The Luddite Vision

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 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).