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

[Mark Stevenson]

Definitely a master opening. This, GR of course, and the "Single up
all lines!" from ATD are all so encapsulatory and spot-on. To use a
really dry and writing-exercise term, the "exposition"  too (ugh) is
masterful.

I did pause on the batter and spoon, but not for sexual imagery. Maybe
it's just the gloppy, chewy form/function syntax that's doing it for
me -- say it slowmo: "among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon. . ."

My first pencil-note, underlining "Snow-Balls" is: could we get any
more entropic??? and then a big downward spiral. Starting with the
depths of winter, a snow ball basically being the perfect entropy
machine, if left to melt, but then thrown in an arc too? The way
everything rushes, like you said Mark, towards the indoors, the
Assault moves from outside, to that comfortable Room at the rear of
the House. The cooking all coming to boil, mealtime prepared to its
necessary heat, to eventually cool too (unless eaten). And yet and
yet, despite all that entropy screaming at me, it's still joyous,
rollicking, a complete sense of freewheeling. . .

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
> -
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– M.
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