BtZ42, p.17: sandbagged

Sun Apr 3 20:32:03 CDT 2016

 The need for an evaluative hierarchy with which to decipher this
chromatically variegated representation lies at the base of Bloat's
reflection, as it does at the heart of the reader's own doubly or
triply mediated encounter with the map (and the text). Given its
unconventionality and chromatic excess there lurks the suspicion that
"perhaps the colors are only random, uncoded," an epistemological
vacillation that brings with it its ontological counterpart: "Perhaps
the girls are not even real" (p. 19). The epistemological doubt is
initially confirmed by Slothrop himself: "The stars he pastes up are
colored only to go with how he feels that day, blue on up to golden.
Never to rank a single one-how can he?" (p. 22). Ontological
uncertainty will develop out of the mapping procedure itself through
its overlapping of textual topographies. The map "does celebrate a
flow" (p. 23) but one that traverses ontologically disjunct domains
and that resists determinate and indeterminate interpreta? tions alike
(as in "The White Visitation's" comic panoply of Slothropian
interpretations: "like the New World, different people thought they'd
discov? ered different things."

MAPPING THE "UNMAPPABLE": INHABITING THE FANTASTIC INTERFACE OF
"GRAVITY'S RAINBOW"

JOSÉ LISTE NOYA
Studies in the Novel
Vol. 29, No. 4 (winter 1997), pp. 512-537

On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 9:19 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> The point that--I poorly paraphrase--the stars and map correspond to some
> terrain or world that is not exactly what we think of as the real
> (/physical/conscious/ad mortem) world is a good one, I think.
>
> P. 275 Pointsman: "'we admit that the early data seem to show,' remember,
> _act sincere_, 'a umber of cases where the names on Slothrop's map do not
> appear to have counterparts in the body of fact we've been able to establish
> along his time-line here in London.'"
>
> The notion of framed/bound images containing an image of or acting as a
> sometimes permeable doorway to a different world--deeper one? An internal
> one--feels archetypal. I guess that's maybe just because that's what art is.
>
> On Apr 3, 2016, at 11:57 AM, <kelber at mindspring.com> <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