Against the Day

[Alex Colter]

The Marching Academy Harmonica Band "grounding" is on p.418 by the way...


Also, I am curious as to how 'Chick's Flight', from town to town or
skyward, figure into or against the various notions of the Transforming
Power of Chemistry, which seem to be more prominent in other, darker, parts
of the book...

from p.372
"We look at the world, at governments, across the specturm, some with more
freedom some with less. And we observe that the more repressive the State
is, the closer life under it resembles Death. If dying is deliverance into
a condition of total non-freedom, then the State tends, in the limit, to
Death. The only way to address the problem of the state is with
counter-Death, also known as Chemistry," said Flaco.


On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Readin' AtD for the first time and was tempted to go back and re-read
> that  'grounding' of the boys, after the first encounter with a Trespasser
> I believe, when they join the Harmonica School (or whatever it was,
> can't-find-the-damn-page) until at length Pugnax and the Inconvenience all
> seem'd the idle memories of schoolboys, inebriated by dime-novel fantasies.
>
> I think Counterfly, like Slothrop, is intended to be our buddy Tom.
> Instead of Counterfly it is a "grounding" of the *Inconvenience* & her
> Crew to assume a new member that begins the novel, Chick having spent his
> life until then flying from town to town as one or another of his father's
> Schemes fell through or failed to materialize. He becomes 'Science Officer'
> aboard the *Inconvenience *but I feel this is more from a Surveyor's
> desire to delineate and map, having spent so much of his early life unable
> to 'get his bearings' being ever dragg'd from place to place...
>
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes, that is what I implied by concentrating on P's earthy grounding of
>> him.
>>
>>   *From:* David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> *To:* P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> *Sent:* Thursday, February 9, 2012 11:01 AM
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: Against the Day
>>
>> How about "Against Flying?"  Seems more apt in a book title "Against the
>> Day.
>>
>> Also, remember that group in GR call the "Counterforce?"
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 6:36 AM, Chris Birks <traditionalgb at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Counterfly = Barfly?
>>
>>
>>
>
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