Back to AtD Reimann maths ain't life. p.891

[Mark Kohut]

Paul Mackin writes: 
The issue from the Cyprian/Yashmeen/Reef trio needs to have more 
significance than merely perpetuating the species, as important as that 
is. Her snatching from the world of brilliance requires some higher 
order purpose if this section of the book is to be saved.
The Holy Family thing obviously has big holes in it, but I can't at the 
moment think of anything better.
 
At one point, Ljubica puts flowers in a gun barrel.......part of TRP's
sixties images and themes? ( a little groan-worthy by now?)
 
And, re maths......I think that Yashmeen giving up  higher math is
part of TRP's book-length general satirization of the uses of math
in the modern world.......
 
From Plato thru "mad Dog' Russell, mathematicians talk of the abstraction
that is mathematics and abstraction links with the daylit fictions, the balloon,
the bloviations of most in AtD, I would argue.
 
And, we don't live in the world of mathematics, we live in the world of
children's sensations, I think TRP puts out there thematically---
 
& he also might have gotten related notions from McLuhan......

From: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
Sent: Sunday, June 3, 2012 9:49 AM
Subject: Re: Back to AtD Reimann maths ain't life. p.891

On 6/2/2012 11:46 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:
>  Paul Mackin wrote:
>
>> Alice knows. What we are witnessing in the foundation of the Holy Family
>> Traverse in which Yashmeen is to become the mother of the baby Jes . . . .
>>  And a good deal of purple prose is necessary get this across, make it
>> sufficiently portentous.
>
> Yes, Paul, I tend to forget that there are more levels to this than
> the feminist angle I was focusing on.
> The Holy Family stuff with Cyps and Reef and Yashmeen, I got to admit,
> slides by me largely unappreciated.
>
> It reminds me of that prison family stuff that the late-capitalist
> pearl girl in IV talks about...
>
> You go into the pages of history with the personnel you have, not the
> personnel that you might want to have.
>
> The symbolism of the eagle is broader than just the "oh no, Yashmeen's
> about to get predated into family life"
> The eagle's diet is the ground-dwelling vermin and compared to making
> a family, I suppose that any commercial or intellectual occupation
> makes of one by comparison a rat, a shrew, or a vole --  I guess
> that's why they play Mack the Knife at wedding receptions...
>
> This is where my viewpont re-converges with Mark's: yes, ultimately
> the continuance of the species is more important than whatever
> individual accomplishments one might have wanted to see from Yashmeen.
>  She did, after, make that anonymous contribution in Professor
> Hilbert's class, and how many of us get to make even an anonymous
> contribution -- things are tough all over, we're all riding that
> Ferris Wheel and all you might be offered is a bite of jellied eel...
>



The issue from the Cyprian/Yashmeen/Reef trio needs to have more 
significance than merely perpetuating the species, as important as that 
is. Her snatching from the world of brilliance requires some higher 
order purpose if this section of the book is to be saved.


The Holy Family thing obviously has big holes in it, but I can't at the 
moment think of anything better.

P
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