Hey all,
Well congrats! This week we hit the halfway mark! All that, and we still have something like 13-15 people on the march, on and off the blog, which is pretty impressive. Like a 40% survival rate to-date. And I’d have to guess that most of the folks who made it this far will see the inside back of the cover.
From this point on, let’s revert to the Unified Thread approach. And let the donuts fall where they may. So long as they don’t fall into my Georgian fruit soup. You see? You see how I did that?! An obscure reference! The power! The power! And again: “No one here seems quite right in the head.” It’s so true….
Next week: Let’s make camp at page 433 (v), where we’ll find “…a blanket, or a night indoors, or a ride home….” -CV
Your theory sounds good to me, Cap’n M. Pynch definitely seems fascinated with origins, whether geographical (can I get a ‘Gondwanaland,’ anyone?), chemical, or alphabetical. The latter two come together explicitly on p. 355, the “How alphabetic is the nature of molecules” passage. For which I blame this random thought:
Think Jamf’s synthesized variants of morphene (p. 348, top). Or Wimpe’s talk about molecules working like “an extravagant game of chess,” with their great chains of “possibilities for bonding” (p. 344). Arent’ the characters starting to seem kind of like that? Slight variations on the same basic molecules, bonding in different combinations:
Slothrop/Enzian/Tchitcherine/Blodgett Waxwing/Squalidozzi …(the Zone questers)
Katje/Jessica/Geli/Galina … (the Nurturers)
dodos/gauchos/Hereros…(the Predestined, or maybe the Preterite)
As Cecil would say, Whaddaya think?
Life in the Zone is beautifully episodic—Pynchon moves us from one intricately imagined absurdity to another. The Tchitcherine story especially hit me, its swings from the comic (Stalinist nose fetishists, grape pie-throwing conspiracists, et al) to the moving (the lovely singing contest, with its “Kirghiz Lights” finale deftly tying this whole Central Asian fantasia back to the Rocket) showing off Pynchon’s gasp-worthy gifts at their best. Omniscient? I’m starting to think he is.
Quick P.S. Add the Kirgiz nomads to the list of the Preterite in the comment above. Or not?
Couldn’t find the Light, Cap’n M, but here’s a close second: http://chineseculture.about.com/library/china/ethnic/blsethnic020.htm
“Slothrop/Enzian/Tchitcherine/Blodgett Waxwing/Squalidozzi …(the Zone questers)
Katje/Jessica/Geli/Galina … (the Nurturers)
dodos/gauchos/Hereros…(the Predestined, or maybe the Preterite)
As Cecil would say, Whaddaya think?”
I think you’re absolutely on to something. Different facets of the same gem.
“Hovering coyly over the pit of death”…that describes exactly how I feel right now. No sooner had I read those words at the Very Expensive Tea Place last night than I was smitten with a brutal illness that has laid me low, yeah, even unto the ground. The timing was so perfect that I can’t even complain; it seems correct somehow.
Anyway, I am on the march, but right now I’m going to be curled up in the fetal position by the side of the road for awhile.
Have finally sweated out the evil disease. Should be ready to resume by tomorrow…but where is everybody? Hello?
Read a good chunk on Thursday — I’ve been a little behind. Got to enjoy the first several pieces of Rocketman. Jumping Jiminey. The whole sequence of him getting into uniform piece by piece through to meeting the Argentinean (sp?) crew — gold, baby, nothing but gold.
i’ve been tongue-tied, in a state of cumulative befuddlement.
and then pynchon–like a good friend who realizes you’re having a bad moment–said, “Put it this way. It’s like stuffing wedges of silver sponge, right, into, your brain!”
yep, it’s just like that, like what he said!
so here i am, a bit at sea but very happy to be paddling onward…
I just realized that you should all be in Potsdam now and Mickey Rooney has just shown up. Thing is Mickey Rooney’s was in the military at the time, but his assignment appears to be secret – which means he could have been in Potsdam. For more on this see Larsson, Donald F. “Rooney and the Rocketman.” Pynchon Notes, 24 25 (Spring Fall 1989), 113-6.
Dr. Vitz
Yes, in fact, I came across Mickey in the book just hours after seeing him on the Oscars…I felt a chill down my spine, which later turned out to be the flu.
Just a note to say that I only managed about 20 pages this week–up through 392. The point where they “start cackling insanely”.
Yup. Sounds about right.
Ok, I finished this part, then read ahead, then stopped, and I forgot what episodes were in this section. So much for that. I always remember the sex sections (hey, that’s just me) and loved the part in the movie studio. And I know there’s a real cool orgy scene somewhere up ahead.
Oh, yeh, I’m halfway through the Pokler section. (Thank goodness for the online version that’s bookmarked.) I kind of felt that the Slothrop/ Argentine sections here were more for the fun, and the Pokler section around here is what’s more SERIOUS writing. This is his what made the Germans do what they did section.
Anyway, this is just a quick post to check in. T