V-2 - Chapter 9 - Clockwork Eye

[Robin Landseadel]

On Oct 16, 2010, at 11:17 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

>>
>> He's looking deep into the eastward view, to eventual wastes of the
>> Kalahari, "north to a distant yellow exhalation that rose from far  
>> under the
>> horizon and seemed to hang eternally over the Tropic of  
>> Capricorn. . ."
>>
>
> Milton echo, in PL, creation of Hell "rose like an exhalation"?

I don't know if you're aware of this, but Glenn Gould -- a man who  
often referred to himself as "The Last Puritan", made a trilogy of  
radio documentaries concerning the idea of people and their local  
cultures that managed some how to be isolated from the Zeitgeist. The  
first was called "Idea of the North". With this documentary, Glenn  
Gould created a form he called "Contrapuntal Radio," where elements of  
the documentary that are usually laid out in normal sequential order  
are laid out in a contrapuntal texture. In this case, Gould edited the  
introductory remarks by the participants into a Trio Sonata texture.  
This site offers up the audio opening of "Idea of the North."

http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/320-1709/

There's a line you'll hear with the entrance of the second voice --  
"I, I don't go for this Northmanship thing at all . . ." The notion of  
the Absolute North as some sort of spiritual magnate, inverted  
immediately by the second subject.

But I love that line, about "Northmanship" and Northmanship is a big  
theme in Pynchon, brought to some kind of climax in Against the Day,  
with a chunk of Pure North burning its way through a chunk of the  
Infected city.

More on the Solitude Trilogy:

http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/gould.html