On Grigori

[Mark Kohut]

Yeahp, lots of rightness here. 1) Griogri is also an octopus. 2) I
misremembered/misread that Grigori was conditioned from the start...I
half-thought otherwise once, I guess.
Looks like I must reread GR again.

But, I've just checked Weisenburger online and he notes that the first
time Grigori appears happens around the casino, "further accenting the
causality vs. chance" motif.
So, seems TRP may still have chosen Grigori for its symbolism as
chance AND for the embodiment of natural animal instincts turned fully
conditioned, yes? Fleshing out
more depth to TRP's meanings?

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 8:44 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l