"Scientific American" Scientific?

[Mitchell R Coffey]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Wright AIA <mwaia at yahoo.com> at Internet
> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 2:07 AM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org at INTERNET
> Subject: RE: "Scientific American" Scientific?
>
> Howdy
>
> --- Doug Millison wrote:
>
> > I haven't seen the SA cover yet, but if Terrence is right
> (and I have
> > no
> > reason to doubt him), the headlines are a bit downmarket.
>
> Isn't the entire Scientific American enterprise sad these days?  It
> seems to chase the same readers Popular Science did in the 60's.  And
> the graphics -- Don't get me started....
>
> Mark

What?  Last month's issue, with the lurid, 256-color Tyranisauri Regis pics, my
five year old son went crazy!

Which, upon reflection, may well be your point.

Which puts us on the topic of the aesthetic sensibilities of pre-literate boys.
Recall the comment by one of the Teutonic underworld guys Slothrop pals with in
The Zone, that Beethoven's 9th was over-rated, that it "only makes you want to
get up and invade Poland".

A couple of years ago I was able to witness a test of that theory, without any
direct threat being directed at Warsaw.  My son, who as we've seen would soon
grow into a connoisseur of large carnivorous lizards, was then in his mid-2s.  I
was listening to the 9th; indeed, the Choral Movement had just risen into one of
it's real loud bits.  My son, who'd never before heard the 9th, walks in.  He
freezes, stunned, transfixed.  He then begins charging and careening about the
room, making appropriate boy-sound effects - explosions, mostly - miming and
mimicking war at it's most physically active, in one of those unaffected faux
orgies-of-destruction that only young boys can get away with without feeling
self-conscious or being institutionalized.

The 9th had quite an effect on my boy.  And Pynchon seems vindicated.

Mitchell Coffey
_______________________________________________________
Slim Pickins rode the bomb down laughing
Bucking to oblivion
In gravity's rainbow rodeo

 - Found anonymously felt-penned onto a wall
   in the Bancroft Library on the UC Berkeley
   campus, c. 1977