GR translation: There passes for Pirate and Katje a brief segment of a much longer chronicle

David Morris fqmorris at gmail.com
Sat Jan 10 22:00:08 CST 2015


Monte is correct. "Branches" are an organizational tree structure.

On Saturday, January 10, 2015, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I thought "the Branches" refers to the ordinary branches of the military,
> as Pirate works for the Firm.  I could easily be wrong though.
>
> On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 10:52 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','montedavis49 at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> Not a joke so much as an attitude of scorn. Pirate addresses the Firm's
>> ubiquitous agents; this catalog of one-to-one, literal, sexual "Loving The
>> People" is implicitly contrasted with with their endless, empty claims to
>> be Doing This For the People. But of course both he and Katje have served
>> the Firm, and can never be 100% sure they aren't still serving it -- so
>> this stance isn't quite convincing. They don't get to twirl light-footed
>> away from what they've been and done.
>>
>> Cf. "the Rocket's own branch office in London" (251),  "PISCES' new
>> branch office in London (274)," and "the Man has a branch office in each of
>> our brains" (712)... possibly the HQ-and-branches parable of the nerve
>> cells (147-149)... maybe even the "branching" of the Sephiroth (753)?
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 9:38 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks, Monte.
>>>
>>> And immediately afterwards:
>>>
>>> V547.38-40  “Take that, you frauds out there in the Branches,” Pirate
>>> wants to strike a humorous note, but doesn’t. He is holding Katje now as
>>> if, in a moment, music will start, and they would dance.
>>>
>>> What joke is Pirate trying to make but falls flat?
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com
>>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','montedavis49 at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The denotation is "occurs" or "is seen by, " with a connotation of
>>>> passivity as if they were watching a movie (a 'March of Time' newsreel?), a
>>>> parade going by, or one of those 19th-century panorama paintings on long
>>>> canvases that scrolled between big rollers.
>>>>
>>>> That last genre, BTW, is brilliantly discussed by Justin St. Clair in
>>>> an essay in _AtD: A Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide_. Starting with the quasi-3D
>>>> "wraparound" panorama at the Museum der Monstrositaten, and noting that
>>>> several big scrolling panoramas were featured at the 1893 Chicago
>>>> exposition, he argues that "reading the novel 'panoramically' offers
>>>> us a new, wide-ranging model for understanding Pynchon’s method of
>>>> characterization throughout his oeuvre while also neatly synthesizing his
>>>> interests in immersive technologies, in drug-induced hallucinations and in
>>>> the remediation of outdated media forms." I thought St. Clair was on a
>>>> fruitful track when I read it, and was sold when I saw how well it works
>>>> for Bleeding Edge,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 1:29 PM, Mike Jing <
>>>> gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
>>>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> V547.6-37 “There was nothing out there. It was a barren place. I’d
>>>>> been most of the day looking for a sign of life. Then at last I heard you
>>>>> all in here.” So they have wandered to a balcony, a graceful railing, no
>>>>> one can see them from inside or out: and below them in the streets, streets
>>>>> they have both lost now, are the People. There passes for Pirate and Katje
>>>>> a brief segment of a much longer chronicle, the anonymous How I Came to
>>>>> Love the People. “Her name was Brenda, her face was the bird under the
>>>>> protecting grin of the car in the rain that morning, she knelt and
>>>>> performed fellatio on me, and I ejaculated on her breasts. . . . . . . Her
>>>>> name was—” well, all these and many more pass for our young couple here,
>>>>> enough to make them understand that horny Anonymous’s intentions are
>>>>> nothing less than a megalomaniac master plan of sexual love with every
>>>>> individual one of the People in the World—and that when every one, somewhat
>>>>> miraculously, is accounted for at last, that will be a rough definition of
>>>>> “loving the People.”
>>>>>
>>>>> What is the meaning of the word "pass" in "There passes for Pirate and
>>>>> Katje a brief segment of . . . " and "well, all these and many more pass
>>>>> for our young couple here"?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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