AtD question

[Mike Jing]

I went back and reread Part Four and Part Five. It turns out that some sort
of “teletransportation” did happen to Kit, although not from the Far East
back to Paris, but from Lwów, Poland. He somehow ended up in the hotel room
of Lord Overlunch, a stamp collector, who told him he was on a Shambhala
postage stamp. This happened in Part Five (p1080-1081), after Kit and Dally
separated, and hinted at some kind of reunion.

Before that, after leaving Fleetwood without saying goodbye, Kit somehow
trekked to Constantinople:

“Kit as a matter of fact was already on the run. He had been living in
Constantinople, tending bar at the Hôtel des Deux Continents, off the
Grande Rue over on the European or honkytonk side of the Golden Horn in
Pera, long enough almost to’ve come to believe his life had found its
equilibrium at last. Folks out here talked about fate, but for Kit it was a
matter of stillness.

It had taken him a while, from Kazakh Upland to Kirghiz Steppe to Caspian
Depression, short hops in little steamers along the Anatolian coast, the
invisible City ahead of him gripping him ever more surely in its field, as
he felt the weight of reverence, of history, the nervous bright edge of
revolution, around the final cape and into the Bosphorus, the palaces and
small harbors and mosques and ship traffic, beneath the Galata Tower,
docking at last at Eminönü.”

Until he helped an enemy of the C.U.P. and had to leave for Buda-Pesth in a
hurry. (p911-912)


On Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 5:05 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> >
> --
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>