BEg2 chapter 2 the quality of light

[Michael Bailey]

That phrase, “the quality of light” is teasingly suggestive like attar of
roses, I know it’s connotative of, like, a painterly eye or something -
Pynchon has a lot of art references, from Oedipa’s observing the Remedios
Varo painting through sunglass goggles filled with tears (sort of a
reversal of these natatorium observation pods, come to think of it) and in
V. those dudes in Florence stealing the painting, all the way thru that
painter guy on the Vormance expedition & the mad artist gunned down by
Vibe’s strike force  on his acquisition tour…

Also the swimming pool brings to mind the Budapest bathing scene in AtD &
some other scene that I can’t quite remember. (Not Zoyd dropping a beer can
out the window in Hawaii & dinging some guy’s surfboard out by the pool)


Mark Kohut wrote:

It's always night or we wouldn't need light---T. Monk

On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 1:26 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at
gmail.com <https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>>
wrote:

>* The only light comes shimmering from watertight observation windows in the
*>* pool, each enclosed in its private viewing booth, much like a peep show at
*>* an arcade, where according to an early real-estate brochure “admirers of
*>* the natatory arts may obtain, without themselves having to undergo
*>* immersion, educational views of the human form unrestricted by the demands
*>* of gravity.”
*>