BtZ42 Read

Wed Mar 16 17:12:50 CDT 2016

If we're bringing in the opening of chapter 2 of AtD here, then
there's a direct connection there with chapter 29 of M&D:

"Cities begin upon the day the Walls of the Shambles go up, to screen
away Blood and Blood-letting, Animals' Cries, Smells and Soil, from
Residents already grown fragile before Country Realities. The
Better-Off live far as they may, from the concentration of Slaughter.
Soon, Country Melancholicks are flocking to Town like Crows, dark'ning
the Sun. Dress'd Meats appear in the Market,— Sausages hang against
the Sky, forming Lines of Text, cryptick Intestinal Commentary. The
Veery Brothers, professional effigy makers, run an establishment south
of the Shambles at Second and Market Streets, by the Court House.
Mason, in unabating Search after the Grisly, must pay a Visit.

"Can't just have any old bundle of Rags up there, even if 'tis meant
to be burnt to ashes, can we," says Cosmo, "— our Mobility like to
feel they're burning something, don't you see? Oh, we do Jack-Boots
and Pet¬ticoats, bread-and-butter items the year 'round, yet we strive
for at least the next order of Magnytude...."

"Here, for example, our Publick Beheading Model,— " adds his brother
Damian, "or, 'the Topper,' as we like to call it, Key to ev'rything
being the Neck, o' course, for after you've led them up to the one
great Moment, how can you disappoint 'em wiv any less than that nice
sa'isfy-ing Chhhunk! as the Blade strikes, i'n't it, and will pure
Beeswax do the Job? No,— fine for the Head and whatever, but look what
you've got to chop at,— spine? throat? muscles in the neck? well,— not
exactly Wax, is it? So it's on with the old Smock, lovely visit next
door, scavenging among th' appropriately siz'd Necks for bones and
suet and such. Then it's up to the Kiddy here to cover it all over and
give it a Head with a famous, or better Infamous, Face. He's a rare
Wax Artist, our Cosmo is. Likenesses almost from another World,
perhaps not a World many of us would find that comfortable. Products
of the innocent Hive, Sir, and beneath, the refuse of the daily
Slaughter, yes there you have it, a grisly Amalgam, perhaps even a
sort of Teaching,— sure you'd enter any dark-en'd Room our lads and
lasses happen'd to be in, only upon ill advice indeed."

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 2:53 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> That opening scene in GR, a dream from below, a subconscious point of
> view, as it begins with a scream above, in the sky, and then the focus
> remains on what is above from the perspective of one who is below, the
> emotions, fear and anxiety caused by what is above and what will fall
> on those below, then the movement, and it is a narrowing and a drive
> deeper below. I think the elevators take the evacuees down, not up,
> down and away from any possibility of light, of salvation, of being
> heard, even if they scream.
>
> Now P made a book into a film recently, or somebody did it with his
> OK, and it is, far as I know his first major film, but he worked on
> film in his youth as I recall reading that at Cornell he was part of
> some little film project or other. In any event, the young P is said
> to have had an interest in making opera or space opera....but what
> strikes me here again as I re-read this opening passage is how keen P
> seems to be to make a movie. The camera position here that is the
> dream of Pirate is from below to above.
>
> The one in Chapter 2 of AGTD is from Above to what is Below and there,
> it is not humans but cattle that are rushed through the Cartesian grid
> to the killing floor.
>
> There are parallels.
>
> The WWII camera, some fixed to airplanes, others handheld down into
> tunnels, some in balloons.
>
> The little commentary in both passages suggest the use of film,
> photography. The colors, the hues, the light or the dark room. all
> kinda hint at P the fil maker.
>
> On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 10:55 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> Nicely argued.
>>> On Mar 16, 2016, at 9:39 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Doesn't this opening remind anyone of the opening to Chapter Two of
>>> _Against The Day_?
>>>
>>> The imagery in _AGTD_ may be a poaching parody, of Upton Sinclair and
>>> others of the period, as McHale argues, and following that analysis we
>>> should look for film parody and poach here, but here in this opening
>>> of GR,  I am inclined to read this opening a not a parody or a poach,
>>> but as the imagination of a writer who has been influenced, as
>>> critical studies argue, by everyone and everything, but who has hit
>>> his stride and is writing in a style that is rightfully and especially
>>> his own. The anxiety of influence, so glaring in all previous works is
>>> ground to dust. Though Mumford and Dickens and Orwell echo here, in
>>> the imagery, Pynchon has a style all his own and what a style it is.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 8:11 AM, Ray Easton
>>> <raymond.lee.easton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I loathe statements about literature of the form "it feels to me like..."  (
>>>> pace, Mark -- not aiming at you, but only at myself! ), but I do have to say
>>>> that some of what follows after the dream "feels to me like" the beginning
>>>> of Ulysses.  Felt so my first reading and has every time since.
>>>>
>>>> I cannot figure out why, though -- and the why is what matters.
>>>>
>>>> Sent with AquaMail for Android
>>>> http://www.aqua-mail.com
>>>>
>>>> On March 16, 2016 6:37:02 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Distinct feeling of Mulligan at Ulysses opening now that you mention it.
>>>>> Wholly changed but in comic tone and meaning
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 4:02 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And the first rebirth is a Pirate, followed by Bloat.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “There are proceedings of such a delicate nature that it is well to
>>>>>> overwhelm them with coarseness and make them unrecognisable; there are
>>>>>> actions of love and of extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be
>>>>>> wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly…“ Nietzsche, BG&E,
>>>>>> 29.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And what is Pirate‘s relation to Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus,
>>>>>> anyway?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l