GR translation: solid-set against the purple mountainslope

[Joe Allonby]

Weird little aside; I once stayed in the room in the Antler Hotel in
Colorado Springs adjacent to the room in which Katherine Lee Bates
wrote that.


On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 10:32 AM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Mountains appear purple when they are at a distance - the bigger the mountain and the further away the more purple it looks.  This is because the red light gets diffused much more readily than the blue.
>
> "O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain!"
>
> Bekah
>
> On Apr 5, 2012, at 7:05 AM, Joe Allonby wrote:
>
>> And of course, the majestic mountain is purple
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 8:45 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Slight quibble:  "solid-set" isn't in *sharp* contrast to the
>>> mountains, both man and mountain are similarly solid-set, just a case
>>> of foreground Vs. background, similar but different.  Notice the two
>>> sets of "against" pairings in this segment (both cases of one thing in
>>> front of another):
>>>
>>> "This Crutchfield here is browned by sun, wind and dirt—against the
>>> deep brown slats of the barn or stable wall he is wood of a different
>>> grain and finish."
>>>
>>> "He is good-humored, solid-set against the purple mountainslope"
>>>
>>> If anything, these descriptions make him almost a part of the
>>> landscape/scene.  I'd say Pynchon is playing with the image of the
>>> Marlboro Man:
>>>
>>>
>>> http://richardcraiganderson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Marlboro-Man.jpg
>>>
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 6:35 AM, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>>> On 4/5/2012 2:07 AM, Mike Jing wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> P69.21-28  This Crutchfield here is browned by sun, wind and dirt—against the deep brown slats of the barn or stable wall he is wood of a different grain and finish.  He is good-humored, solid-set against the purple mountainslope, and looking half into the sun. His shadow is carried strained coarsely back through the network of wood inside the stable—beams, lodgepoles, stall uprights, trough-trestlework, rafters, wood ceiling-slats the sun comes through: blinding empyrean even at this failing hour of the day.
>>>>>
>>>>> What does "solid-set against the purple mountainslope" mean?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> appearing unmovable
>>>>
>>>> in sharp contrast to the mountain slope
>