Ellipsis and the Practice of Selective Reading

[jbor]

Has anyone ever bothered to read the entire article? It's very good, you 
know. This mention which millison and monroe keep harping on about is
paragraph 22 of a 26 paragraph text, a paragraph which actually serves as an
illustration of Pynchon's contention that the relegation of works of science
fiction of the late 40s and 50s to the ranks of genre writing was a pity
(foremost among these being Vonnegut's early, and best imo, works such as
*Player Piano*, *Sirens of Titan*, and, though later, *Cat's Cradle* I
suspect). He's discussing literature, film and culture in general for the
majority of the piece.

In the article he talks about the way industrialisation and scientific
"progress" have created inhuman horrors, and how the popcult/
literary/religious imagination has constructed equal and opposite-type
monsters to contend with the purportive causes of these horrors ("Badass"
golems like King Ludd, Frankenstein, King Kong etc). He's not *specifically*
talking about the Holocaust at any point, and he's certainly not saying:
hey, I published a 760 page book there in the early 70s, but it's about how
> the Industrial Revolution -- had been
> extended to include the Manhattan Project, the German long-range rocket
> program and the death camps, such as Auschwitz
so youse needn't bother reading it after all.

To echo a long-gone contributor who *was* virtually driven off the list by
millison: Sheesh.

*******

         'millison's rainbow'

   A screaming comes across the sky.

   ... (It was the Holocaust.) ...

   Now everybody-- (else, SHUTUP!)

*******

I guess it's a lot quicker to read.

best

----------
>From: "Otto Sell" <o.sell at telda.net>

>
>>
>> In the meantime, in light of perhaps not only my own values, but ones I
> read out
>> of the text, out of Pynchon's texts, esp. in light of "Is it O.K. to be a
>> Luddite?"
> (http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/pynchon.paper.luddite.html),
>> I can't help but read GR as positing the Holocaust, Hiroshima, not to
> mention
>> Global Nuclear Apocalypse, as Very Bad Things Indeed.  How do you account
> for
>> Pynchon's nonfiction?  Do you?  Let me know ...

>
>     "By 1945, the factory system -- which, more than any piece of machinery,
> was the real and major result of the Industrial Revolution -- had been
> extended to include the Manhattan Project, the German long-range rocket
> program and the death camps, such as Auschwitz. It has taken no major gift
> of prophecy to see how these three curves of development might plausibly
> converge, and before too long. Since Hiroshima, we have watched nuclear
> weapons multiply out of control, and delivery systems acquire, for global
> purposes, unlimited range and accuracy. An unblinking acceptance of a
> holocaust running to seven- and eight-figure body counts has become -- among
> those who, particularly since 1980, have been guiding our military
> policies -- conventional wisdom. " from:
> http://pages.whowhere.com/internet/f.vazquez/luddite.html