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[Mark Kohut]

Full disclosure: I almost always read Pynchon as meaningfully ambiguous
meaning not unclear but rich with resonant meaning. Therefore I second this
from Bailey......P would have written troops instead I might argue....

*I do want to add that “relevant masses” could quite likely refer to
troop movements - maybe even primarily - but would also connote the
movements of consumer goods, war matériel, maybe even the planetary
vibrations caused by the passage of heavily laden trains, or the
Masses to be said by priests traveling on such trains - if Werfner is
hyper-holistic to that degree… *

On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 2:16 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> *Mike Jing wrote - *
>
> *and such rates of change as how quickly one’s
> *>* relevant masses can be moved to a given frontier . . .
> *>>* Is this what the word "masses" mean here:
> *>>* *b.* *Military*. A close formation of troops, *esp.* one in which the
> *>* battalions, etc., are arranged one behind another.
> *>* --*
>
>
> *David Morris wrote:*
>
>
> *Of course you have found one meaning that was surely intended, but
> remember the word “relevant” is the modifier. When one looks at a work of
> art, a painting, the connoisseur advises one to step backwards, just like
> this, until the details blurr a bit. You are even told to squint your eyes,
> so that you intentionally lose focus, in order to “see” an abstracted
> version. A Gestalt understanding of what you are looking at. “Gestalt
> psychology, gestaltism or configurationism is a school of psychology that
> emerged in the early twentieth century in Austria and Germany as a theory
> of perception that was a rejection of basic principles of Wilhelm Wundt's
> and Edward Titchener's elementalist and structuralist psychology.” Gestalt
> psychologists emphasized that organisms perceive entire patterns or
> configurations, not merely individual components. The view is sometimes
> summarized using the adage, "the whole is more than the sum of its parts."
> *
>
>
> *- I agree with David that Werfner’s advice on holistic viewing here
> is applicable beyond the immediate scene in the room with the maps.*
>
> *In fact it could be good advice for literary appreciation in general.*
>
> *On a less lofty level, such a viewpoint is very helpful in doing word
> search puzzles (for those who occasionally indulge in them) faster
> than systematic up and down and across.*
>
> *In this passage, the advice suggests - beyond an approach to
> Werfner’s wall full of maps - ways for Lew to approach the Cohen’s
> “atonement” which Lew is still pondering.*
>
> *He’s already in the past page or two considered his own guilt in
> anti-union activities as a private dick* (although he seemingly hasn’t
> yet brought thoughts about his primal Chicago guilt into the mix), and
> goes forward from this passage into a kind of “holistic” view of
> Werfner’s instructions which include wider effects of tracking the
> Gentleman bomber (to which Werfner segued from ruminating
> uninformatively about the Interdict)*
>
> *[also mentioned in GR?]*
>
> *and the possibility that Werfner is mad. So Lew has achieved some
> measure of that less immediate view.*
>
>
> *I do want to add that “relevant masses” could quite likely refer to
> troop movements - maybe even primarily - but would also connote the
> movements of consumer goods, war matériel, maybe even the planetary
> vibrations caused by the passage of heavily laden trains, or the
> Masses to be said by priests traveling on such trains - if Werfner is
> hyper-holistic to that degree… *
>
>
> ** also he’s playing with the Iceland Spar concept of two selves - one
> the Pinkerton goon, the other a deerstalker-hat wearing echt-detective
>  - almost certainly as an aftereffect of the Cohen’s gentle mental
> nudging.*
>
> *Werfner’s holistic thinking on top of the Cohen’s advice lets Lew
> consider both roles - catch the guy people say is bad, but also learn
> from him. And include some healthy skepticism.*
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>