The Luddite Vision

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Thanks Kai, I think Cowart uses the word or term "apologist"
here in this sense:

A person who argues in defense or justification of
something, such as a doctrine, a policy, or an institution.

And I think he's right, but of course I like Cowart, hey
that "mending wall" is poetic genius, I think. 



Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote:
> 
>  This morning I read Cowart's M&D review (- thanks again to Terrance). A very
>  clear (re)introduction to the novel. I'm going to start my second reading next
>  week. This time on German. Since I had some serious problems with the old
>  English forms back in '97, it will be a special joy for me to read the book
>  without a  dictionary. For my third reading I'll then return to the original.
>  At first glance the German translation by Nikolaus Stingl seems to be adequate.
>  But having not studied English academically, I'm not the right person to judge
>  this. Thomas?
> 
>  For our GRGR context the most significant passage in Cowart's essay is the
>  following:
>               "Yet Pynchon's career-long emphasis on paranoia, often taken to be
>                the little more than a holding of the mirror up to a
>                characteristic psychopathology of the age, reveals itself in his
>                fifth novel as potentially transformative. Pynchon sees paranoia
>                as a PHARMAKON - at once the poison and its remedy. Thus the
>                paranoia of Mason and Dixon, at first the measure of their
>                inconsequence, becomes the gauge of their sensitive resistance to
>                rationalist excess. They come to see that their line does a great
>                deal more than signify where Pennsylvania ends and Maryland
>                begins. They recognize in the Line an epistemic watershed, a
>                boundary between dispensations." (p. 359)
>                                                            Sunny wishes, Kai
> 
>  PS: Nevertheless, I doubt that Pynchon, who once wrote "we always end up loving
>  these folks, we cheer for Rob Roy, Jesse James, John Dillinger" (SJ-intro), is
>  really happy with being characterized as an "apologist for balance" (p. 361).
>