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

[Joseph Tracy]

Amazing that you remember that at all and  it made me want to find the passage, see if there is a parallel. Unfortunately not exactly aluminum 
“around the blind curves and out the lonely spurs, a sour smell of rolling-stock absence, of maturing rust,” .  Also an absence adding to the gloom of evacuating a city under attack. rather than the presence of wheeling youngsters well before the attack. Intentional contrast? hard to say but he seems to do things like that.


> On Nov 6, 2021, at 1:14 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Echoes:
> 
> "ambush by
> rolling aluminum."
> 
> Rolling aluminum appears in the opening scene of GR.
> 
> Pynchon writes novels because he must. His vision builds; all those
> perceptions must will out.
> 
> 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
>> 
> --
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