On Grigori

[David Morris]

Octopi are very intelligent creatures, but they look like monsters.
Grigori was a trained monster, a useful tool.  Sthlothrop was also a
trained monster, and when he escaped into the Zone, his creators were
terrified.  Think Frankenstein.

David Morris

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 7:27 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> In an essay on Melville, Yvor Winters riffs on the ocean in Moby Dick,
> home of the white whale as symbol of evil but also of "the great white
> squid, chaotic and formless, the symbol of chance in life"....
> quoting Melville: '[it] undulated there on the billows, an unearthly,
> formless, chance-like apparition of life".
>
> Think TRP was alluding? I have always wondered Why Grigori?.....
> .Later in GR, octopus is used in Frank Norris' sense, 'corporate
> octopus" --Octopus: 'the shifting construction of animal instincts
> along class lines'" writes one modern critic/historian.
>
> A quick bit of research sez: Squids live in schools in the open sea.
> Octopuses live in caves more solitarily; octopuses are
> "bottom-feeders", Squids not.
>
> That TRP gets every metaphor right, yes?
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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