Re: BEg2 chapter 1 Maxine’s walk to the Otto Kugelblitz School

[Mark Kohut]

I think it is a beautiful, beautiful opening. TRP does openings like a
chess pro.
What capturing of a beautiful spring family morning. A Pear tree morning on
the first day of spring.
it is almost---okay, not almost--
as simply socially observant as any of our best social realists...Sinclair
Lewis...Wharton...
others. I was lucky enough to walk on the Upper East side RIGHT THERE often
during the years
in question and, of course, it is well caught (yet I never saw it so whole,
only in fragments because
i'm not him)

On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 12:36 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I’m trying to find something useful to say about it.
> It’s good. Workmanlike. Factual.
>
> More to learn myself than expound, about the “pick” which “Maxine drifts
> into….”
>
>  - in basketball (mentioned approvingly in VL)
>
>
> https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/articles/how-to-set-pick-in-basketball.html
>
> “When an offensive player legally blocks the path of a defender to open up
> another offensive player for a shot or to receive a pass.”
>
> In football, it’s an interception, but March is basketball season.
>
> Maxine and her sons are on offense, to stretch (or maybe just catch) the
> allusion.
>
>
> Moving on to quote the passage, claiming fair usage:
>
> “At the corner, by reflex, she drifts into a pick so as to stay between
> them and any driver whose idea of sport is to come around the corner and
> run you over.
>
>   Sunlight reflected from east-facing apartment windows has begun to show
> up in blurry patterns on the fronts of buildings across the street.
> Two-part buses, new on the routes, creep the crosstown blocks like giant
> insects. Steel shutters are being rolled up, early trucks are
> double-parking, guys are out with hoses cleaning off their piece of
> sidewalk. Unsheltered people sleep in doorways, scavengers with huge
> plastic sacks full of empty beer and soda cans head for the markets to cash
> them in, work crews wait in front of buildings for the super to show up.
> Runners are bouncing up and down at the curb waiting for lights to change.
> Cops are in coffee coffee shops dealing with bagel deficiencies. Kids,
> parents, and nannies wheeled and afoot are heading in all different
> directions for schools in the neighborhood. Half the kids seem to be on new
> Razor scooters, so to the list of things to keep alert for add ambush by
> rolling aluminum.
>
>   The Otto Kugelblitz School occupies three adjoining brownstones between
> Amsterdam and Columbus, on a cross street Law & Order has so far managed
> not to film on.”
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>