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

[David Casseres]

I said
>> 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).  
>>
>> 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.

davemark sez (after quoting "Is It O.K. To Be a Luddite?")
>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
>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.

Yes.  I really thought this was one of the best bits in the book so far.  
The whole sequence in the Cudgel & Throck is a key piece of the 
jigsaw-puzzle presentation of the transformation of England in the 18th 
century -- getting a start on the Industrial Revolution by creating an 
alienated population of laborers, and so on -- and of the popular 
responses to it which included Luddism and the Diggers.


Cheers,
David