Not long after Erlys had gone off with Zombini the Mysterious, Merle Rideout dreamed he was in a great museum, a composite of all possible museums, among statues, pictures, crockery, folk-amulets, antiquated machinery, stuffed birds and animals, obsolete musical instruments, and whole corridors of stuff he would not get to see.
**********
"Not long after Erlys had gone off with Zombini the Mysterious"
Merle is in a heartbroken state when he has this dream. Is this the disaster that Merle has been trying to "ride out"? "Er lys" means "the light" in Norwegian. Here, Merle's light has died to be mysteriously reborn (or, more accurately, raised from the dead) elsewhere. Merle, being a photographer, depends on light. I mean, obviously everybody who has working eyes depends on light for day-to-day operations and would have to change everything if that light should go off with a mesmerist! But Merle's career (and passion) is to capture images to history using a camera which cannot physically operate without light. So if his light is gone, he can do nothing but wait it out until it returns.
"Merle Rideout dreamed"
We're delving down into Merle's subconscious here. One French anagram of Merle's name is "le id outre mer," or "the id overseas." Meaning Merle's subconscious has risen above the water line (yes, taking a bit of liberty with "overseas" as "over seas"), or come forward to be his conscious state. Basically what dreams do to us.
"he was in a great museum"
I suppose our memories can be regarded as a large composite museum of all possible museums, housing many, many Pynchonian lists of objects within it.
"a Pynchonian list of objects"
Pynchon loves long lists of things, doesn't he? At least this one didn't go on for one and a half pages! At times when he's making a list, you'd suspect him of padding out his word count. But it's Pynchon and if there's one thing he never needs is a longer word count.
"whole corridors of stuff he would not get to see"
This could refer to the things he would have experienced has Erlys never left him (both literally, as in the experiences they would have shared, and metaphorically, as in Merle couldn't see anything because his light had left him). It could also just point to the reality of how little we actually get to experience over our short lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment