BtZ42, p.17: sandbagged

[ish mailian]

The passage and pyramid parenthetical has been abused by Gore Vidal
who contrasts Pynchon with Joyce.

The grammar of GR, the hysterical comic book and cartoon grammar makes
a stodgy grammarians scream.

But it attracts others who see his style of disconnectedness as
rhetorical and satirical.


Those interested should see  "Hysteron Proteron in Gravity's Rainbow,"
 Steven Weisenburger, and his book Fables of Subversion, and more
extensively A Hand to Turn the Time, Kharpertian's book.

What interests me too is the guide book that the building is not mentioned in.

Why not say it was a small building with no real historical significance?

The building is not simply contrasted with the famous Grosvenor, but
is said to be too insignificant for mention in any guidebook. Any? Is
it on a map? Is it too/also  unmappable? Is the Slothropian map in the
unmapped building a guide to reading, to the reader?




On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 4:15 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> Grammatically, would we say "indeed" is affirming the curiosity? Would we
> say the curious things are the gods or the gods' offspring?
>
> I think this maybe should be chased after, then understood, in reverse. What
> is being affirmed. What is curious. Who are the gods' offspring. Then who
> are the gods. Then how do the pyramids gratify them. At one point does the
> parallel stop referring to the sandbags and start referring to the pyramids
> we know. What is the exact operation of the Metaphorical RNA here.
>
> Ultimate gut instinct about where he's taking us is to maybe point to or at
> least nod at some unexpected and disturbing ways--like bugs underneath a
> log--that contemporary "secular" human society/thought/war, differs from and
> (maybe more troublingly, for us mortals) resembles our ancestors. More
> religious though we think they might have been. Maybe it questions human
> progress.
>
> On Apr 2, 2016, at 11:03 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm with John here: as Egyptian pyramids are for the dead mostly mentioning
> gods seems to imply rather Mesoamerican pyramids.
>
> 2016-04-02 17:48 GMT+02:00 Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>:
>>
>>   That was my first impression, conveys endurance like a pyramid, really a
>> apile of sand similar to a house of glass already referenced. Also there is
>> the similar connection to some pharoah-like power, some god-man that is the
>> identity of those who serve.
>> > On 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
>> >
>> > 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.
>> >>
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l