BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): at the window while he sleeps

[David Morris]

Like cheap perfume?

On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 7:58 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> (That should be "chep nihilism" in the penultimate paragraph)
>
> On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> end of P. 57 -> P. 58
>>
>> Foxes and dogs again, among the latter a painted pointer "alerted by the
>> eternal scent, the explosion over his head always just about to come." Good
>> boy, Tyrone!
>>
>> http://www.old-print.com/mas_assets/full3/J5141807/J5141807448.jpg
>>
>> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/43/02/f0/4302f06cbc44b3b2e6fbc371f51b2bce.jpg
>>
>>
>> What makes these images -- standard English fare at the time  for exurban
>> bourgeois as well as country-house aristocracy -- "even more autumnal,
>> necropolitical, than prewar hopes"..? This section has reminded us before
>> and will remind us again that Roger & Jessica's evasion  of the war is
>> temporary and precarious -- but here we're told that golden autumnal
>> meadows are *becoming* a City of the Dead (necropolis). Just a _memento
>> mori_ for the lovers, for a nostalgic English self-image? More?
>>
>> 58.11-15: something blocks Roger's speech, and "how does she know... so
>> exactly what Roger meant to say?" (Reinforcing 56.37's "Roger really wants
>> other people to know what he’s talking about. Jessica understands that.") A
>> hug, melting into arousal for both, is more than a consolation prize for
>> "failure to communicate" -- it *is* communication, "mind-to-mind."
>>
>> 58.16 brings us back to the framing night of winter solstice. Perhaps the
>> clinch just above was earlier the same night -- the section began with "pillows
>> in front of the fire. Roger’s clothing... scattered all about." Or perhaps
>> all their nights here are one, off the timeline and off the books.
>>
>> 58.24: "Pointsman’s... his... a bleakness whenever she meets him.
>> Scientist-neutrality." How does that differ from Roger's commitment to the
>> data and only the data about rocketfalls, which was only recently "cheap
>> cynicism"...? Or is Roger's version of neutrality less creepy to her
>> *because* it makes him uncomfortable even as he insists on it? NB he
>> repeatedly, parodically *plays* the mad scientist in exchanges with her. If
>> I didn't know that Pynchon fears and condemns science like all good
>> creative souls, I'd think there's some quite interesting ambivalence being
>> modeled here.
>>
>> 58.33: "And the people who might have been asleep in the empty houses
>> here . .., are they dreaming of cities that shine all over with lamps at
>> night, of Christmases seen again from the vantage of children and not of
>> sheep huddled so vulnerable on their bare hillside, so bleached by the
>> Star’s awful radiance?"
>> Spoilers be damned, this is a sweet foretaste of the Advent evensong
>> coming up three nights from now (p. 127)
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160515/add5dbaf/attachment.html>