"He thinks he's hallucinating" m

[Michael Bailey]

>> but like in Jazz, the variations can sometimes lead off the beaten
>> path; overtones can summon a completely different meaning to a phrase
>
> Sure. On this, Jazz got nothing on Shakespeare.
>
>> sure, she's trying to keep it light, that's the one chord, but then
>> the way she does it - appealing to a reasonable third party is like
>> your minor seventh
>
> Hate to be an absolute knave and a grave digger,  but what third party?
>

the listener on the (nonexistent? metaphorical?) wire - thot that was clear...

>> a nonexistent third party (and that in itself is a bluesy kind of a
>> minor 7th, why come she can't be in Doc's world, isn't his trip groovy
>> enuf for her)
>
> That bluesy minor is not in that phrase. Is it? Isn't it in the
> contradistinction of her clothes and his apartment and what was and
> what will never be.

and the phrase

>And, we hear these minors because Pynchon plays
> them for us with other phrases and sentences. It's a lot of weight you
> want to load onto a missing pronoun.

it wasn't my idea.  I'm brainstorming and looking for corroboration,
because, well, I get more of a kick out of doing that than out of
ruling things out.
"No is the saddest experience"  Also, sometimes go looking for one
thing and maybe find something else (Crowley: if it were not for the
Garter, I would never have seen the Star)

>If it were the only example, I
> would be more inclined to read it as you conceive it, but given at
> least dozens of other dropped pronouns in the text,

each possibly for an artistic reason

> I'm inclined to
> read it as I read the others.

one at a time, with an ear cocked (smile)?


Dr Thwackum or somebody in the Lit curriculum somewhere talked about
Hawthorne's "No, writ in thunder" or something like that.  (He also
mentioned some other American luminary's "yes" - or did he? I can't
remember if he did, or if he did, that writer's name, right now)

...anyway, everlastingly no to all readings that would detract, that
would not make sense, that would obtrude a meaning counter to the
manifest decency and perceptiveness of the writer.
Woe to those who'd find in Pynchon's work incitement to cruelty, for instance...

So, I take your point: the text is girt about with rules of engagement.

(As a pleasure reader, I sometimes take them more as suggestions...)

Let me just note, though, the sort of paradox (paradox?  eh, maybe in
the same way that rain on your wedding day is ironic) - or um,
conundrum that the sentence, "[He] thinks he's hallucinating" gives
rise to ---

if he only *thinks* he's hallucinating, then he's misinterpreting his
sensory perceptions just as much as if he were, right?

I mean, that is a weird little statement, without trespassing outside
Galactic Standard syntax or grammar at all, eh?