Pynchon, SF: TV tube

[Eric Alan Weinstein, Centre For English Studies, University Of London]

>Is there some similarity between this line of Gibson's (from 
NEUROMANCER):
>        "They sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to 
            a dead channel..."
>>and this from CL49:
>        "Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the dead eye
>        of the TV tube..."

CL49:
     Looked at in one way, the greenish dead eye of the (Orwellian/
Mcluanesque) television is what stands in for the meeting house of 
 'god's temple.' Yet  the nature of Television is that it is both  
manifestation of the will-to-atomisation present in American
 [community? ho ho ho], and one of its primary enforcing agents. 
Similarly, we find several characters wearing green bubble-shades 
in order to, presumably, distance themselves from each other and
certain seemingly unpleasant aspects of their reality---thus making
their participation in their own lives more like the passive non-
activity of watching television. In the same part of the book, we also 
get Oedipa wanting to feel "as drunk as possible," further buffering 
her from her situation, which suddenly demands both recognition of 
the death of her ex-lover, and  responsibility for the material empire 
which he has left behind. It is a massive legacy which we discover, 
can perhaps only be called America. Yet Pynchon knows, like 
Waugh before him, that America does not really believe in death, 
and isn't too sure about mutual responsibility, either. 

     If Pynchon is here using his televisions as part of an ongoing
image of Americans buffering themselves FROM 1) other people,
 2) their responsibility for their own lives, and 3) perceptions of 
and engagements with the natural and built environment, what is 
Gibson doing? Perhaps polluting the distinctions between the
tele(vision) and our visions of the 'natural world' / and the 'built 
environment'--- ("the sky above the port" etc.) For how can the
eye nurtured by tv not relate to this world of ours as 'stranger,'
and do so in terms learned at the (now primary) electronic breast?
Gibson's tv's are no longer buffers and replacements for other 
things, but is the thing itself, if you will: perhaps the ironic site of 
what Lacan tells us is our earliest dialectic. And of course, it is
cosmic earlyness (remnants of the big bang) being recorded by 
a tv "tuned to a dead channel." 

     Well, perhaps, anyway. Comments?

E.A.Weinstein
Centre For English Studies
University Of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk