Drop It

[Bill Nolan]

Hmmm . . . Kind of hard to follow (or maybe I'm just tired), but definitely 
worth some thought. Worth more than $0.02 as well.

Thanks, Aaron.
--B

<---- Begin Included Message ---->
Date:          Wed, 9 Aug 1995 15:07:27 EST
From: "Aaron Yeater" <AYEATER at ksgrsch.harvard.edu>
Subject:       Re: Re[2]: Drop It
To: pynchon-l at sfu.ca


> It's true, as you say, Harold, that everything is information. But 
> sometimes it's a mistake to examine a phenomenon at the wrong level. 
> Thinking, for instance, has some relation to brain activity. Would you 
> rather read Pynchon's EEG or his books? Dead people are lives blotted 
out, 
> not information randomized. To insist on seeing them as the latter is to 
> exalt cybernetic fact over human truth.

but much of what the bomb represents is exactly that, human lives 
obscured by the blinding flash and leveling of civilization.  I think 
jporter 
was acknowledging that fact about the bomb and its cultural 
significance, which is why i think there is another level of meaning, 
the "human" one, that you are referring to, which also exists--and it 
is the relationship (or lack of one) that reinforces a sense of irony 
about the bomb, that leads to "bomb humor" (Dr. Strangelove, GR, 
etc.)...which i think is a good think, a healthy, meaningful kind of 
criticism.  moral outrage is not the only way to make the point.

my .02
aaron
***********************************************************

"For Beauty is naught
    But the beginnings of terror"

                    -Rainer Maria Rilke
                     "Duino Elegies"
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___________________________________________________________________________
Bill Nolan, Writer/Editor/Wiseguy            http://www.halcyon.com/bnolan/
Amid slender firs in the green and gray Northwest        bnolan at halcyon.com