IVIV(12): Screen-Door Salesmen

[Dave Monroe]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

>   "Dr. Threeply was a shifty specimen with that quality now and then
> observed in aluminum-siding and screen-door salesmen of once having
> been through somethingh--a marriange, a criminal
> proceeding--traumaticv enough to have torqued him permannetly out of
> tolerance, so that now he had to beg potential clients to ignore this
> unsepcified characater handicap." (IV, Ch. 12, p. 187)
>
> ".. the high frequency squeal of a TV sweep circuit through a screen
> door [...] to be followed by the more worldy sound [...] of the Bugs
> Bunny/Road Runner Hour." (IV, Ch. 12,  p. 199)
>
> "... sounds from neighbors through windowsceens ...." (IV, Ch. 12, p. 201)
>
>
> Screen-door salesmen
>
> 447; "dumb and easygoing" husband of woman in Slothrop's dream in
> three parts; 665, "Minnie Calkins (Chapter 1.793) got married Easter
> Sunday to a screen-door salesman from California. Sorry to say he's
> not eligible for Membership - at least not yet. But with all those
> screen doors around, we'll sure keep our fingers crossed!"
>
> http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/alpha/s.html
>
> Calkins, Minnie
>
> 665; Mason who married screen-door salesman
>
> http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=C#
>
> "Security." Her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing
> in the air as in through the screen door of the Quonset office wth a
> smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. Security. Her
> magic word, her spell against demons." (GR, Pt, IV, p.709)
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=iPDGp7VT8H8C&pg=PA709
>
> "Mucho Maas, home, bounded through the screen door." (Lot 49, Ch. 1, p. 3)
>
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/8569911/Thomas-Pynchon-The-Crying-of-Lot-49
>
> Grid
>
> "a glittering map. . .ruled off into 576 squares" 55; sieves, 56;
> "crosshatchings of his black rubber soles" 70; "corporate lattice" 75;
> "Dutch grid's 380 volts" 101; "to keep Grid Time synchronized with
> Greenwich Mean Time" 133; "the Grid runs inching ever faster" 134;
> "Quisling molecules have shifted in latticelike ways" 176; "back in
> France's power grid" 190; "Forget subdivisions" 294; 400; ego as grid,
> 404; "the holy grid" 404; "screen door salesman" 447 ...
>
> http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/alpha/g.html#grid
>
> Slothrop leads us to the Rockefellers much as a proverb from Ben
> Franklin transforms into a quote from Mark Hanna leads to old John D.
> Rockefeller, whose schoolchum Hanna was. Hanna was not a “nickel
> magnate” as Pynchon slyly asserts; if he was any kind of “magnate” it
> was in Great Lakes shipping. Most definitely he was John D.
> Rockefeller’s boyhood pal, and later, at the turn of the century, he
> was US senator from Ohio. He was a leader in Republican politics,
> known as Rockefeller’s political fundraiser and king maker.
>
> We should remember that Ohio was the hub of Republican politics during
> the period, and that Cleveland was the seat of the Standard Oil Trust.
> Mark Hanna was responsible for the political careers of both McKinley
> and Taft, and his machine was largely instrumental in having each
> become president....
>
> http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

Not to mention, of course, "sportello."  See, e.g., ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139777
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139875
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139907
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139910
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139912
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139913
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139916
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139925
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=139926

U.s.w., et soforthiam.  But I gotta go, so ...