LISS/STEPVR 9th roundup 27/23 April 21

[Michael Bailey]

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 09:49:22 -0400
From: ish mailian

At first glance, it seems clear enough that Zoyd Wheeler, sleeping
later than usual drifts awake one summer morning in 1984 while
sunlight through a creeping fig that hangs in the widow shines in on
him and while a squadron of blue jays stomp around on his roof.

But readers of Pynchon, of Gravity's Rainbow's first sentence, and of
the dream that may be Pirate's Dream, as much as Shakespeare's
Midsummer Night's Dream may be Bottom's dream, now many anxious years
after, read this first sentence and just go on as if it is a sentence
that reads, "Call me Ralph." No. This sentence demands explication.

Those not fond of exegesis can walk out. Like so many did when Richard
McKeon fixed us on a sentence, a word in Plato,not for a day but for a
term. Or Derrida on his "pharmacy" in the Phaedrus.

But the grammar,  the free indirect style narrative technique, and the
fact that as we read on we slide into Zoyd's internal speech or
thought we slide into and out of his dream and his understanding or
interpretation of the dream and narrative commentary on Zoyd's
interpretation, all these can not be ignored. Like ignoring Pirate's
Dream or Bottoms or the speaker in Poe's The Raven. Note the midnight
is not a dreary midnight but a midnight dreary. And it's midnight.
What day is it? And the speaker is nearly napping when, like that
squadron of blue jays, the speaker, half in a book of romance and half
in a dream, is not quite awakened, and begins to interpret the
confluence of book and dream and mind. Then in stanza two the memory
is tapped.

 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore?
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
??Tis some visitor,? I muttered, ?tapping at my chamber door?
            Only this and nothing more.?

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

The window that Poe will use as portal to these confluences is key to the
poem.

And so is this window in sentence one of VL.

Zoyd drifting awake is the creeping fig in the window.

Like Bottom, like Rip Van Winkle (surely this now common political
reading has value), like Poe's speaker, Zoyd is a dreamer, his mind is
in and out of the 60s, California Dreaming, his High experiences
remembered though window panes of sunshine superman and dear Mr.
Fantasy...with Munchhausen's Munchhausen.

The sentence screams across the page with Whitman's deliberate ambiguity.

---------Thanks for that. Were those really types of window pane in the 60s?





Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 05:36:20 +0000
From: Raphael Saltwood

peterthooper places politics 5th among desirable novel attributes:
- pentateuchly, after the scenery. Among an author?s Rasselas-like
qualities...

That?s Greek to me. Maybe it?s quintessential.

---------maybe so.





Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 06:47:45 +0000
From: Raphael Saltwood
(Vehicles, and more vehicles)
41) early-model toughmonkey Porsches (185) V&B had towed,
like this one maybe
https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrCxnYblJ5e3hIAuhUPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTB0N2Noc21lBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNwaXZz?p=early+model+toughmonkey+porsche&type=__alt__ddc_linuxmint_com&hspart=ddc&hsimp=yhs-linuxmint&ei=UTF-8&fr=yhs-ddc-linuxmint#id=61&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.motoexotica.com%2Flistings%2Fimages%2F7972%2F155427.jpg&action=click

- that's not a porsche, though. This might be more like it, add some mud etc

https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrEePQrt59eUpkAnScPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTB0N2Noc21lBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNwaXZz?p=62+porsche&type=__alt__ddc_linuxmint_com&hspart=ddc&hsimp=yhs-linuxmint&ei=UTF-8&fr=yhs-ddc-linuxmint#id=69&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unionjack-vintagecars.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F08%2FDSC06015.jpg&action=click





Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 08:32:59 +0100
From: "Erik T. Burns"
As if 2020 needed an epigraph...

  "To submit; but above that, to endure."

---------yes, that works!





Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 08:35:10 +0000
From: Raphael Saltwood
5) truly brief recap of 3 important conversations

---------tl/dr. No, not really: 3 little scene-precis's, a small thesis (tv
ain't so bad), and picturing Frenesi as a movie director, but Adorno?






Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 04:43:08 -0400
From: Mark Kohut
Raphael.

Almost always too much to deal with at once so...we deal with nothing. Just
sayin'

---------moving thru a dense signifying field like VL, induction
overcharged his coils?
Still, that is a pretty blanket rejection, couldn't you just find some
grammar problems or something - ijs.






(