animals in M&D

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Spencer Thiel wrote:
> 
> Terrance,
> Definitely no apology necessary.  You brought up very good points about
> Fang's role.  In the end, I agree with you that the primary meaning of Fang
> is to challenge the thought of man in the age of reason -- Pynch did not
> put fang there to primarily bring up the matter of conditioning and animal
> intellegence.  

In M&D, Pynchon introduces both his LED and Mechanical Duck.
These are but two examples of how Pynchon subjects the
relationship between humans and other animals and the
relationship between the inanimate and the human to an
ironic process often found in traditional satire. Pynchon
often invests inanimate objects with human characteristics
and inanimates human subtleties, by first divesting them of
human characteristics through reification and then
re-investing them with pseudo-human characteristics. Pynchon
also follows the traditional satirists when he transforms
men into animals and empowers animals with distinctively
human traits and abilities and complicates these
metamorphoses with his black subversive humor, to tickle us
into good manners and giggle us gently away from our
favorite follies. 

In his Luddite essay Pynchon warns, "If our world survives,
the next great challenge to watch out for will come-you
heard it here first-when the curves of research and
development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology
and robotics all converge." The Mechanical Duck in M&D is a
remarkable combination of Pynchon's brilliant style and the
ironic techniques with which he treats humans, animals, and
machines.  


However, like Allegre's croissants, so too are Pynchon's
> books layered.
> -st.

It is difficult to probe Pynchon's techniques without
falling over a cliff. So much of Pynchon is nearly
impossible to discuss without first considering the whole
encyclopedic tapestry that Pynchon weaves together with his
uncanny imagination and fantastic prose. Therefore, if we
take up humans and machines, it's difficult to avoid being
confounded by the whole tradition that Pynchon draws from:
Freudian fetishes, the slow return of the repressed Badass,
Virgins and Dynamos, and what ever else. Likewise, if we
take up animals and humans, it is nearly impossible to
escape the encyclopedic knotting into and out-of that makes
Pynchon's writings so wonderful. So, conditioning, literal
biblical interpretations, historical and literary allusions
are all very relevant to why dogs talk and machines walk,
talk, and shit like ducks.

TF