GRGR14 the yarns he spun (was Re: Prosthetic Paradise(2) Enfetishment&MS

[rj]

And this "philosophical question" is nowhere more apparent than in that
pairing of Slothrop's and Katje's maps which was being discussed, as
well as the apparent breach between the pre-Brenchsluss and
post-Brenschluss operation/status of the rocket itself. After
Brenschluss the rocket appears to have 'a mind of its own'. Slothrop,
too, appears to defy empirical 'laws', or, rather, is seen by the
scientists as the vehicle or medium through which the rocket's
post-Brenschluss trajectory can be made to conform to some tangible
pattern, or logic. Pointsman can't cope with the idea of the
rocket/machine having 'a mind of its own'; his science is founded on the
notion of human primacy over the machine. The irony is (and Pynchon is
less a "Satirist" than a Socratic "eiron", or dissembler) that it is
science which unleashes this monster in the first place. Here is the
Frankenstein connection, too. The rocket is the golem, not Slothrop (or
only insofar as he, like Gottfried, is a component of the rocket's
inhuman function.)


Michael Perez wrote:

> When Pynchon does introduce us to "humans with plastic parts," like the
> Bad Priest, some humanity manifests itself.  Disassembly is not
> necessarily disintegration.  Slothrop "disappears," but is not rendered
> inanimate.  Esther gets a nose job which isn't necessarily rendering
> her inanimate either, but the gruesome description of the process does
> have the effect of goading the reader into seeing this as a
> construction job (complete with orange cones).  Gottfried, of course,
> is the ultimate human "cog."  To recognize humanity within the
> inanimate and recognize the inanimate within humans is a bit too
> simplistic for Pynchon.  After the characters and the reader
> reestablish the humanity of humans given up for inanimate and realize
> the lack of humanity in the inanimate, all are faced with a
> considerable moral dilemma.  This is not, I believe a readers' trap, as
> Terrance asks about (or a writers' trap), but a presentation of a major
> philosophical question, there does not appear to be conscious deception
> or dangerous ambiguity.  The dialectics regarding this issue are left,
> for the most part, to the readers.