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

Mark Kohut mark.kohut at gmail.com
Fri Mar 25 05:31:28 CDT 2016


Yes, I might think P here puts on the page his perception that
in our sick Civilization---embodied in Nabokov's Humbert Humbert,
that well-educated, successful European--men are conditioned to
lust after girls, it is our trampish nature but Pirate is enough of
The Establishment to know a cop should be called over that fantasy.

When Brown's polymorphous perversity is repressed, which it has been
in History.

On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 6:47 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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