BTZ42Read: it has happened before

[Steven Koteff]

Hold--I think as in to obtain. Meaning both to possess and to remain unchanged--to continue. The impulse to possess is, psychoanalysis says, anal, stemming from the old death instinct (which is also, get this, derivative of the impulse toward constancy/stasis/return to the past). Also the impulse to possess is so obviously important to capitalism. I think there's some resonance there. 

> On Mar 14, 2016, at 5:04 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160314/3d936233/attachment.html>