Pavlov and the Book
Craig Clark
CLARK at SHEPFS2.UND.AC.ZA
Tue Nov 5 09:07:37 CST 1996
I asked:
>...mebbe Pointsman is meant to be a parody of Skinner? Just how did
>BF spend the war anyway?
David Casseres replied
> Hoo hoo! Wasn't it Skinner who did the work on conditioning pigeons to
> peck at high-contrast spots on a screen so that they could be suicide
> pilots in glide-bombs to be launched against enemy ships at sea? Or am I
> imagining that it was Skinner? In any case, now that I think of that,
> it's amazing Pynchon's Pavlovians didn't do any work with a Pigeon Pyotr
> (or pouter).
I vote we petition TRP via his agent to produce a sequel to _GR_
oriented around this fact...
Craig Clark
"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
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