AtD question

[Michael Bailey]

Let’s see, I never did connect Kit’s travels very well:


Kit and Yashmeen scarper from Göttingen together on an ostensible mission
to the Far East for the T.W.I.T.S…

Meet up with Reef in a sanatorium in Switzerland

Kit takes off with Reef to try to kill Vibe in Italy

Yashmeen is called back to London

Kit & Reef fail to kill Vibe; Kit continues on eastward to Trieste,
carrying a letter from Yashmeen to her
father (who’s in the East)

On to Bucharest, Baku, then there’s some riding on the Trans-Caspian
railway … to Kashgar (as of 2023
it’s in western China)

Yashmeen’s father, Auberon Halfcourt, is living a diplomat/spy’s life &
facing off frequently with his Russian counterpart, Colonel Prokladka

Halfcourt sends Kit to Siberia in the company of Lieutenant Prance…He’s
overawed by Lake Baikal…

To Irkutsk, where they get a bunch of counterfeit coins from a British
agent named Poundstock, to take & circulate in the Tunguska region

After the Tunguska event they go to Tuva & hear the throat-singers…they
sort of discern that the T.W.I.T.S no longer care what they do…they
separate

Prance meets & flies off with the Chums

Kit takes up with a band of woodchoppers

Sees Fleetwood Vibe, catches up with family news, then they spend an uneasy
night dreaming of killing each other

After which - “[Fleetwood] looked over, through the wind-beaten confusion,
at where Kit’s bedroll should have been. But Kit had left sometime in the
night, as if taken by the wind.”


Next time we see Kit, he’s on a Wagons-Lits train east of Budapest, heading
for Paris - & at a brief stop in Szeged, sees Dally on the Orient Express
going the other way, about to be abducted…

He saves her from her would-be captors and they become lovers.


So yes, there’s a gap. Whether it’s teleportation that brings Kit back from
Asia into Europe and onto the train, one cannot say for certain - nor that
it isn’t.

It’s like he goes further & further into the parts of the world less
familiar (to Westerners) and then - like in Pac-Man - goes off the edge of
the board and comes back in on the other side.

Or - to use the yoyo metaphor from _V._ - he does some elaborate tricking
in Asia, walking the dog etc, and then at just the right moment, the
attraction of Dally pulls him rapidly into a pericheir.


On Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 3:37 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I haven't touched AtD for a while and may have forgotten, but I don't
> remember such a "teletransportation" taking place anywhere in the book. As
> far as I can tell, Kit met Dally by chance on his way back from the Far
> East, and they went back to Italy together and got married. But they
> eventually separated and Dally went to live in Paris, while Kit remained in
> Italy.
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 9, 2023 at 4:44 AM matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Howdy folks,
> >
> > Maybe y'all can help me with something. I'm pretty behind on recent
> Pynchon
> > critical writing and I'm trying to find out if anything has been written
> on
> > a certain subject. My problem is that I'm not finding much but I suspect
> I
> > may not be getting good search results. (I've checked Orbit but came
> across
> > nothing relevant.)
> >
> > My question is: does anyone know of any articles or essays that deal with
> > Kit's "teletransportation" from the Far East back to Paris at the end of
> > the AtD? It strikes me that heaps has been written about Slothrop as he
> > fades from (into?) the narrative of GR and yet little attention appears
> to
> > have been given to Kit's rather perplexing instant transport through
> > space-time.
> >
> > ciao
> > mc otis
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>