GR translation: more steeply than the waking will ever need

[Paul Mackin]

On 10/23/2012 11:52 PM, David Payne wrote:
> Sorry to blather on, but I was thinking about why I suggested that 
> Pynchon conflated waking from sleep with the waking of the sea -- I 
> mean, why did I suggested that this conflation was "perverse"?
>
> It seems pretty straightforward after all, the sea "waking" up makes 
> perfect sense as a pun. Likewise, a person waking up from the depths 
> of slumber.
>
> This occurred to me, and I wondered why I described it as perverse.
>
> Then I realized that when I was reading Pynchon's use of the word 
> "waking" over and over throughout the text, it seemed like he kept 
> using ironically, like waking into a nightmare, or making it seem like 
> the awake world was less real than the dream world.
>
> Maybe I'm wrong there, but wanted to throw is out to see if it chums 
> up a conversation...

I thoroughly concur with the ways David ties the various senses of wake 
together.

Spilling the two into the sea would be like waking the amorous pair from 
a kind of dream or idyll. Not exactly an idyll maybe--their time 
together is both idyllic and   fraught with an ominous, not quite 
definable meaning.

In thinking of my boating days, I don't specifically remember ever being 
awoken by the wake of a passing craft, but recall  innumerable times 
having been made alert by such.  Something might need checking out.  
Wake up means get alert.  Wake up soldier.  Snap to, Slothrop.

And of course there's the wake for the dead vs waking from the dead.  
Finnegan's Wake--both with and without the apostrophe.  "Do you think 
I'm dead?"

All very interesting.

P
>
>
> On Wed, 24 Oct 2012 02:56:52 +0000, dpayne1912 at hotmail.com wrote
>
> Huh, Amazon's _Look Inside_ finds 26 results for "waking". I read 
> through them and it had that weird effect where you say a word over 
> and over and it sounds weirder and weirder. I started to get the sense 
> that the waking up from a dream was being perversely conflated with 
> being dragged under the wake of the sea, but that's just me in the 
> moment, probably no reflection on the text.

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