BtZ42, p.17: sandbagged

[Keith Davis]

Good stuff, Ish. 

Gurdjieff said human progress is a myth, and we're actually regressing.

Www.innergroovemusic.com

> On Apr 3, 2016, at 9:04 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l