Sportello - Door/Window/Doc/Pynchon

[Mark Kohut]

In an essay on another writer in the Faulkner mold, a critic uses the phrase 'frame-time' which sounds pretty fine to me applied to ole Doc
Frame-Time.

--- On Tue, 11/17/09, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Sportello - Door/Window/Doc/Pynchon
> To: "David Morris" <fqmorris at gmail.com>, "John Carvill" <johncarvill at gmail.com>
> Cc: "Dave Monroe" <against.the.dave at gmail.com>, "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 7:45 AM
>  > There are many grids in
> > GR.  The most famous one probably being Slothrop's
> > map.
> > 
> > Indeed. And I think there was probably quite a lot of
> > relevant stuff
> > in Against the Day - the Venetian sequences, for
> instance.
> > 
> > > I think in IV the most pervasive sportello is
> the
> > framed pixelated
> > > grid of the TV.
> > 
> > Hmmmmmm. I like the connection between grids,
> perspective,
> > sportellos,
> > and photography. IV as a 'snapshot' of Pynchon's
> > environment and era
> > whilst writing GR, which itself was, in part, 'about'
> that
> > same
> > environment and era. That and the mental image of
> Pynchon,
> > leaning out
> > of the upper half of his Sportello-like door, in
> Manhattan
> > Beach,
> > watching that environement and era go by.
> 
> 
> We have been so wonderfully precise in working out some
> resonances to Pynchon's Sportello,--exciting stuff, I say---
> that I want to try to push the precision:
> 
> Yes, all those connections between grids, sportellos,
> perspective might be like a "snapshot" metaphorically meant,
> but it seems to me TRP is clearly adding resonance from a
> time way before photography: the camera obscura, with
> mirrors--lots in his work--and reflections and angles. 
> 
> More depth charges of meaning, perhaps: his senses of what
> we (as human beings) have lost are often illuminated with
> perspectives from history, often back centuries; and his
> sense of when History went wrong places perspectives further
> back in time for understanding. 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
>