Chapter 5 Summary

[David Morris]

You are onto something big here.  I can't contribute right now, but keep
digging.

David Morris

On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 8:17 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> "It's control. All these things arise from one difficulty: control. For
> the first time it was *inside, *do you see? The control is put inside. No
> more need to suffer passively under 'outside forces'--to veer into any
> wind. As if......"
>
> Besides the control associations listed in Joseph's post, a Control is the
> person the medium uses to communicate with, ---Selena I guess?  And there
> is what The Firm is trying to do,* is doing* we learn here (but not what
> yet)......now internalized? ????
>
> Wind, formerly secular to Roland, is now everywhere. Often a symbol of
> spirit, the Spirit, in many religious uses....
>
> Eventyr is Norse for adventure, or fairy tale, ...Gloaming is that time of
> day before dark....
>
> Another scene where Pynchon is always saying?: ...."more than in all your
> philosophy" [science?], Horatio?" Even if fully ironic, as seems to be
> Mann's use per Kai's post, it still sez here, people act as if there
> is......
>
> it keeps the ambiguity of Both Sides of the epigraph as plot device
> seesaw/fulcrum alive.
>
> And opens up interpretation as a metaphor, a synecdoche, a 'something
> else' in meaning.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 1:17 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> Here is a summary of key events in the chapter. Disagreements with
>> anything?
>>
>> At the opening of Chapter 5( 30-38) we enter a seance conducted in some
>> space of  SOE aka the Firm, a space lit by a sensitive flame in which a
>> medium, Carroll Eventyr, seems to have entered the spirit of Roland
>> Feldspath expert on control systems, guidance equations (a concept which
>> haunts the novel in various forms: rocket
>> guidance,determinism/calvinism/fascism/gnosticism ). Roland has "
>> transected into the realm of Dominus Blicero”, but Roland gets distracted
>> from Blicero by lights moving as in a  dance and  particularly by the  wind
>> as a kind of ecstatic force he never knew. He calls out to his wife Selena
>> ,who assures she is listening; he starts talking about the difficulty of
>> control and  about replacing the invisible hand of the market  with self
>> creating control, dispensing with God, then counters that this is only a
>> more harmful illusion that A causes B when they are part of same….
>> The seance is almost over as the sensitive flame that responds to sound
>> and movement retreats then soars up as a new rocket falls  and Jessica
>> Swanlake throws dart  which hits dead center .  Selena ,  the dead
>> Feldspath’s wife is there. All is recorded by Milton Gloaming trying to
>> develop statistical analysis of psychic and other events( death is the most
>> frequent word he records). Jessica and Gloaming converse, he asks about
>> Roger Mexico, her lover, who she says is with Pirate Prentice.  We move to
>> conversation in Snoxall’s (pub,club?) between Prentice and Mexico; Prentice
>> is more ambitious and more paranoid than first impression.  Mexico thinks
>> the project with psychics is endangered by the revival of witch laws .
>> Prentice is delivering microfilm to Mexico from Bloat. We find out about
>> PISCES under the larger White Visitation. Pirate is concerned about the
>> non-war/post-war related schemes arriving with the  Americans and obscuring
>> Germany and war, thinks Mexico is being used in one such indecent plot,
>> notes Mexico’s growing enthusiasm for microfilm being sent. Beautiful
>> Jessica triggers Prentice's memory of affair with Scorpia Mossmoon, now
>> long over. PP longing for real love, friendship, jealous of , but hoping
>> Jessica and R M stay together. As chapter fades into maudlin with memory of
>> Mossmoon’s inevitable departure Pynchon brings in the merry midgets but it
>> falls a bit flat.
>>
>>
>> We think of WW2 as a particularly modern and technological war and that
>> gets much attention in GR, but from the start Pynchon is diving into a less
>> respectable aspect of the pursuit of information. Psychic or paranormal
>> phenomena . Why is it so prominent? We know it played a role in the war,
>> but is it standing in for something larger in the Novel? In some ways it
>> allows P to introduce nonstandard economic and political information into
>> the War history. Is there more?-
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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