M& D Group Read

[Joseph Tracy]

I thought first of children looking for patterns and perhaps naturally drawn to a pattern that suggests the path of a wand’ring heart.  Also is there something a bit supicious about a card table with sliding mortises and hidden catches, kind of like The Rev Ccoke and his deck of tales and tales of decks and the 7 seas. There is also the thematic contrast between the waving life pattern of the tree preseved in the grain and the edges and secret cubbies of  abstract geometry. Cards show up soon again in Captain Smith’s desire to dine together, converse, play cards. 
> On Dec 26, 2017, at 8:26 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps the place to comment on that famous Card Table early on, page 5 , I think, with the Wan'dring Heart grain and its "illusion of depth". 
> 
> Pynchon wrote in one of his letters that everything is there on the surface of his texts and 
> I always think of that.
> Despite his buried allusions, the surface sings with his jokes, lyrical observations, overtly expressed themes--like this one about his own prose. 
> 
> And this reading I ask if it is a card table because decks of cards are patterned from the start? One after another, like ordained fate, yet " mysterious until revealed? 
> 
> That this is what the new world is too. Always is. 
> The "illusion of depth" depth is just the next unknown card in the limited patterned reality? 
> 
> Similar conceptually but entirely different from his use of Tarot cards in GR?
> 
> He says for conversation starting. 
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone-
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