Lud Oafery (was Re: MDMD(8) Notes Addendum)

[davemarc]

> From: David Casseres <casseres at apple.com>

> But did anyone else feel the oblique shadow of Ludd, as in the 
> author of what we now call Luddism (wish I could remember his other 
> name).  

Sayeth Tom Pyn, relying on the OED in the NYT of 10/28/84:  "In 1779, in a
village somewhere in Leicestershire, one Ned Lud broke into a house and 'in
a fit of insane rage' destroyed two machines used for knitting hosiery. 
Word got around.  Soon, whenever a stocking-frame was found sabotaged--this
had been going on, sez the Encyclopedia Brittanica, since about 1710--folks
would respond with the catch phrase 'Lud must have been here.'  By the time
his name was taken up by the frame-breakers of 1812, historical Ned Lud was
well absorbed into the more or less sarcastic nickname 'King (or Captain)
Ludd,' and was now all mystery, resonance and dark fun:  a more-than-human
presence, out in the night, roaming the hosiery districts of England,
possessed by a single comic shtick--every time he spots a stocking-frame he
goes crazy and proceeds to trash it."

Later:  "No doubt what people admired and mythologized him for was the
vigor and single-mindedness of his assault.  But the words 'fit of insane
rage' are third-hand and at least 68 years after the event.  And Ned Lud's
anger was not directed at the machine, not exactly.  I like to think of it
more as the controlled, martial-arts type anger of the dedicated Badass."

> I did, and was much charmed by the idea of this Ludd as a 
> werewolf, first incapable of human speech but later revealed as an 
> articulate advocate of popular causes.
> 
Lud Oafery seems to me both an inverted werewolf and an inversion of
Pynchon's own idea of Lud--in his "normal" state akin to the "insane" Lud
and then, against expectations, turning into a fop--not a dedicated Badass.
 For those unfamiliar with "Is It O.K. To Be a Luddite?", there's the broad
humor of inverting the werewolf transformation--a mother, comfortable with
her animalistic son, rueing his transformation into...a fop.  For those
who've read the essay, there's the possibility of feeling that the
familiarity with it will help one understand where the episode's going, and
then being doubly surprised (and amused) by the direction it takes.

davemarc