IVIV, Bigfoot on Doc's case

[Monte Davis]

Mark sez: 

> A...and, mirrors are there in much of the other 
> fiction...Remember Oedipa in the doorway of double mirrors 
> and their infinite regress.... lots of mirrors in M & D....V. 
> too, but I can't remember an example....
> 

Try the mirror-with-ghost-dance Kit encounters at the geometric center of
AtD (p 542), as I think Robin was first to note:

"...at some point in the deep malediction of the hour she had mysteriously
vanished. Only a moment before, it seemed to him, she'd been there at the
seaward window, poised against the uncertain marine light, carefully mixing
absinthe and 
Champagne to produce a strange foaming louche. Now, with no sensible
pas-sage of time, the rooms were resonant with absence. Next to the
cheval-glass, Kit noticed a pale dressing-gown, of all-but-insubstantial
chiffon, not draped 
over a chair but standing erect, now and then rippling from otherwise
unsensed passages of air, as if someone were inside of it, perhaps stirred
by in-visible forces less nameable, its movements, disquietingly, not always
matched by those of its tall image in the mirror.
	Nothing now, not even the ocean, could be heard in the room, though
the windows overlooked the long moon-stung waves. In the moonlight, against
gravity, the thing poised there, faceless, armless, attending him, as if, in
a 
moment, it would speak."

Itself a replay of Slothrop and Katje au Casino Hermann G (p 194):

"She's at her window, the sea below and behind her, the midnight sea, its
individual waveflows impossible at this distance to follow, all integrated
into the hung stillness of an old painting seen across the deserted gallery
where you wait n the shadow, forgetting why you are here, frightened by the
level of illumination, which is from the same blanched scar of moon that
wipes the sea tonight . . . "

Moonstung waves, scars on the sea -- V's been a bitch from the get-go. LOTS
of rearview mirrors in IV, as you'd expect in LAutoland with a driver of 72.
Not to worry, though:

"Old Uncle Roony will drive you anywhere you want, won't look in the rear
view mirror, won't be anything but the kindly old chauffeur he is." (p 349
in V, which is simply rotten with mirrors: Melanie's loft alone, sheesh)

A stuffed panda to the first who finds the mirror/sea/elusive love trope in
M&D!




> A...and, mirrors are there in much of the other 
> fiction...Remember Oedipa in the doorway of double mirrors 
> and their infinite regress.... lots of mirrors in M & D....V. 
> too, but I can't remember an example....
> 
> --- On Tue, 9/1/09, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > From: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: IVIV, Bigfoot on Doc's case
> > To: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
> > Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 5:11 AM
> > > A lame joke, yes, but a lame
> > joke which connects to important
> > > themes in IV. An obvious answer to Doc's question
> > would be "in
> > > the mirror," and Doc does have a close relationship
> > with mirrors.
> > > Also, in his PCP trip on p. 318 he DOES watch his own
> > head, as
> > > he hallucinates his own double:
> > >
> > > "WoW," Doc replies, "you look just like you do in th'
> > mirror!"
> > 
> > Yes, and Pynchon has always been a big fan of corny jokes, 
> puns, etc.
> > We know this.
> > 
> 
> 
>