stray thought on Snoxall's

[Mark Kohut]

If that can't be confirmed, there is simply "Snots All" , maybe, in
Pynchon's way,  which might sum up The Firm members on p. 30.

Jessica, about whom 'brass throats and breasts warm to her touch, quake in
the hollow of her hand. She seems herself, gentling their feathered
crosses, brushing with fingertips, to have slid into a shallow
trance...."...sorta the opposite of a Rachel Owlglass, in love with her
inanimate car.....here Jesssica warms cold metal, and makes the darts quake
in her hand......sorta becoming one with them?

Para about another rocket bomb. "The windows rattle, the floor
shakes"..."the sensitive flame dives for shelter, etc....more"

As Gloaming goes to shut the gas off is when
"it seems the right moment now for Jessica to throw a dart: one dart. Hair
swinging, breasts bobbing marvelously beneath each heavy wool
lapel"............

into the dead center....

I have read all this as Jessica's poise, beautiful Jessica, perfect
womanhood as presented [she too is a snot about that other one's dress]
some kind of kind, centered human goodness, good will--is love doing it?--,
no mean feat in the war,--love that 'gentling'-- esp after another bomb has
just hit---...and 'in a  shallow trance' , the atmosphere there, cf what
psychologists later called flow or being In the Zone, [In positive
psychology <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology>, *flow*,
also known as *the zone*, is the mental state of operation in which a
person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized
focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In
essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.
Named by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi>, the concept has
been widely referenced across a variety of fields (and has an especially
big recognition in occupational therapy
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapy>), though has existed
for thousands of years under other guises, notably in some Eastern religions
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_religions>.[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)#cite_note-Csikszentmihalyi1990-1>
Achieving
flow is often colloquially referred to as *being in the zone*.]

she throws     *A zen dart in the art of dart throwing [my allusion to Zen
and the Art of Archery], she can't miss. *

Unless, as with Pynchon, of course, it is the wind, now blowing
'everywhere' and some are newly conscious of it.

On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 1:29 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> For some reason, I always assumed that "Snoxall's" was the slangy name,
> coined by regulars, for a pub called Vauxhall's (snotty old Vauxhall's),
> possibly because the name Vauxhall is instilled early on when Pirate is
> driven across the bridge to inspect a bomb. In fact, the Vauxhall
> neighborhood (section?) of London seems to have been hit with a lot of
> bombs. Not a place that government insiders would want to hang out - or
> precisely the place they'd want to hang out, due to the statistical odds?
>
> http://www.vauxhallandkennington.org.uk/bombing.shtml
>
> Laura
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160412/69d3ff1b/attachment.html>