BtZ42, p.17: sandbagged

[Mark Kohut]

Yeah.   And I will add the concept of "the tower", the observation from
Frazier. Eliade and many others, a trope of modernist writers,  that the
highest structures in a land are the ones erected for religion. The
pyramids we know were built for religion-related reasons; the Egyptians, as
Norman Mailer is always saying, our first (among our first, dunno)
believers in long-term--after death---survival.

Which concept of the tower Pynchon plays with and subverts overtly in Lot
49. "The tower was everywhere".

And here, these provisional pyramids are used ala Davis' words.

On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 12:07 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> How about that the sandbags, stacked up like pyramids, give the illusion
> of protection, enough to satisfy the folks inside, stupid humans, descended
> from gods, who would accept the comfort of this alleged protection, putting
> out of mind that any bomb could fall on them at any moment?
>
> Www.innergroovemusic.com <http://www.innergroovemusic.com>
>
> On Apr 1, 2016, at 10:22 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I would say that this narrator's insights re. pyramids and gods are meant
> to be prompts for the reader's own thoughts, a way of getting buy-in to the
> proposed paranoia. The reader is being overtly recruited into a paranoia.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Friday, April 1, 2016, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Too fragmentary for any deep diving, unless linked to other parts of the
>> text. The spiritual references are playing against what Bloat can't feel at
>> all, so the narrator is feeling the aura in his stead, which would then
>> include pyramids, etc.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Friday, April 1, 2016, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On the way into ACHTUNG:
>>>
>>> "... a certain  desperate aura here. But Bloat, going in the sandbagged
>>> entrance (provisional pyramids erected to gratify curious gods’
>>> offspring indeed), can’t feel a bit of it..."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/men-resting-on-top-of-piles-of-sandbags-wwii-london-4-september-1939-picture-id102729664
>>>
>>>
>>> Help me out with that parenthetical description. "Provisional," sure --
>>> these aren't for the ages, just for the V-weapon Blitz 2.0. But what's
>>> Egyptian about it? Who are the curious (and is that 'peculiar' or
>>> 'inquisitive'?) gods... let alone their offspring? What desire is being
>>> gratified? And why that "indeed," as if this were reinforcement or
>>> confirmation of something stated or questioned earlier?
>>>
>>>
>>> I get an echo of p. 9, where the men crushing ice against the concrete
>>> Jungfrau were "wasted gods urging on a tardy glacier." But it's a faint
>>> echo, and doesn't help me understand this.
>>>
>>
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