AtD question

Tue Jan 9 12:50:27 UTC 2024

Howdy Folks,

Belated Happy New year. I'm glad some of you have taken interest in this
very strange part of the book. I plan to present on this at the upcoming
IPW in Serbia in June.

First, let's try to sort things out with time and place. Kit and Dally have
been star-crossed lovers through much  of the book, coming together only to
be separated. It is now very close to the end of the book and Kit and Dally
are in Venice where Kit has taken up dive bomber work with Renzo (starting
to look a bit like Gabriele D'Annunzio?). Dally doesn't approve and they
have an argument. On return from a mission he finds a note: "*I'm going to
Paris*." (1074) This is when we read that she sees Policarpe. The line
about "back in Belgium" is a bit confusing because after he says that the
peace is just an illusion, he then says, "For a moment I thought I had seen
your former husband."  We then read, "In fact he had. Kit had returned to
Paris *unexpectedly*, after some time in Lwów." We then get the analepsis
that explains: Dally left and Kit kept fighting until, "one day the War was
over". He meets an algebraist (E. Percy Movay) and goes to the "now-defunct
Austro-Hungarian Empire" where he meets a circle of mathematicians at the
Scottish Cafe. This brings him back into contact with Prof. Vanderjuice.
(The Prof. explains that he wanted to kill Vibe, and was rescued by the
Chums -  one of the very few times that the two narrative trajectories
cross and interact. Normally, the world of the Chums does not intersect the
Traverse world.)
So, Kit is in Lwow/ Lviv. And one day Vanderjuice vanishes. "Kit went down
to the Glowny Dworzec and got on a train and headed west, though soon he
got off and went across the tracks onto another platform and waited for a
train going east..." So he is yo-yoing. "He would come to for brief
intervals, and then go back inside a regime of starvation and hallucination
and mental absence." (1080) He apparently goes through the Iron Gates
(Belgrade) and later Lake Baikal (Russia). "From this precise spot along
the shoreline it was possible to "see" the far shore a city, crystalline,
redemptive." (Was this Shambala?) He starts thinking about Dally.
"After some weeks of this, he began to be visited by a sort of framed
shadow suspended in the empty air, a transparent doorway, approaching him
at a speed he knew he would not always be able to avoid." (1080) It is not
clear exactly where he is.
"At last one day, still hesitant, he decided to approach it - might then,
in fright, have lost his balance, and seized all at once as if by gravity,
he toppled into the curiously orthogonal opening, exclaiming "What's this,"
as to the astonishment of onlookers he was turned to shimmering
transparency, dwindling into a sort of graceful cone and swept through its
point into what appeared to be a tiny or perhaps only distant window of
bright plasma. Kit, on the other hand,had remained the same size...."
So there are on-lookers and they perceive events one way and Kit perceives
them quite differently. This is exactly what Einstein first theorized, and
now has become our understanding of what happens as one enters a black
hole.
And then he is in Paris in a hotel room of Lord Overlunch. Lord O. is in
town for a crying of stamps; he explains that Kit was in Shambala,
apparently on a stamp. Kit says he wasn't to which Lord O. responds "Well,
well. A twin perhaps." When Kit inquires as to how he arrived, Lord O.
simply says, "It's the way people reappear these days." So it is far from
clear what has caused Kit to cross space/time to be in Paris. In fact it is
no more clear than how Slothrop starts to dissipate and disappear.
Moreover, I place this ending beside GR's in terms of baffling authorial
practice; in comparison the antagonists of other Pynchon novels have rather
comprehensible exits from the narrative scene as the curtain comes down.
(The section has a number of elements that tie it to other Pynchon novels,
which is clearly on purpose.)

Pynchon could have put Kit on a train back to Paris to be reunited with
Dally, but that would be lazy and almost as unoriginal as riding off into
the sunset. I argue that his solution draws on two things that thematically
run through the book (science and religion) but that the sources come from
outside the book as well. However, I'll wait until after the conference to
share all that. I will say this: the cone is very important.

Oh, and if our amazing translator Mike Jing is reading, I will add that I
just came across a use of that concept in the second book of the
"Three-body Problem" trilogy (The Dark Forest). In one scene (p218-9) a
scientist explains the concept of a light cone and says, "It's impossible
for people outside the cone to comprehend events taking place inside the
cone" To this the other character responds, "Fate lies within the light
cone." If TP read that line, I'm sure he thought it brilliant.

ciao
mc otis

On Mon, Jan 8, 2024 at 5:16 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> So, way late in the book, and *after* Kit and Dally separated -
>
> Thank you Mike, and everyone on the thread (Matthew for originating)
>
> It’s actually a really cool section and I’d forgotten about it, or maybe
> didn’t really read it attentively at all before.
>
> Kit meets up in Lwów with - ah, spoiler alert
>
>
>
> Professor Vanderjuice & they talk about the Zermelo Axiom & in fact it’s so
> good I think tomorrow, I’ll start a “reference chasing thread” for those
> few pages
>
> (Takin’ a break from Flange for a minute)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 3, 2024 at 12:23 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > 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
> >> >
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>