V-2nd. Chap 1 last belated email and some themes summarized

[Mark Kohut]

could not use a real computer last eve....

I had this linking of observations still to make...i'll so the short version:

See when Rachel sez "Come Home" and when Benny asks if home was the mercury-lit street. A; No, we know
from P's vision of such..........

See the two uses of an umbilical cord attachment between Benny and Rachel.
Grant, of the Companion, quotes and seems to agree with those who see some mothering
from Rachel to Benny....strikes me as not right in most of our ways of understanding...."she comes to him at
night, like a succubus(!) in the snow"....

I think TRP was more likely linking one's natural home--the Five Towns; where Rachel and Benny could meet
in the Catrskills wherever Benny is really from....with its organic pull...........that "organic community" many
social scientists--Raymond Williams--and many literature scholars, Leavis and Empson for example--
wrote of......wrote of the loss of.....when one left. 

P.S. also, notice the atmospheric snow thruout Chap 1......."i'm cold; I'm cold" sez the dying guy in Catch--22
and cold is such a Bad Shit symbol in many writers, not least TRP.....

as is snow in TRP, like rain in Hemingway and TRP's earlier story---excepting that great snowball in the different M & D---which in this reading reminded me of the great
story of snow---saw the faithful film---Joyce's The Dead.....which has a woman feeling the loss of her youthful love as the snow falls..........

And, by a stretch of genius only TRP might have, I thought of V. from the past....perhaps Venus, perhaps the Virgin, perhaps
love lost in history---which we will be exploring.....missing from this Chap 1 setting of V.