MDMD: Stonehill's Prophecies of Pynchonspace

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

Reading over today Brian Stonehill's article from PN 34-35,
Pynchon's Prophecies of Cyberspace, I realised that during the
reading he preforms on several episodes in GR, 
he hits upon several details and themes which are played 
again in a different key in M&D.

 Firstly, a cute detail he reminded me of--- the Polish undertaker who 
takes a  rowboat out in a storm to see  if he can get hit by lightning (GR,
p 663). 

    Secondly, with relavance to the Rebekah episodes, he re-minds me
of the way the dead have always persisted in Pynchon, how the lines
between subject and object, animate and inanamite are always being 
crossed. Lyle Bland says in GR----

     "Its hard to get over the wonder of finding that Earth is a living
critter, after all these years of thinking about a big dumb rock
to find a body and psyche(...) To find that Gravity, taken so for granted,
is really something eerie, Messianic, extrasensory in earth's mindbody." 
(GR p589) 

     Anyway, Brian's article brought me back to several episodes in 
GR which have a bearing on Pynchon's continuing interests in M&D.
His essay, while made for another purpose, has become valuable from 
our new perspective.

Eric

Eric Alan Weinstein
University of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk