M&D - Chapter 16 - Peach and Silk

[Mark Kohut]

Johnny Marr points to sheer beautiful writing beautifully:
"Savage flowers of the Indies, demurer Blooms of the British garden,
striped and tartans, foreign colours undream'd of in Newton's
prismatics, damasks with epic-length Oriental tales woven into them,
requiring hours of attentive gazing whilst the light at the window
went changing so as to reveal newer and deeper labyrinths of event,
Velvets whose grasp of incident light was so predatory and absolute
that one moved closer to compensate for what was not being reflected,
till it felt like being drawn, oneself, inside the unthinkable
countours of an invisible surface"

P on the richness of ....life? of the range of color life can be?
We've got color "undreamed of" by science...we've got Oriental
tales...labyrinths, depths, can remind of that early table in Chap
one......

RANGE OVER THE RICHNESSES...

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 9:57 PM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:
> We encounter Susannah Peach, the original apple of Mason's eye, and the
> daughter of British imperial conquest, clother solely in the silk that her
> merchant father imported from India. TRP's criticism of the exploitative
> nature of the British Empire is clear without becoming overstated - a world
> of plundered treasure, of foreign lands and customs assumed without
> question. TRP wears his learning lightly - three types of silk (Tussah,
> Pngee and Susannah's favourite Shantung) are mentioned with casual
> authority.
>
> TRP writes one of the most beautiful extended sentences you could hope to
> read. Shades of political critique and erudition, but both are subjugated to
> sheer aesthetic delight.
>
> "Savage flowers of the Indies, demurer Blooms of the British garden, striped
> and tartans, foreign colours undream'd of in Newton's prismatics, damasks
> with epic-length Oriental tales woven into them, requiring hours of
> attentive gazing whilst the light at the window went changing so as to
> reveal newer and deeper labyrinths of event, Velvets whose grasp of incident
> light was so predatory and absolute that one moved closer to compensate for
> what was not being reflected, till it felt like being drawn, oneself, inside
> the unthinkable countours of an invisible surface"
>
>
> Susannah's recommendation that Charles learns 'Silk' offers a career with
> great prospects, although he may have to move to Aleppo in Syria rather than
> India. A clever reminder from TRP that India was very much the jewel in the
> crown of the British empire in the mid-18th century, with America a vast,
> still mostly unexplored backwater. The mention of Syria can't help but
> resonate for readers in 2015 - the colonising powers just can't leave alone
> ...
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l