GR/JR

[Brian Collins]

Spurred on by the enthusiasm here I started reading JR again, but to just
kind of read along, fast and not close? Few books demand (or reward) such a
close reading, a 725-page tumult almost entirely of unattributed dialogue
linked by dense poetic transitions ('Wagnerian' comes to mind for a number
of reasons) with no chapter or other breaks. Try to quote a passage and you
appreciate the interconnectedness of the whole thing ... however to try to
give a little of the flavour to Pynchonians who haven't had the pleasure
(if any such there be):

(It begins with money, and money drives it; a bag of coins, intended for a
school class's 'investment in America' has been dropped outside a bank -
the coins turn up later as the Rheingold in Bast's rehearsal, only to be
stolen by the Albericht, none other than the infant capitalist JR himself)

	-It was twenty-four dollars . . .
	-And still get to your rehearsal, Mister Bast. To have it ready for
Friday, we want to show this Foundation team how we're motivating this
cultural drive in our youngsters, its all in preparation for the cultural
festival next spring you know, Miss Joubert . . . watch his hand there yes,
to show we can make this cultural drive pay off like never before in mass
consumers, mass distribution, mass publicity, just like automobiles and
bathing suits . . .
	-And sixty-three cents, Mrs Joubert finished, a gentle bulge rippling from
her knee as she shifted her weight in departure to disappear in the swirl
of her skirt as the quarter bounding from the billowing trouser cuff drew
Bast in a headlong lunge after the exhaust of Whiteback's car shearing from
the curb, rounding the corner int Burgoyne Street to course through the
shrieks of saws and limbs dangling in unanesthetized aerial surgery,
turning at last into the faculty parking lot and into Gibb's limited vista
from a second floor classroom window watching Mrs Joubert alight and come
towards the portal beneath him, knuckles gone white where he grasped the
cold radiator staring down into the loose fullness of her approach till it
was gone beneath the sill, and he turned back to the darkened classroom to
face the talking face in flattened animation on the screen itself until the
tension of watching without listening broke the surface in a slight twitch
of his own lip and turned him back to the window looking down [ . . .]
	-All right let's have order here, order . . . ! he'd reached the set
himself and snapped it into darkness. -Put on the lights there, now. Before
we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is
simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything,
but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized
so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be
organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that
organization is an inherant property of the knowledge itself, and that
disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from
outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin,
perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos . . .
	-But we didn't have any of this, you . . .
	-That's why you're having it now! Just once, if you could. if somebody in
this class could stop fighting off the idea of trying to think. All right,
it all comes back to this question of energy, doesn't it, a concept that
can't be understood without a grasp of the second law of, yes? 

(he tries to get them to spell e - n - t - r - o - p - y)

(Later, in a school budget meeting -)

	-Right. You mention education and they grab for their wallets. Now here's
thirty-two thousand six hundred and seventy for blacktopping the parking
lot over to the TV studio.
	-That's the only bid that came in.
	-And there's this twelve thousand dollar item for books.
	-That's supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand should be paper
towels. Besides, there's already that bequest for books for the library.
	-Did it say books in so many words? No. It's just a bequest for the
library.
	-Use it for pegboard. You need pegboard in a library. Books you don't know
what you're getting into.
	-Right. Remember Robin Hood? [ . . . ] 
----------
> From: Murthy Yenamandra <yenamand at cs.umn.edu>
> 
> I'm blissfully ignorant of Theory and I'm not going to be graded on my
> reading of _JR_, so I intend to just kind of read along (much faster
> than the intended reading of _GR_ and not as closely) and have fun -
> what with the zebra music and all.