The Great Divide

[Henry Musikar]

I don't know if G. Spencer-Brown's "Laws of Form" is still in print. 
I bought and read it based on the hearty reccomendation of the first 
"Last Whole Earth Catalog(ue)."

On 16 Jul 97 at 14:50, Vaska <vaska at geocities.com> wrote:

> Andrew Dinn wrote:
> >Michael McAulay writes:
> >> I've been looking for an opening for this for a while now...check page
> >> 616 of M&D where there is a clear reference to G. Spencer-Brown's Laws
> >> Of Form.  In LOF the fundamental operation of thought is identified as
> >> drawing-a-line, which operation is explicitly identified with naming.
> >
> >Wow! Thanks for a beauty of a footnote.
> 
> 
> I don't know the work of G. Spencer-Brown [which I will have to read
> now, dammit], but what Michael McAuley has pointed out strikes me as
> far more than mere footnote material.  
> 
> It links directly to Pynchon's [by now] life-long preoccupation with
> the pitfalls opened up by the symbolizing faculty of the human
> animal -- a preoccupation prominently displayed in both _V_ and
> _GR_.  Going totally out on a limb now, my feeling is that, despite
> or perhaps along with all his postmodern surfaces and depths,
> Pynchon has been moving steadily back towards an almost classical
> Romantic position.  Which is a huge topic in its own right,
> especially now that he's given us a novel whose attitude to the
> Enlightenment seems ambivalent at best.
> 
> And with all those Pynchon conferences coming up, this DST thing is
> becoming a real godsend, come to think of it. 
> 
> Vaska
> 
> 
> 

Henry Musikar
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