BE: echoes in coastal waters

[malignd at aol.com]

The "great" falls, yes.  A tourist magnet.



-----Original Message-----
From: Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thu, Aug 22, 2013 6:24 pm
Subject: Re: BE: echoes in coastal waters



Paterson, of Williams' long poem, was built around part of the Passaic ( 80 miles long I learn) and there is The great Falls and, as a pynchonian resonance, maybe, it was exploited early and deeply to make industrialism work. 

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 22, 2013, at 5:41 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:




Right. I get it. So you think P has fucked up or what? Is it just a little joke? Titilating allusion don't you think? 


Btw, in Trans-Atlantic, a novel I like ver much, though I dislike Douglass, we hear run river run...and all manner of allusive stuff that springs up from a choppy hoppy prose style. He is best on the Irish, on words and meanings, weak when he has the lass in Manhattan. 



On Thursday, August 22, 2013,   wrote:

The point is that the Passaic, under the best circumstance, would not provoke awe and wonder.  There are reasons it's not known as the Mighty Passaic.



-----Original Message-----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thu, Aug 22, 2013 7:38 am
Subject: Re: BE: echoes in coastal waters


Seems to be the point, that it is almost impossible for us to imagine the Passaic as it once appeared to those first Europeans, just as it was nearly impossible for Carraway / Fitzgerald to imagine the LI Sound as it appeared to the early explorers. The Passaic was much wider, it's forests thick, and so on. See _History of the Passaic and its Environs_ Vol. 1 
William Winfield Scott. For a look at The Sound, see _A Fine piece of water, Andersen. 


So what has happened to our capacity to wonder as the natural beauty of he Earth has been deminished?


Also see


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler_Antabanez



On Wednesday, August 21, 2013,   wrote:

As one who grew up in a town on the mighty river's bank, I can say he certainly has the correct example of water polluted by industry.  But I can't imagine anyone at any time feeling on the edge of possibilities sailing up the Passaic River.  Now the Hackensack ... 

“and for maybe a minute and a half she feels free—at least at the edge of possibilities, like whatever the Europeans who first sailed up the Passaic River must have felt, before the long parable of corporate sins and corruption that overtook it, before the dioxins and the highway debris and unmourned acts of waste.”




-----Original Message-----
From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 5:19 am
Subject: BE: echoes in coastal waters



We’ve so often quoted (and recognized in TRP) this from Fitzgerald: 
 
“…gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes-a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent…”
 
It’s dawn, and Maxine and companions are in a boat on the Arthur Kill near Isle of Meadows, a huge NYC landfill site:
 
“and for maybe a minute and a half she feels free—at least at the edge of possibilities, like whatever the Europeans who first sailed up the Passaic River must have felt, before the long parable of corporate sins and corruption that overtook it, before the dioxins and the highway debris and unmourned acts of waste.”
 







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