gaaah...kreplach! -- two openings

[bandwraith at aol.com]

I think he does openings better than closings. Perhaps that's how it 
should be, given the natural order of such things. LOT49 probably 
worked best for me, and if we include the stories, The Secret 
Integration.


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, Sep 22, 2012 2:41 am
Subject: gaaah...kreplach! -- two openings


i almost da's'n't -- but in the spirit of compare / contrast, and in
the knowledge that the following comments will probably bear the same
unsavory relationship to the text as the dread kreplach does to the
savory ingredients...


ok - two openings:

GR - the screaming comes across the sky, the dream passage, pirate
saving bloat, and as pirate sort of wakes up, we're implanted with the
idea that there is a message -- in addition to the destruction it
contains -- there is an actual message in the Rocket, for those
deputized and solemnized and trained, with their Special Talents...so
we of course aspire to be among those who read that message...there's
a new election, a new preterition, you didn't think you'd be saved,
old chap..., but in some ways you can crunch the whole tale down into
something that's presaged and mise en scened very thoroughly in the
opening


Vineland - old Zoyd is sleeping late, this is something that more
people should do (imho) because it feels so good... and the bluejays
on the roof and the vines twining about the window, as Benny profane
said to Rachel, let's try it with a fig leaf next time - it is not
good for man to be alone -- but once you know the plot, you know that
he's about to jump thru the window, which is in fact not glass but
spun sugar...and the actual jump itself is girt about with flashbacks
to the planning of the jump, the reason for the jump, the
heartbreaking stresses to which he's subject, 'the betrayals of which
i am part' as Roy Harper put it in McGoohan's Blues...
anyway, the crunch fest, like some sugary cereal or cheetos, here in
this opening, is the fact that Zoyd is making a leap of faith...a-and
of course, the trajectory is similar yet different -- he's powered by
human muscle and blood, flesh and bone...instead of by liquid
hydrogen...he's guided by experience and flashbacks, instead of vane
servomotors and gyroscopes...he's doing something publicly crazy for
love of his daughter and his ex, instead of for revenge...


gaahhh - kreplach!


--
- where the bee sucks, there suck I