BTZ42Read: it has happened before

[Jochen Stremmel]

One should perhaps read the screaming in the 1st paragraph together with
the one in the 7th: Screaming holds across the sky. The parallelism and the
difference – without the indefinite article ...
To come and to hold, like you hold your breath or hold back?

What do you make of the "hold" here?

2016-03-14 22:41 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> a kind of wonderful (possible) phenomenological reading, it seems.
>
> I must say, however, that I am old-fashioned about that
> opening and cannot read it that way. That scream moves across the sky, not
> the audible world and
> even on first reading it had to be a bomber or rocket. Later, screaming is
> used similarly in his work.
>
> And Pirate dreams other people's fantasies, the dreamlife he dreams is not
> nightmares.
>
> And he to me is clearly acting while an Evacuation is going on. That is
> part of what makes living, making a banana
> breakfast, contemplating the one you won't hear,  so vital to the life in
> the midst of war motif. This is what we do
> while death is coming.
>
> And The Evacuation could not be called--by the narrator as I read it--'all
> theatre' inside Pirates' dream.
>
> And we get that Evacuation continuing when we know Pirate is awake.
>
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 2:53 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Set aside what you know is coming. On that first page you don't know
>> you're in 1944, or London. or that V-2s will play a part in the novel.
>>
>> You're in an evacuation, in some sort of train, leaving a city, and you
>> infer attack from that and the anticipation of glass breaking overhead.
>>
>>  So *don't be quick assimilate the screaming to a V-2*, and its reversed
>> sequence of explosion -> sound of passage. There has been no explosion
>> here. On this page the screaming is as likely -= more likely -- to be an
>> air-raid siren, or whistles of evacuation trains, or screams of terrified
>> citizens.
>>
>> "It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now."
>> That's how things happen in dreams: an event or thing or person is charged
>> with significance, but stripped of the tags and flags and links that let us
>> categorize waking percepts or compare them to -- well, anything -- for
>> plausibility. We're in Pirate's dream. As we will learn later, dreaming
>> others' dreams is his specialty (although whether he's receiving,
>> transmitting, or both is ambiguous). He's an artist, if only a 'prentice.
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 1:20 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hey, wasn't the official group read start date tomorrow? Will we have
>>> anything to compare the discussion to then?
>>>
>>> I take the opening sentences at closer to face value - the prosaic view:
>>>
>>> A screaming comes across the sky. The V-2 rocket, super-sonic, so its
>>> sound is out of kilter with time. "Screaming" reflects that more than "a
>>> scream."
>>>
>>> It has happened before … Again, the prosaic read - if you're hearing the
>>> V-2, it's already landed - no need to kiss your ass goodbye.
>>>
>>>  … but there is nothing to compare it to now. This is the toughest nut
>>> to crack.  " … and, therefore, there is nothing to compare it to now,"
>>> seems a more logical end to the sentence. The word "but" emphasizes the
>>> word "now." It implies that when it happened before (when this rocket was
>>> launched? Or: whenever these rockets have been launched in the past?) there
>>> WAS something to compare it to. So I guess what I'm saying is that the word
>>> "but" derails the simplistic V-2 reading. What in hell does Pynchon mean?
>>>
>>> Laura
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> >From: Ray Easton <raymond.lee.easton at gmail.com>
>>> >Sent: Mar 14, 2016 12:51 PM
>>> >To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> >Subject: BTZ42Read: it has happened before
>>> >
>>> >How do you (any of you) read the second sentence?
>>> >
>>> >Ray
>>> >
>>> >-----
>>> >You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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