GR translation: coaltar-impossible orange-brown

[pfm at aspeon.com]

I remember a product called "Pears Coal-tar Soap". It was exactly that
orange-brown colour but you could see right through it. This might be the
reference?

Cheers,

Peter


> V693.8-19, P706.31-707.2   There were men called “army chaplains.”
> They
> preached inside some of these buildings. There were actually soldiers,
> dead
> now, who sat or stood, and listened. Holding on to what they could. Then
> they went out, and some died before they got back inside a garrison-church
> again. Clergymen, working for the army, stood up and talked to the men who
> were going to die about God, death, nothingness, redemption, salvation.
> It really happened. It was quite common.
>        Even in a street used for that, still there will be one time, one
> dyed afternoon (coaltar-impossible orange-brown, clear all the way
> through), or one day of rain and clearing before bedtime, and in the yard
> one hollyhock, circling in the wind, fresh with raindrops fat enough to be
> chewed . . .
>
> What does "coaltar-impossible" mean here?
>


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