IVIV20: 'Glittering mosaic of doubt"

[Mark Kohut]

Given our varying degrees 'against interpretation" or overinterpretation; against 'symptomatic' reductionism.......

the phrase 'glittering mosaic of doubt' resonates in lotsa meta-ways to me....you?  

Re: overinterpretation--TRP does seem to present lotsa color--glittering mosaic positively...a...and 'doubt' [against certainty] almost everywhere...........

--- On Fri, 1/15/10, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:

> From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
> Subject: IVIV20: Moving faster than Doc had ever seen him, 354-357
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, January 15, 2010, 12:15 AM
> 20.1 appears transitional, from the
> departure of Bigfoot at the end of Ch19
> to the renewal of the Golden Fang plotline in 20.2.
> 
> On 354 Doc is discovered waiting, as so often, reactive
> rather than
> proactive, to be involved in the action (as Gilligan to
> Sauncho's Skipper). 
> 
> Doc-&-Sauncho is offered as an alternative to
> Doc-&-Bigfoot; when Doc is
> arrested in Ch2, Sauncho appears in counterpoint to
> Bigfoot. The Golden Fang
> is associated with Sauncho after his "strangely evasive"
> response to Doc's
> question on 89; a couple of pages later he tells Doc "his
> firm ... ha[s]
> been keenly, almost desperately, curious about the Golden
> Fang for a while
> now" (91), which might explain why, relating the boat's
> history, he can tie
> Mickey Wolfmann to it (93). Sauncho's first appearance
> (26-29) might lead us
> to question his competence; viewed from Doc's pov he might
> appear as
> threatening as Bigfoot. Subsequent reference to The Golden
> Fang (89-91)
> introduces a note of mystery, again from Doc's pov.
> Moreoever, his
> "fantasies" (91) echo Doc's own yearning for status.
> 
> Down the page on 354, another kind of reading. Viewed from
> the ocean,
> Gordita Beach appears "in a spill of weather-beaten colors,
> like paint chips
> at some out-of-the-way hardware store, and the hillside up
> to Dunecrest ...
> looking from out here strangely flat, hardly there at all".
> The loss of
> perspective indicated here is both painterly and
> reminiscent of the earlier
> (two-dimensional) "glittering mosaic of doubt" (351). To
> emphasise Doc's
> impressionistic reading: ". like paint chips". The extreme
> close-up and the
> long shot are equally evasive.
> 
> On 356, the Golden Fang finally coming into view, Doc notes
> Sauncho's look,
> one of "pure unrequited love"; this obsession recalls
> Bigfoot, who has
> returned in flashback, courtesy of "Sauncho's old
> binoculars" (355). Here,
> Doc imagines Bigfoot "at the outset of his career",
> contradicting the
> parting view of Bigfoot on 350, Doc suppressing any thought
> of the "weird
> twisted cop karma" and "what [Bigfoot] thought he needed to
> know" in favour
> of the "young cop" on 355. Now that Bigfoot has departed
> Doc reverses time
> much as he did when parting from Shasta (the "fool's
> attempt" on 314).
> 
>