"You Can't Run a War on Gusts of Emotion."

[ish mailian]

I mention the tramp because he is the one who utters the phrase that
has been identified here as so puzzling after decades of reading and
re-reading it. Not saying it is easy to solve or even possible but I
am suggesting that a closer examination of the passage might prove
fruitful. So what to make of the first encounter Pirate has with a
person whose fantasy he has, and what to make of the person, the
derelict, the tramp?

Why does he cause Pirate to threaten him with the police?
What is it this buttonless tramp does exactly?
Lusts after girl's bottoms?
Is that it?
Not much of a crime.
Is Pirate afraid to admit, to succumb to his own lust for little girls?
Does he share the derelict's fantasy, not because of his gift, the one
the Firm is so keen to harness, or does he just lust after nymphets?
Does the tramp call him out on it?
A hot night for Pirate, the sizzling panties?
Maybe it turn out to be someone else's fantasy. Maybe it's the Readers.


On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 5:05 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> What to make of the tramp?
>
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 2:53 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Lot of nights in BtZ that could be described as sizzling. Fires in night
>> skies. Slothrop's Hotel Fire (29).
>>
>> pp. 41-42: "They have drawn near a glow over the rooftops[...] Heat beats at
>> their faces, eye-searing yellow when the streams shoot into the fire. A
>> ladder hooked to the edge of the roof sways in the violent drafts. Up top,
>> against the sky, figures in slickers brace, wave arms, move together to pass
>> orders[...] Once Roger and Jessica might have stopped. But they're both
>> alumni of the Battle of Britain, both have been drafted into the early black
>> mornings and the crying for mercy, the dumb inertia of cobbles and beams,
>> the profound shortage of mercy in those days...."
>>
>> The sensitive flame at Snoxall's, which is on my mind when I hear about
>> Gusts of Emotion.
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 9:41 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Could be referencing burning flesh, I guess, but since sizzling night
>>> is what the tramp says, not sizzling meat or flesh, metaphorically he
>>> seems to be describing a sound, a sound that is Yours drear reader and
>>> Pirate's and whomever the pederastic fantasy actually belongs to,
>>> and given the naughty sexual context, and mention of the Genital Brain
>>> above it, I read it as a very very hot night with sizzling orgasmic
>>> sound. Unless of course the film is silent and it's all theatre.
>>>
>>> There are any number of characters who might dream of little girls
>>> bent over a fountain.
>>>
>>> Aqualung isn't one of them.
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l