Chasing ... Cutting

[Dave Monroe]

Have the Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: Modern Critical Interpretations,
ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1986) at hand, but no Charles
Berger--is there a Thomas Pynchon: Modern Critical Views instead that I've
missed in the confusion?  Apparently ... and did I read your response right,
that you have an essay within?  Will find ...

And Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization is indeed useful, relevant, as
you've demonstrated.   Hauled out Alfred North Whitehead's Science and the
Modern World, as it comes up often enough, any comments why?  Howzabout
Siegfried Giedeion's Mechanization Takes Command?  In the Classic Big Book on
Technology stakes.  Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society?  Daniel Bell's
The Postindustrial Society?  Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media?  For those
60s books ... Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics and The Human Use of Human Beings, of
course, but certainly not in the same way.   But am very interested in the
science 'n' technology angle (whereas I've really got to work on the tarot,
gnosticism, kabbalah, et al.).

And, while this certainly wasn't a source for Pynchon (pub. 1986, I think), I'd
think Otto Mayr's Authority, Liberty and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern
Europe might well provide a few clues, esp. when we get to V., or even Mason &
Dixon (sorry, pardon mon exhibitionisme, but am curious as to what gets read out
there, and why, and how it's used).  Anyway, respect (I think, maybe a missing
word there I don't wanna know) right back atcha, and am always happy to have
someone elaborate the Rilke connection in GR ...


Terrance Flaherty wrote:

> 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 respect Doug a lot and I Dave M. too, but we
> just disagree on this opening scene.
>
> TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION is Lewis Mumford's classic study
> of the Machine and its effects on civilization