Atdtda35, After a few sociable rounds, 995

[bandwraith at aol.com]

I see the Willis Turnstone, p.310 passage (the same as the one leaked
on the web pre-publication, as I recall), as a fairly direct indication
of authorial intention, or even more grandiose, role of fiction
nowadays. That would be: the attempt at making "adjustments" to the
historical flow that has led us astray. Not just setting the story
straight, but somehow altering its course into a less pathological
posture. This, in contrast, to the presumed failure of the Cyprian,
Reef, Yashmeen tripartite to alter the course of the impending war. But 
the
failure of CRY is relative, and perhaps their role should be appraised
wrt to their "complex conjugate" Lake, Sloat, Deuce- which, if only by
the laws of symmetry, suggests a cancelling of effect- LSD ending up
historically barren.


-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, Sep 29, 2012 12:19 pm
Subject: Atdtda35, After a few sociable rounds, 995


We have gone from a bar where Frank meets Melpómene (at the start of
66.6 on in
990) to one where he meets Doc Willis, the ‘onetime disappointed beau of
Frank’s sister Lake’ (995) and a reminder that Frank has gone back but
can
never (‘onetime’) go back. Above the section break, the final paragraph
of
66.6 describes the ease with which capitalism might cross borders and
treat
space as a fiction; here, the first paragraph replicates the opening of
the
previous section (Willis, ‘just off his night shift’, reminds us of
Frank’s
similar retirement to El Quetzal Dormido) and also takes the reader
further
back in the narrative, time as a fiction (on 922, 63.2 ends with Frank
considering Ewball and Stray, then reflecting upon Lake’s relationship
with
Deuce Kindred). Doc then suggests (‘I didn’t once ask about your
sister’)
that he too has been taken back in time: the Denver they each currently
inhabit is far removed from the past they recall.

Doc’s reference to acupuncture provides, following accounts of Günther’s
plantation on 987 and 989-990, reference to another kind of
modernisation,
the co-existence of mainstream and alternative medicines: we might go
back
to ‘young Willis Turnstone, freshly credentialed from the American
School of
Osteopathy’ on 309 and the subsequent magic he performs on Jimmy Drop’s
bad
back on 310, where Willis confronts tradition in the Old West. Here, of
course, the Old West is invoked by any reference to the Traverse
pursuit of
Webb’s killer: Willis the ‘onetime disappointed beau’ will have one
recollection of Lake, Frank another.