BTZ42Read: it has happened before

[kelber at mindspring.com]

If Pirate is picking up another's dream, then it's the nightmarish thoughts of someone being herded into the shower stall - the train down the increasingly narrowed road, to the final arch: "Come, we all know who we are by now. No one was ever going to take the trouble to save you, old fellow." From the fall of the crystal palace (kristallnacht) to the "last crystallizations (carbonized bones?) of all the city had denied, threatened, lied to its children." The dream may have been instigated by the sound of a V-2 or air-raid siren, but it's morphed into a holocaust victim's final visions.

Laura

-----Original Message-----

From: Mark Kohut 

Sent: Mar 14, 2016 5:41 PM

To: Monte Davis 

Cc: kelber , Ray Easton , P-list List 

Subject: Re: BTZ42Read: it has happened before



a kind of wonderful (possible) phenomenological reading, it seems. 
I must say, however, that I am old-fashioned about thatopening and cannot read it that way. That scream moves across the sky, not the audible world andeven 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 bananabreakfast, contemplating the one you won't hear,  so vital to the life in the midst of war motif. This is what we dowhile 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  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,   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 

>Sent: Mar 14, 2016 12:51 PM

>To: P-list List 

>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

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