BtZ42, p.17: sandbagged

Sun Apr 3 12:46:44 CDT 2016

What I feel is being suggested in the contrast I am seeing is 2 very different ways of seeing, really, everthing. A universe with the face of women, human names, colored stars found in the middle of wreckage in a world where important things are named after men. Slothrop is sorting out his place via a different reckoning. Bloat is clearly envious and also simply mesmerized by the map. The stars here are also  the reality of stars transcending the pettiness of bureaucracy, secrecy, war. This is the old map with made up names and the arc of every story. Boat is worried that his furtive banana chemistry will betray him.
> On Apr 3, 2016, at 12:57 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> The whole experience of reading the book is an exercise of being lost in space and time. Where are we? When is this? What don't I know that I should know? Is this real? If it's a dream, whose dream is it?
> 
> It's an interesting point that (I think) Ish made about the stars (as opposed to pins) being a clue to the reader that this isn't a real map, in the conventional sense.
> 
> Some thoughts on the stars (I've lost the thread where they were originally discussed - sorry!): Those tiny, multi-colored, gummed stars being back memories of kindergarten - I can actually remember how they smell. Their usage: atta boy/girl! However tiny they are, they still splay over a larger area than those punctilious government-issue pins. The pins tell us: the bomb dropped right here. The stars tell us: something happened, sort of over here. Bloat's superiors have decided not to worry about the different colors. They're not interested in what happened, just where. 
> 
> Slothrop's use of stars instead of pins might be his own way of telling Death to fuck off. Something fun happened here. Atta girl!
> 
> LK
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Keith Davis 
> >Sent: Apr 3, 2016 11:22 AM
> 
> >
> >- Is it too/also unmappable? Is the Slothropian map in the
> >unmapped building a guide to reading, to the reader?
> >
> >There's no straight path through the forest.
> >
> >Www.innergroovemusic.com
> >
> >> On Apr 3, 2016, at 9:04 AM, ish mailian 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 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 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 :
> >>>> 
> >>>> 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 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 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 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 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
> >-
> >Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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