IVIV20: They both knew, 356-359

[Mark Kohut]

Or For Interpretation (my preference):

Let's take "The Preserved". What is Pynchon intending is being preserved; should have been preserved?

Look at the dream just a few pages back. Remember dreams, ala, Jung, usually contain truths in TRP's work it is safe to say?

 

--- On Mon, 1/18/10, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:

> From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
> Subject: IVIV20: They both knew, 356-359
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Monday, January 18, 2010, 12:12 AM
> Pursuing the Golden Fang, Sauncho
> bringing Doc back to the here-&-now. The
> "pair of greenish blobs" (356) recalls the "little blobs of
> color" on 351,
> not to mention the "paint chips" on 354, or even the
> "cubist rose" on
> 355-356; and then, of course, the radio "sound[s] like a
> Gordita Beach bar
> any night of the week" (356). The schooner proves elusive
> and again the
> action is quite inconsequential. Sauncho ("Well, that lets
> us out") gives up
> easily, perhaps oddly so, given his apparent enthusiasm for
> the chase
> earlier, "moving faster than Doc had ever seen him" (354).
> 
> What follows will be observed at a distance by Sauncho and
> Doc; so possibly
> their presence is now quite superfluous. Observers rather
> than participants;
> observation and reading as participation. But then,
> fast-forward to the
> section's closing exchange on 359: without Sauncho and Doc
> as witnesses
> "[t]here'd be only the government story".
> 
> And so to "St Flip of Lawndale's mythical break, also known
> to old-timers as
> Death's Doorsill" (358), a paragraph that begins by
> confirming their shared
> knowledge/understanding. On 357 Doc suspects the Golden
> Fang is leading them
> into a trap; a page later he thinks he sees the Preserved.
> He might put it
> down to poor visibility, but again there is the
> recollection of an ethical
> alternative.
> 
>