pavement and beach(es)

[Mark Kohut]

I would also say: Florida ain't California in TRP's mythology system....Florida 
in AtD, mentioned in the same time as 'the Southern Strategy" with
that backwater Blackwater place..............

In his special way, I suggest TRP found an emblematic way to symbolize 
Florida.............



----- Original Message ----
From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, January 23, 2011 7:02:31 AM
Subject: pavement and beach(es)


Believe it or not, me got "The Moon" card two days after another as daily 
instruction and that's exactly how I feel ... Anyway, just read a sentence in 
Against the Day which seems to be connected to the Situationist intro quote in 
Inherent Vice that found such brilliant interpretation in Millard's article:

"He had found in Pugnax a sympathetic soul, for, owing to often weeks of being 
cooped up in the gondola of the Inconvenience, Pugnax also dreamed of release, 
running in the early morning, into a brisk wind, leaving behind whatever humans 
had accompanied him, ALONG THE WILD BEACHES OF FLORIDA HARD AS PAVEMENT 
[emphasis mine.kfl], or the frozen rivers of Siberia where Samoyeds raced 
alongside in a spirit of friendly competition." (p. 255)

So we have beach(es) & pavement another time, but this here is different. The 
freedom desired is not imagined in figures of binary distinction (soft vs. 
hard), yet in in the superimposition of both terms, which
seems to indicate (cf. in the same sentence: "spirit of friendly competition") a 
dialectical transcendence of thinking in opposites. But maybe I'm exaggerating 
and it's just about that dogs can't run well on soft sand ...

Kai