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

[Mark Kohut]

Yeahp, .should have looked it up...the echo is of a rolling stock,
a contrasting echo......
I would say it is Pynchon echoing one of his tropes, always visible....we
notice
it is presented as something that could ambush....yet it is just a
scooter...

On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 4:41 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> 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
> >>
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>
>
>