GR translation: across a clear skirmish-line from the Force

[Mark Kohut]

Monte noting the other capped use of Force, can lead one, under the seven types
of ambiguity richness, to see Force as, perhaps, something even more
than They.....They/us as a Collective Phenomenon.....Hegel's Spirit darkly obverted throughout history.....
( I am reminded that the 'pre-historic wastes'
is usually a positive trope in Pynchon....and that being "transmuted to the very substance
of History" is not a good thing).....

But that may be only adding unnecessary words to Monte's gloss.....

P.S. I even mention Hegel's Spirit/Geist because it seems TRP plays a fair bit with
our historical/personal consciousness in Against the Day......words like "co-conscious" resurrected
for example...


----- Original Message -----
From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
To: 'Mike Jing' <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>; 'Pynchon Mailing List' <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 9:20 AM
Subject: RE: GR translation: across a clear skirmish-line from the Force

The "yes"es seem to me a repeated affirmation: she's ready IN SPITE of
imminent disaster, IN SPITE OF anyone who may be watching. Also, for readers
of Big Encyclopedic Novels in English, surely a nod to Molly Bloom's "yes I
will yes" sexual soliloquy at the end of Ulysses.

The Force? Opposed to the (much more frequently named) Counterforce of
slackers, dopers, and  mindless pleasure-seekers,  the Force is the book's
big bad They: everything that rules, controls, dehumanizes. The best clue is
the only capitalized reference to it I know, on p. 639 (Penguin pb), where
Dodson-Truck is thinking of Nora:

"In recent weeks, in true messianic style, it has come clear to her that her
real identity is, literally, the Force of Gravity. [italics] I am Gravity, I
am That against which the Rocket must struggle, to which the pre-historic
wastes submit and are transmuted to the very substance of History . . . ."

But wait: isn't the Rocket itself emblematic of inhuman lunar-Nazi dreams of
transcendence (not to mention death and destruction here and now)? If the
Force is bad, a-and the Rocket struggling against it is also bad...???

Good question. "[Oedipa] had heard all about excluded middles; they were bad
shit, to be avoided; and how had it happened here, with chances once so good
for diversity?"

Or: http://writeonill.org/masondixon.htm



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Mike Jing
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 8:48 AM
To: Pynchon Mailing List
Subject: GR translation: across a clear skirmish-line from the Force

P222.2-13  ...her skirt is pulled up in back, the bare bottoms of her
thighs, marked red from the train seat, turn toward him . . . yes . .
. in the imminence of disaster, yes, whoever's watching yes. . . .
"Leni, where are you?" She was at his elbow not ten seconds ago.
They'd agreed beforehand to try and keep together. But there are two sorts
of movement out here-as often as the chance displacements of strangers,
across a clear skirmish-line from the Force, will bring together people
who'll remain that way for a time, in love that can even make the oppression
seem a failure, so too love, here in the street, can be taken centrifugally
apart again: faces seen for the last time here, words spoken idly, over your
shoulder, taking for granted she's there, already last words-

First, how should I interpret the three "yes" in " yes . . . in the
imminence of disaster, yes, whoever's watching yes. . . ."?

Second, what is "the Force" in "across a clear skirmish-line from the
Force"?