BtZ42 Section 9

[Monte Davis]

There's one passage later in which Pointsman speaks of exploring Slothrop's
feelings about American blacks, presumably as part of the rationale, or as
a pseudo-control, for the Schwarzkommando psywar against Germans. That's
the only "data" I can recall that would logically have come from this
scene, whether Slothrop is babbling all this to someone in the hospital
room taking notes, or Pirate is "listening in."

The glimpse of winter Roxbury is inflected and again on 70-71 as Slothrop
exits the ballroom and we exit the scene:

"The brick surfaces... are flaming corrosion dense, deep, fallen upon by
frosts again and again: historied..."

And London at the moment before the very first V-2 (26):

"It was one of those great iron afternoons... This smoke is... an imperial
presence... Busses were grinding off, hundreds of them, down the long
concrete viaducts
smeared with years’ pitiless use... down side shoving curves into roads
clogged with Army convoys... power lines and chimneys brown as aging indoor
wood, brown growing deeper, approaching black..."

There is One City of modernity, and -- awake or asleep -- not much time
left to get out. Dickens had tested this palette and many of these
adjectives for Pynchon,





On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 6:15 AM, János Széky <miksaapja at gmail.com> wrote:

> Was ill, sorry. Thank you, Mark.
>
> Keep the aspidistra flying.
>
> 62 (Viking)
>
> PISCES: Can you see anything?
> Slothrop: Well, no, not exactly . . .
>
> What he does is mostly hear. But before that: elevated subway, "steel and
> a carbon shroud recalling the ancient bricks," which recalls the opening
> dream scene. Whose dream does Pirate dream as a relieving surrogate? Can it
> be Slothrop's?
>
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