Atdtda38: On passions and seductions, 1073-1074

[Dave Monroe]

Thanks as always for yr persistence + excellent work!

On Wednesday, August 27, 2014, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
wrote:
> This final chapter opens with a key narrative question concerning the
> Kit-Dally relationship and her presence in Paris, alone. Following 70.1
> their relationship breakdown is shown/explained after the reader has been
> made aware of it, with as much weight, if not more, given to Kit's
> relationship with Renzo (1069-1072); the reappearance of
> Reef/Yashmeen/Ljubica (1072-1073); and then the reappearance of Colfax
> (1073). Only towards the end of the new section (70.5) does Dally leave
for
> Paris, Kit finding out after the event (1074). The opening section ends
with
> Dally's pov, 'able to brood freely about her past' (1068); if the reader
> might infer that the narrative will now offer her account of the
separation,
> or one from her perspective, that is hardly what happens. Her departure
from
> Torino is marked when Kit discovers her absence: 'when he got back ... she
> was gone' (1074), the note she has left, and the 'postcard from Paris'
with
> which the section ends echoing Kit's letters (1067).
>
> Perhaps this helps explain the function of Clive Crouchmas in these pages:
> if he never appears as an agent, he is always present as a signifier, on
> 1067, 1069 and 1074. Given the passion that drives Dally's relationship
with
> Kit from 913 onwards, Clive's reappearance is juxtaposed to the passion
> shown by Kit for flying and solving mathematical problems. On 910 the
> narrative promises Kit and Dally a future, one in which ('Years later they
> would be unable to agree ...' etc) they rehearse/recycle stories about the
> past; on 917 Kit fails to 'fly into a jealous frenzy' when Dally
> 'cannonball[s] straight down into her history with Clive Crouchmas', but
she
> then evades the question posed at the bottom of the page, opting to
> speculate, over the page, on 'a small part in a new show' (918). In the
> current chapter, the impression given when Clive is reintroduced is that
he
> is, indeed, somewhat less than 'dangerous': 'not the night's biggest loser
> but far short of what he might once have believed was his entitlement'
> (1067). Nonetheless, as Dally finally confronts Kit's decision-making
> ('allow[ing] himself to be seduced into the Futurist nosedive, with its
> aesthetics of blood and explosion', 1073), his response is to '[drag] her
> history with Clive Crouchmas into it again' (1074). Back on 1069 Dally
> points out that '[t]he Austrians shoot people down'. Her reference to
'that
> family tradition' (1073) indicates that she is not offering pacifism as an
> alternative to warfare per se, merely pointing out that Kit has mistaken
his
> enemies: Austrian soldiers are his 'brothers-in-arms' (1074) and, invoking
> Webb and Reef, '[t]hey're not the ones need bombing'.
>
> That Dally brings up 'that family tradition' after the reintroduction, in
> the previous section, of Colfax is significant. The current section opens
> with Kit still clinging to 'his engineer's neutrality' (1073), his earlier
> 'velocity-given illumination' (1071) notwithstanding. Cf the opening to
70.2
> on 1068: 'Kit felt right at home ...' etc. Here, it is left to Dally to
> point out that 'Reef and your Pa put [bombs] where they'd do some good'
> (1074).
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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