Hi Evrybahdy!

Tue Jun 6 18:41:20 CDT 2017

Anything about the wild colors of the primates in the land of Viesshu
(sorry for the spelling... or am I even remembering the name right?) under
all that ice in Antarctica?

Man, I gotta read V again soon.

Jerky

On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 4:01 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> One personally testable effect of complementary colors that I find
> intriguing has to do with afterimage.  If you stare at a  colored shape
> against a neutral background ( white, grey, black)  for say 20 seconds and
> then close your eyes, the color you see will shift to its complement:
> red/magenta to green( red will produce a medium or  dark blue green,
> magenta a pale aqua green) , blue to orange, yellow to purple. two
> comlements always add up to 3 primaries: yellow ( first primary) plus
> purple( red plus blue second 2 primaries) . This effect can be done quite
> well with a computer screen in a darkish room with a simple paint program.
> What exactly this means is debatable, but it seems like the mind provides
> a complement to what is being observed or considered. Perhaps any
> perception of anything is only possible in reference to the larger whole,
> yin yang style. I assume that to see red requires the temporaray
> suppression of the receptors for blues and yellows that make green, a
> suppression that is its own internal  shadow color which becomes internally
> luminous when the eyes are closed.
>    A fairly universal effect of psychoactive drugs is the perception of
> the emanation of colors  and patterns from higher energy sources like
> music, eyes, art, flowers fruit etc. It may be that the complementary
> effects being produced by perceptions are no longer suppressed -   that
> there is no longer any clear hierarchy of perception..   In my experience
> magenta and green are particularly exaggerated in the plant world or in the
> dark.
> In Pynchon they seem to me  to have 2  or 3 effects; 1 as markers of a mid
> zone between nonphysical and physical planes, or 2, simply a perception of
> dissipating energy( entropy) seen as colored light. They can also mark an
> acidic environment , danger, threat.
>
> On Jun 5, 2017, at 7:07 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I like this theory. M&D is full of characters with names like Wicks
> > and Tenebrae ('shadows') and Lomax, which I swear is something to do
> > with light or electricity. And AtD virtually treats light as a
> > character throughout the novel, beginning with the epigraph ("It's
> > always night, or we wouldn't need light").
> > I always approached the magenta/green combo as something to do with
> > their complementarity, ie they're 'opposite' colours so they produce
> > the greatest contrast possible to the human eye. You can get a sense
> > of the effect just on the Wikipedia page for complementarity:
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_colors
> > It's close to an optical illusion, the effect the contrast has on the
> > eye. Supposedly complementary colours cancel each other out and create
> > white or black as a result but I don't really understand what that's
> > all about.
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 1:00 AM, da kid <peterock86 at live.com> wrote:
> >> Cool thanks. Only skimmed the article so far but I like the idea of
> >> purple/green indicating Slothrop is a projection. It agrees with my
> vague
> >> understanding of Pynchon's "hologram style characters" that his ex-gf
> said
> >> he was trying to create. I was wowed by that comment of hers when I
> read it
> >> on some obscure blog because previously I had been a fan of an essay on
> M&D
> >> comparing it's structure to a magic eye a.k.a. auto-stereogram.
> >>
> >> I'm currently finishing up ATD so there are two scenes that have stuck
> with
> >> me that I think have something to do with this. One is the scene where
> the
> >> Chums meet the Trespassers at Candlebrow U. where they dematerialize and
> >> reappear. At first they have a magenta and green edge to them and then a
> >> blue and orange tone (he's more specific of course).
> >> The second is the scene when Kit is at the sanitorium after dodging
> Foley at
> >> Gottingen. This goofy scene features among other things a distracting
> >> necktie in magenta and green that if look at right can show entertaining
> >> images. I'm personally of the opinion that this scene is one of a
> handful in
> >> ATD where Pynchon rolls out his old standby themes  from his other
> books.
> >> There's a football making a parabola I believe and the jelly doughnut
> guy
> >> who I suspect is the disguised  Eucharist - cannibalism question of
> Rec'd
> >> Cherrycoke's. Another big part of this scene is the "doctor" Dinkopf's
> >> anti-Semitic hangups. He is a proto-Nazi who suspects everyone is
> Jewish. To
> >> me this sounds like Docs phone call to his Aunt in the  Inherent Vice
> movie
> >> (I haven't read that one) about I think Mickey Wolfman- "He's secretly
> >> Jewish but thinks he's a Nazi". Dr. Hilarius too. I don't know if all
> these
> >> allusions are supposed to tie in a certain way or if it is some kind of
> >> Pynchon montage.
> >> I may be rambling too much here so basically magenta and green has
> something
> >> to do with holograms or 3d projections or perhaps television?
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> From: Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> >> Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2017 8:51:32 AM
> >> To: da kid
> >> Cc: Pynchon-l
> >> Subject: Re: Hi Evrybahdy!
> >>
> >> Magenta & green, etc -- "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow", downloadable:
> >>
> >> https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/articles/abstract/10.16995/pn.374/
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sat, Jun 3, 2017 at 3:49 PM, da kid <peterock86 at live.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi I've been reading the p-list archives for a little while now and
> admire
> >>> the ideas of alot of the people here. Entries by Andrew Dinn, John
> Bailey,
> >>> Doug Millison among many others are Imho far better than New Yorker or
> NYT
> >>> essays for understanding TRP's books. I have tried to talk about
> Pynchon on
> >>> Reddit but I rarely ever encounter anyone who really wants to dive
> into the
> >>> text. So, I am excited to hopefully discuss some of the theories and
> whatnot
> >>> that have been bugging me for awhile. Pynchon's ubiqui-themes like:
> >>>
> >>>   Ourobouros through the ring
> >>>
> >>> Magenta and green specifically and his hangup with particular shades
> >>> pigments in general.
> >>>
> >>>  Holograms/Layers
> >>>  His "cartoonish" characterization that Chrissie Wexler refers to in
> >>> Lineland.
> >>>
> >>> Vibrating to stay invisible (CoC & Inconvenience, the revealing of
> America
> >>> in M&D)
> >>>
> >>>  The Eucharist
> >>>   The Holy Ghost and the Pentecost
> >>>
> >>> as well as my pet theories about the Hairy Ball Theorem in M&D and
> Donald
> >>> Barthelme as Dixon. I could keep rambling on but I'll stop for now.
> >>>
> >>> Anyways, I hope to get to the bottom of all this malarkey and reveal
> the
> >>> authors perverse schemes once and for all...
> >>>
> >>> Pete
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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