great quote for entering a party from "the recognitions"

[edmoorester at gmail.com]

great quote for entering a party from "the recognitions"

> TR part 1: ch 5
p 176

"Herschel lay against the doorjamb getting his breath;
and Otto (thinking only of what it looked like to see Otto entering a room)  
entered.

He was dressed comfortably for the temperature. It was not a large room.

The established guests were too engrossed in talking, or waiting for  
opportunity to talk, to attend the new ones. Some of them glanced up, as  
residents of a railway coach glance up at a new passenger struggling down  
the aisle after a seat; but all maintained a composure which reflected the  
impertinence of the new arrivals for arriving at all."

I noticed TS Eliot had a play "The Cocktail Party" and I hustled to get  
appropriate quotes.

> http://www.literary-quotations.com/e/t_s_eliot.html


> This reminds me of Otto. . . .


> "It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
> Resign yourself to be the fool you are."


> Everyone's alone — or so it seems to me.
> They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;
> They make faces, and think they understand each other."

I thought of a nice contrast to this awful party scene with a
quote from "Infinite Jest"

IJ p369 1996 Back Bay

"The thing is it has to be the truth to really go over, here.
It can't be a calculated crowd-pleaser, and it has to be the truth  
unslanted, unfortified.
And maximally unironic. An ironist in a Boston AA meeting is a witch in  
church.
Irony-free zone. Same with sly disingenuous manipulative pseudo-sincerity.
Sincerity with an ulterior motive is something these tough ravaged people  
know and fear,
all of them trained to remember the coyly sincere, ironic, self-presenting  
fortifications
they'd had to construct in order to carry on Out There, under the ceaseless  
neon bottle."


ed


> Mark wrote:


> Nothing, Nothing...like the "Nothing, nothing, nothing at all" of the  
> MacLeish poem...The End of the World...published before 1953 since it is  
> in the prize-winning Collected Poems of that yearmAnd Lear's nothings....=
> Talk about getting hit with a downer as you go thru the door......=
> ..And, why was "When Buddha Smiles" the tune chosen to be on t=
> he radio (by =0AGaddis)?=0AA little jab? At what? one story =
> of the buddha and his smile......=


> Message ----=0AFrom: Erik T. Burns 0ATo: pynchon-


> subject: TRTR Part 1, Chapter V, Page 169 So, foax, we're o=
> ff to a cocktail party.But first let's meet Maude & Arny Munk, repres
> entative of Nothing.
> And the wasteland. And of a deep rooted theme in TR,that of  
> the "unreproductive" couple.
> Babies, having them and not, will feature throughout this section.

As will peoples' heads, less their hands, lost limbs and suicide jokes.

ed
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