GR translation: Just for the knife-edge

[Monte Davis]

What Jochen said. Also a hint of other images in the book: sound shadows,
the terminator line of sunrise or sunset sweeping along (1000+ mph at the
equator), maybe a subliminal equation of  new directions ion life with both
danger and "cutting loose."



That last sentence is a wonder, appealing to something almost every traveler
has felt. Give it all your care.  

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Mike Jing
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 4:35 PM
To: Pynchon Mailing List
Subject: GR translation: Just for the knife-edge

 

P256.30-257-5  It turns out to be an ancient four-story hotel with early
drunks lying in the hallways, eyelids like tiny loaves brushed with a last
glaze of setting sun, and summertime dust in stately evolutions through the
taupe light, summertime ease to the streets outside, April summertime as the
great vortex of redeployment from Europe to Asia hoots past leaving many
souls each night to cling a bit longer to the tranquillities here, this
close to the drain-hole of Marseilles, this next-to-last stop on the paper
cyclone that sweeps them back from Germany, down the river-valleys,
beginning to drag some from Antwerp and the northern ports too now as the
vortex grows more sure, as preferential paths are set up. . . . Just for the
knife-edge, here in the Rue Rossini, there comes to Slothrop the best
feeling dusk in a foreign city can bring: just where the sky's light
balances the electric lamplight in the street, just before the first star,
some promise of events without cause, surprises, a direction at right angles
to every direction his life has been able to find up till now.

What is "Just for the knife-edge" trying to invoke here?

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