Part One - I - The first Paragraph and the First Sentence

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, what an evocation of happy familyness! One might gloss by saying
that Pynchon got down a Western (and wider) society almost-universal
scene (where it snows, at least) embodying Tolstoy's "Happy families
are all alike". The food cooking images
always remind me of my grandmother's place, where we did not go enough
and where it seemed to young me, the smell of good food always filled
the air.

I love the Ringing Lids and it comes into my mind whenever my tea
kettle whistles. (But, I am usually making that Enlightenment drink,
coffee, one filtered cup at a time--riff coming soon--not usually that
English drink)

Motion, everything, the kids esp, is in motion...youthfulness is
activity, from sledding to carefree Assaults.

Nah, no sexual undertones in Batter & Spoon for me, all sexfree,
carefree Assaults.

Here is what I had prepared re that beginning:

What a wonderful opening, yes? Lyrical as all Get-Out (lit crit
phrase). Wintertime, throwing snowballs, extended family fun ["these
are all my cousins!", my grandson shouted with glee once when I
visitied. It was hot mid-summer and getting
sprayed was the fun then] 'Something about cousins' an old friend
remarked when I
told him this scene. True?

Misc. Someone: ["Meanwhile, over at Facebook, the kids of someone you
barely knew but didn't like 20 years ago spent some time with their
cousins. Pictures." ]
Sleds, feasty happiness food --"ringing lids'--so nice.

V. begins at Christmas time, we know, THE holiday Pynchon seems to
love celebrating.
(in print at least) the most. And a snowball arc is a human happy
arc... not even close to a death rocket's arc (except as parabola)
So, M & D is 'the opposite' (?)--let me count the ways?--of a
fear-ridden paranoiac Death-defying 'vision'? Just a notion for us to
explore the emotional tone. Q: how close to Christmas is it in M & D?

Re that tone. M & D is, of course, a serious book and Pynchon has
humor and wit in every book, it is part of his vision, but doesn't M &
D seem to start a new tone re humor in P's work? The first three books
aren't framed with so much entertaining wit, it seems to me this read.

On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 9:55 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> PART ONE - I - First Paragraph
>
>
>
> Okay, first of all, looking at the first paragraph taken as a solid whole,
> is absolutely marvelous. So beautiful, so evocative, so lush and tactile.
> It's an incredible opening paragraph. It tells us so much about the
> environment that we're starting off in. "The sights, the sounds, the smells"
> to paraphrase Spinal Tap. And capping it with a reminder that we're at the
> cusp of America's birthing... that the departure of the British Loyalists
> still rings in the heads of the people who will populate this novel.
>
>
>
> Shrinking our perspective even more, that first sentence. Again, it's just
> fantastic, ranking among my favorite first lines in all of literary history.
> Much has already been made over the parallels between the "Snow-Balls" and
> "their Arcs" being a gentle, even whimsical counterpoint to the deadly
> serious rockets "screaming" across the skies of Gravity's Rainbow (another
> killer first line, perhaps more significant for its brevity). The playful
> stuff of snowball fights and sleds, and sweet home cooking and children
> running amok... it's a far cry from the grim evacuations of the London Blitz,
> when the world, itself, was "given over to" the "carefree assaults" of
> fantastically over-powered madmen.
>
>
>
> But there's one small section I'd like to focus on that has niggled at my
> brain since first reading. The fragment: "among rhythmic slaps of Batter and
> Spoon". I don't know about you folks, but personally, whenever I come across
> the line "rhythmic slaps" in fiction, it's usually as part of a scene that
> is sexual in nature ("the rhythmic slaps of their bellies", etc). Spoon and
> Batter (both capitalized) are also both easy to see as phallic (the Spoon,
> as opposed to the more probably whisk) and vulva-like (the batter,
> presumably in a bowl or receptacle, long seen as a universal symbol for the
> feminine archetype). Indeed, "Batter" itself has become a bit of a euphemism
> for sperm ("baby batter").
>
>
>
> Anyhoo, just a couple thoughts to start things off.
>
> MT
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l