Re To The Wonder and Against the Day

[Jeff Sunbury]

Very poetic, Alice.

Alice B. Toklas might respond by citing Gertude Stein's observation "What
is the use of being a boy if you grow up to become a man, what is the use?"
from 'The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature
to the Human Mind' (1936).

Hamlet's Death, that European Death asks "To be or not to be?"; and
conscience doth make cowards of them all, whereas, Pynchon's Death, that
American Death, has already answered Hamlet's question, "not to be", and
goes on to ponder (when to scream Geronimo? before or after the glass
breaks?) from 'V'. pg.2.


On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 4:49 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com>wrote:

> Wonder, Magic, Grace, and these are, as that Prairie (VL), when a
> child, might say, "Trees" that tremble above and below, with the
> sacred stuff that can not be divided, not even by a narrative about a
> creator god that as He engenderes sets the night from the day. This is
> a theme P never abandons. It is there in TSI, where the Sick Crew,
> boyz who suffer from all manner of sociel diseases, a theme explored
> parodically in V., where P has his fine finger in the pages of West
> Side Story, but better examined with boys, younger boys who, as
> parodic characters taken from the Swift-type novels and from Twain,
> are launched in AGTD, so, for example, there on page 418, the
> crew...read that top passage, there where teh Crew began to find
> evidence of Trespass everywhere...
>
> notice it is an invisible narrative...and the theme is Death. Yes,
> that American Death is not Hamlet's, be Hamlet a sixteen years college
> lad or a 20 years prince who does the dozens withe sexton, sixteen or
> sexton....both/and, but a death of that for ever young American boy,
> who wants to divide the night from his days, but must, know that the
> neuropathy, the loss of sense, of day, can not be blocked by concrete
> walls or anything Vibe might produce or sell, or make a deal for, but
> must be given its day, then Grace is not against it.
>
> Thanatopsis!
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130502/1a7bf0c0/attachment.html>