SLPAD - 29 & of course he goes on to add

[Mark Kohut]

Sorry,,,,,I just went back to it and I cannot take it for a
moment....phony, then some
extratextual crazy reading.....

Not my cuppa alternate reality....Joseph Begone....





On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 7:05 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I didn’t fully read it before posting the link.
>
> Reilly has an elaborate explanation for the Intro that actually is rather
> laudatory.
>
> More about this later, probably
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 5:38 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The Pynchon Notes guy, one Terry Reilly, sees a burned-out Pynchon by
>> 1984....
>>
>> how wrong can one be?  How we can project what we can't even see.
>>
>> Even the estimable Richard Poirer calls him 'tired' while seeing the
>> intro nicely positive
>> but unable to see it for what it is, what P says it is: the writer he
>> was.
>>
>> I too remember being so excited by that book and intro and knew, more
>> work had been worked on
>> steadily because that is what he did.
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 5:08 AM Michael Bailey <
>> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> how John Le Carré “upped the ante for the whole genre” - credit where
>>> credit’s due. Very true, but the appeal of all those historical scenes in
>>> UtR & V. is only partially from the spying and the Baedeker background.
>>> The
>>> contrast with Slothrop breaks away from spy craft, to mention the most
>>> obvious. But lots of other unique touches.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> “Most of it, happily, is chase scenes, for which I remain a dedicated
>>> sucker—it is one piece of puerility I am unable to let go of.”
>>>
>>> V. - check - chasing V. by Stencil, great Profane’s chase scene action
>>> onboard the USS Scaffold
>>>
>>> CoL49 - Oedipa’s of course chase after meaning thru the whole book, the
>>> Volkswagens when they steal the boat, sort of
>>>
>>> GR - Major Marvy after Slothrop underground
>>>
>>> M&D - ah, there’s gotta be one
>>>
>>> IV - the Vegas getaway by Doc Sportello
>>>
>>> BE - March & her ex with Maxine in the cigarette boat
>>>
>>>
>>> Porpentine - Hamlet I, v
>>> His father’s ghost refusing to describe the torments of Hell:
>>> “I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
>>> Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
>>> Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
>>> Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
>>> And each particular hair to stand on end,
>>> Like quills upon the fretful porpentine….”
>>>
>>> But also, it’s the name of an inn in The Comedy of Errors.
>>>
>>> & in Henry VI part 2, “[John Cade, under the name of John Mortimer]
>>> fought
>>> so long that his thighs with darts were almost like a sharp-quilled
>>> porpentine”
>>>
>>> & in Troilus & Cressida, Ajax warns Thersites, “Do not, porpentine, do
>>> not;
>>> my fingers itch”
>>>
>>> (To which Thersites replies, “I would thou didst itch from head to foot,
>>> and I had the scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab
>>> in
>>> Greece.”
>>> Geez guys, get a room!)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Moldweorp from Old Teutonic (so he’s the one who’s lurking and skulking
>>> for
>>> Germany?) for “mole” unintentionally anticipating the Le Carré usage.
>>>
>>> “ Less conscientiously, there is also an echo of the name of the
>>> reluctant
>>> spy character
>>>                Wormold, in Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, then
>>> recently
>>> published”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Interesting article on the Intro in Pynchon Notes from Terry Reilly, who
>>> seems less than thrilled with it, but brings in some worthwhile
>>> perspectives nevertheless.
>>>
>>> https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/article/2563/galley/2956/download/
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>>