BtZ42

[Smoke Teff]

And then the topsoil metaphor gets distorted into "bureaucratic smegma"
when describing Slothrop's desk on p.18.


On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 5:54 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeahp, one might and maybe should. Think, everyone, think!
> I think of Hunter in Against the Day.
>
> Also from the wiki, my earlier self post, I think.
>
> 5.32 *all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the
> seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil*
>
> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scumbled "To blur the outlines
> of: a writer who scumbled the line that divides history and fiction."
>
> A-and the wonderful phrase, "knives of the seasons" embodies another
> lifelong deep theme in Pynchon's work: that the 'wheeling' of time [see
> later in *Gravity's Rainbow* and *Against the Day*], the cycle of nature,
> is an ineluctable good thing, even as it knifes us, ravages, us. It
> thickens us, impasto-like, gives us topsoil in our characters, so to speak.
>
> Recapitulated later in "...corrode in the busy knives of weather pushing
> relentlessly into all the rooms." p532
>
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 6:49 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "scumbled," "impasto," [painter's] "knives" = all terms for paint on
>> canvas. If one didn't know that it's Bad Science that does mean things to
>> molecules, one might ask some questions about art.
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 6:31 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> p. 5 "Corydon Throsp, an acquaintance of the Rossetti's" ---
>>> Romantic and religious family who gathered writers and others together.
>>>
>>> "all got stumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons"--
>>> love that Good Things phrase, that anarchy of nature creating
>>> "unbelievable black topsoil"
>>>
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160323/4d0ecfe6/attachment.html>