GR translation: the grating of his close-shaved skull

[Mark Kohut]

Three uses of grating around hair. Fascinating. thanks, David.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grating
 
And going to the internal link 'diffraction grating' herein will learn you [sic; wilfull] that the first experiments happened
a year after Newton did prism work and involved bird feathers!  
 
The things we learn in reading Pynchon.
 
I think it is time for me to reread Gravity's Rainbow yet again and parse it this time. (There's a job). 
I keep thinking of Pynchon remarking, proudly, to a Viking employee that he typed all the manuscript himself. 

From: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>
To: Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2011 7:45 AM
Subject: RE: GR translation: the grating of his close-shaved skull


There's some meaning here that I'm not sure I understand. I found two other places where Pynchon uses "grating" in reference to hair in GR:

P188.1-3: "Breakfast is wine, bread, smiling, sun diffracting through the fine gratings of long dancers' hair, swung, flipped, never still, a dazzle of violet, sorrel, saffron, emerald."

P656.9-15: "Each long haircut is a passage. Hair is yet another kind of modulated frequency. Assume a state of grace in which all hairs were once distributed perfectly even, a time of innocence when they fell perfectly straight, all over the colonel's head. Winds of the day, gestures of distraction, sweat, itchings, sudden surprises, three-foot falls at the edge of sleep, watched skies, remembered shames, all have since written on that perfect grating."

Perhaps Pynchon is riffing off of a type of grating that is used in optics--from the OED online: grating, n.2, 4. _Optics._ An arrangement of parallel wires in a plane, or a surface of glass or polished metal ruled with a series of very close fine parallel lines, designed to produce spectra by diffraction.

----------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 12:22:14 +0200
> Subject: Re: GR translation: the grating of his close-shaved skull
> From: jstremmel at gmail.com
> To: mikezjing at hotmail.com
> CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>
> if you run your hand across a close-shaved skull it's kind of a
> grating sensation?
>
> 2011/7/16 Mike Jing <mikezjing at hotmail.com>:
> > P100.25-26  ..., the pale bar-light across the grating of his close-shaved
> > skull -- ...
> >
> > How is his close-shaved skull like a "grating"?
> >
> >
> >
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