Section the Third, pg.17-19 spies and girls

[Mark Kohut]

If I use the phrase "the reasonably innocent soul of Slothrop" later and
over and over,
you will remember I stole it from you, right?  Seems Goldilocks-right.
Perhaps a little
'obsessed'; there will be adultery in his future and spying (for good
reasons?), but he's
generously life-embracing as innocents abroad usually are.

And the unknown 'girls' here in the story
are also presented as innocents, building bird feeders and more.

Covering the whole crew verbally, as you noticed in an earlier post, before
we move on seems on the mark to me.
You were first to mention spies. So, they are a reworking, enlarging of the
whole sick crew by TRP---
yes? from one perspective except they, some, spy. Spy vs Spy. No more
'reasonable innocence' for many
and therefore in P's vision here?

Since I am hooked on Towers as a modernist symbol, notice "Tower Hill"
below, a dense cluster where the girls
are the religious meaning, so to speak---see Laura on where the 'fun' is.
....'violet density", that female color coded in P...Mayfair...such
resonances.

“The stars pasted up on Slothrop’s map cover the available spectrum,
beginning with silver (labeled “Darlene”) sharing a constellation with
Gladys, green, and Katharine, gold, and as the eye strays Alice, Delores,
Shirley, a couple of Sallys—mostly red and blue through here—a cluster near
Tower Hill, a violet density about Covent Garden, a nebular streaming on
into Mayfair, Soho, and out to Wembley and up to Hampstead Heath—in every
direction goes this glossy, multicolored, here and there peeling firmament,
Carolines, Marias, ”

“He moves back down the beaverboard maze,"
Of course, it would be on beaverboard.

Joseph:
"Bloat, Prentice, and Feel  who may be the ones sadly disconnected from
real sexual and personal relationships as the last line in this chapter and
many other lines in the novel indicate."






On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Was just reading some missed posts about the scene reconstuction of London
> at the time. Good to get Monte’s feedback from his Father who was there.
> This chapter has that quality of realism sandwiched into the stranger
> stuff. Girls first appear here, women really, but they are called girls
> because that is how the men are seeing them. Later we meet women like
> Jessica and Katje etc.
>
> …you can hear winter birds cheeping outside, busy at the feeders the girls
> have put up.
>
> “Girl at the main desk, gumpopping, good-natured bespectacled ATS, waves
> him on upstairs”
>
> “The stars pasted up on Slothrop’s map cover the available spectrum,
> beginning with silver (labeled “Darlene”) sharing a constellation with
> Gladys, green, and Katharine, gold, and as the eye strays Alice, Delores,
> Shirley, a couple of Sallys—mostly red and blue through here—a cluster near
> Tower Hill, a violet density about Covent Garden, a nebular streaming on
> into Mayfair, Soho, and out to Wembley and up to Hampstead Heath—in every
> direction goes this glossy, multicolored, here and there peeling firmament,
> Carolines, Marias, ”
>
> “He moves back down the beaverboard maze, in the weak yellow light,
> against a tide of incoming girls in galoshes, aloof Bloat unsmiling, no
> time for slap-and-tickle here you see, he still has his day’s delivery to
> make. . . .”
>
> Bloat speculates that the girls may be imagined and that has been batted
> around, but it seems that from what we gather in the text it is Bloat,
> Prentice, and Feel  who may be the ones sadly disconnected from real sexual
> and personal relationships as the last line in this chapter and many other
> lines in the novel indicate.
>
> Life and youth are all around along with the fear and duties of war to
> which these felows have attached themselves.  But there are no James Bonds
> or even Tyrone Slothrops in this crowd.
>
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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