GR translation: silver ringing the fields of white

[Monte Davis]

I nodded at your "trying to invoke": it's blurred for me.

The white could be banquet tablecloth, napkins, and/or empty dinner plates.
But given the typical sizes, shapes, and positions of those, I don't get a
clear image of silverware "ringing" either a single diner's place or the
table as whole. And reading "ringing as Doctor Who S09E0ringing" a
metallic/musical sound doesn't work well, either.

The last hundred pages of GR have always been tough for me. Gottfried's
 launch and the ending "at the movies" are absolutely great, and there are
many other fine things. But for much of those hundred pages, it feels as if
Pynchon was exhausted, exalted, or both, trying to pull all the themes at
once into crescendo. With every reason and right to be, god knows -- but
there are costs in clarity and coherence.

On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 4:45 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V715.36-716-3, P730.9-16   “Cyst salad,” Roger continues, “with little
> cheery-red squares of abortion aspic, tossed in a subtle dandruff dressing.”
>        There is a sound of well-bred gagging, and a regional sales manager
> for ICI leaves hurriedly, spewing a long crescent of lumpy beige vomit that
> splatters across the parquetry. Napkins are being raised to faces all down
> the table. Silverware is being laid down, silver ringing the fields of
> white, a puzzling indecision here again, the same as at Clive Moss-moon’s
> office . . . .
>
> What is "silver ringing the fields of white" trying to invoke here?
>
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