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

[Joseph Tracy]

re  wit/humor: Vineland came before and is similar in hilarity of opening. But there has been growng mastery of tone set into a wonderful acknowledging of literary debt to masters like Dickens, Dylan Thomas ( Chaucer), and the early American writers. i went from gut laughter to wonder struck at the line about Madeira poured like elixir on the seething pot of Politiks-- for the Times are as impossible to calculate, this Advent, as the distance to a star.



On Jan 5, 2015, at 8:26 AM, Mark Stevenson wrote:

> 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
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> – M.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l