Chasing ... Cutting

[Terrance Flaherty]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> Terrance,
> Where could one find the Charles Berger essay you mention?  

I think it's the last essay in the Harold Bloom Edited
Modern Critical Views, Chelsea House Publishers, 1986, NY,
pages 203-215m, the title again, is "Merrill and Pynchon:
Our Apocalyptic Scribes. 

Also, is the
> title to the "1 of 10" essay below yours?  

Yes. 

I think this is all very
> interesting as a larger structure for many of the diverse thems in GR, and
> not just a literal timeline, as Paul seemed to imply.  


Well, while I don't disagree with Paul, at all, in the
archives, you will find, and I guess this will not surprise
anyone but our newest friends, that all through GRGR, and
indeed since subscribing here,  I have posted on the fainter
echoes and direct references and allusion, anachronisms,
that Dave M.  and Doug M. note, but it's a matter of
emphasis and focus. My reading of GR does not include any
reference, allusion to the holocaust in Pirate's opening
dream. This is not denial or idiocy, it's not anything like
that, but it's not a matter of just not seeing it, or
but/and or excluded middles,  it clashes with what I think
is happening here in the opening scene, and in the novel
over all. I respect Doug a lot and I Dave M. too, but we
just disagree on this opening scene. 


Also, whence cometh
> the term "Paleotechnic?"  Is it yours, and could you explain its meaning?
> >
> >See: Mumford's 'T & C,' ch.1, "Cultural Preparation"  (a)
> >The Monastery and the Clock, (b) Space, Distance, Movement,
> >(c) The Influence of Capitalism, (d) The Road Through Magic,
> >(e) The Mechanical Universe.

Sorry, I took this from the archives and I cut 90% out.
TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION is Lewis Mumford's classic study
of the Machine and its effects on civilization. First
published in 1934, it can be had for a buck or two at a used
book store. I am convinced that Mumford ( a prolific
writer)  was one of TRP's sources. Paleotechnic is a term
Mumford adopts from Professor Patrick Geddes. He takes a
chapter to define it, so I can't do it justice here, but he
says:  

Looking back over the last thousand years, one can divide
the development of the machine and the machine civilization
into three successive but over-lapping and interpenetrating
phases: eotechnic, paleotechnic, neotechnic...Following the
archeological parallel he called attention to, I shall call
the first period the eotechnic phase: the dawn age of modern
technics [109]. 

A new movement appeared in industrial society which had been
gathering headway almost unnoticed from the fifteenth
century on: after 1750 industry passed into a new phase,
with a different source of power, different materials,
different social objectives. This second revolution
multiplied, vulgarized, and spread the methods and goods
produced by the first: above all, it was directed toward the
quantification of life, and its success could be gauged only
in terms of the multiplication table [155]. 


Other Mumford books: 

    5	AMERICA AND ALFRED STIEGLITZ A COLLECTIVE PORTRAIT
<1934>
    6   AMERICAN CARAVAN <NEW YORK> serial
    7   AMERICAN CARAVAN A YEARBOOK OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
<NEW YORK> serial
    8   ARCHITECTURE <1926>
    9   ARCHITECTURE AS A HOME FOR MAN ESSAYS FOR
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD <1975>
   10   ART AND TECHNICS <1952>
   11   ARTS IN RENEWAL <1969>
   12   BROWN DECADES A STUDY OF THE ARTS IN AMERICA 1865
1895 <1931>
   13   BROWN DECADES A STUDY OF THE ARTS IN AMERICA 1865
1895 <1955>
   14   CITY DEVELOPMENT STUDIES IN DISINTEGRATION AND
RENEWAL <1945>
   15   CITY DEVELOPMENT STUDIES IN DISINTEGRATION AND
RENEWAL <1946>
   16   CITY IN HISTORY ITS ORIGINS ITS TRANSFORMATIONS AND
ITS PROSPECTS
         <1961>
   17   CONDITION OF MAN <1944>  
   18  CONDITION OF MAN <1973>
   19   CONDUCT OF LIFE <1951>
   20   CONDUCT OF LIFE LEWIS MUMFORD <1951>
   21   CULTURE OF CITIES <1938>
   22   ECOLOGICAL BASIS OF PLANNING <1972>
   23   ESSAYS AND JOURNALS <1968>
   24   FAITH FOR LIVING <1940>
   25   FINDINGS AND KEEPINGS ANALECTS FOR AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
<1975>
   26   FROM THE GROUND UP OBSERVATIONS ON CONTEMPORARY
ARCHITECTURE HOUSING
         HIGHWAY BUILDIN <1956>
   27   GOLDEN DAY A STUDY IN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE AND
CULTURE <1926>
   28   GOLDEN DAY A STUDY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND
CULTURE <1934>
   29   HERMAN MELVILLE <1929>
   30   HERMAN MELVILLE A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND VISION
<1963>     

Now I must clean up my Rilke notes and posts.

In the Russian countryside and in the bells of old Moscow's
churches ringing, Rilke discovered the landscape which he
felt correspond to the size and terror and hushed stillness
of his own inner life. In the country of the Hereros,
Weissmann discovered in the rugged landscape and its strange
stars a symmetrical inversion of the Rilkean "mountains of
primal pain." "A Wandervogel in the mountains of Pain" and
"a constellation of dark stars"  no "anti-Rilke has yet
named." [97-102]