[ish mailian]

sorry, should say, an unlit gas lamp. Perhaps they were in use when
the fantasy. nevertheless, as I read it P is mixing the texts and
films and fantasies. I guess one can smell the Holocaust in it too,
but I don't. Nor do I smell the sizzling flesh.

On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 8:13 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> The gas, it would seem, is from a dark, that is, an unlit though still
> open, so the gas is wafting over the street, of proper Sherlock Holmes
> London. The mention of the author seems to shift us to the period when
> gas lamps were common. Surely they were not in use as late as the time
> Pirate is managing the fantasy.  So we can't be certain if we are in a
> book, a film, a fantasy, or all at once. It can't be reversed.
>
>  https://hudsonhousemysteries.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/the-health-risks-of-street-lighting-during-the-victorian-age/
>
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 7:17 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I distinctly remember the adenoid section from my first reading of GR
>> decades ago, mainly because the inclusion of an adenoid seemed so
>> *abject*. Why not a familiar and easily isolated body part? Fiction
>> has no shortage of crawling hands or swiveling eyeballs or disembodied
>> brains etc but this tiny, slimy thing I'd never seen let alone
>> imagined outside a body swollen to gargantuan proportions... I think
>> my mind wanted to turn away from the image. Too gross, too excessive,
>> too impactful. A fine introduction to the rest of the book, then.
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 5:33 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>> Adenoids are different from tonsils - they're higher up, behind the nose.
>>> Swollen adenoids are generally a problem in childhood, after which they tend
>>> to shrink. When swollen, they hamper breathing, and so they may need to be
>>> surgically removed.
>>>
>>> Some thoughts on the giant adenoid:
>>>
>>> It first appears to Pirate, some time between 1935 and 1939,  together with
>>> "the unmistakable smell of gas." Gas - giant adenoid preventing either a
>>> giant child or mass numbers of children from breathing - could be a
>>> vision/premonition of the kids who will die in the Nazi gas chambers. "The
>>> Army shows up in full battle gear with bombs full of the latest deadly gas."
>>> But the giant adenoid cannot be gotten rid of, communicated with or
>>> understood. Eventually, Lord Osmo is able to ignore it and focus on the Novi
>>> Pazar beat. Osmo dies in a tubful of pudding (connecting him with the
>>> soon-to-appear Brigadier Pudding). Two old-school Brits who are still
>>> focussed on the politics of WWI - totally unable to address the brewing
>>> holocaust.
>>>
>>> Laura
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Mark Kohut
>>> Sent: Mar 26, 2016 9:21 AM
>>> To: Monte Davis , pynchon -l
>>> Subject:
>>>
>>> MD---So... why an adenoid (i.e. a tonsil), rather than an appendix or spleen
>>> or hypothalamus? Why human tissue at all, rather than some other stand-in
>>> for Osmo's fears? Its slimy protoplasmic aspect led me on first reading to
>>> think of SF movies:
>>>
>>> more to come but remember that Richard Schlubb, when he is brought in to
>>> loop the history is described as 'adenoidal" .....
>>>
>>> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l