GR translation: social eye

[Paul Mackin]

On 10/21/2011 9:53 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> One of those really dense, tough sections.
>
> She is Nora, Eventyr is holding on (to her, or trying to).
>
> I'd read it this way:  He's waking (becoming more clairvoyant and, simultaneously realizing he's in love), getting a real glimpse of her (she's deepening in his view), just as things come into focus when a sleeper opens his/her eyes.  But simultaneously, she (who's the source of light for his eyes, his social eye being his mental, emotional viewpoint) is fading away, just as the light fades at twilight.  Nothing can help him get her back (retain the light).

Good explanation and yes the passage is very dense.

I can't help inflicting my own male (chauvinist?) reaction to Nora.

Excuse the stereotyping, but she a woman all of us (males at least) have 
met up with at one time or another.

Her deepening and fading away is even more pointedly demonstrated a page 
or so later with "And he--passive as a trance, allowing her beauty: to 
enter him or avoid him, whatever's to be her pleasure."

Similar to Proust's narrator's problems arising from falling in love 
with first Gilberte, then Albertine--two also Nora-so-heartlesses.

Incidentally it's somewhat similar to what happens to the narrator of 
Julian Barnes' award winning latest. (similar but different)

Nevertheless, Nora, and Leni too, have great appeal.  Fond memories.

P




>
> Laura
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Mike Jing<mikezjing at hotmail.com>
>> Sent: Oct 21, 2011 1:52 AM
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Subject: GR translation: social eye
>>
>>
>> P148.6-9  Had he felt her, even then, beginning to recede...called up the control from across the Wall as a way of holding on?  She was deepening from his waking, his social eye like light at the edge of the evening when, for perhaps a perilous ten minutes, nothing helps: ...
>>
>> Lots of questions here, so please bear with me:
>>
>> Here "she" refers to Nora Dodson-Truck, is that correct?
>>
>> Who called up the control as a way of holding on, "she" or Eventyr?
>>
>> What is her "deepening"?  Is his "waking" referring to the awakening of his talent?
>>
>> What is "his social eye"?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>> 		 	   		
>