architecture WAS Re: GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb

Dave Monroe monroe at mpm.edu
Mon Jul 3 20:26:11 CDT 2000


Doug Millison wrote:

> I wonder if any of the P-list architects can tie this discussion back
> to GRGR or other Pynchon novel?  Architecture does appear to be one
> of Pynchon's cultural concerns -- in the Rocket City passages, in the
> Mittelwerke passages, etc. It seems almost as if Pynchon, as he sat
> writing GR, was able to anticipate some of the PoMo architectural
> theory, even as the novel gave critics a model to ground their new
> speculations about fiction/reality.  The notion of ruins and
> simulation

You know, I set out to read as much literature on the V-2, Peenemunde at al.
as I could over the past year, precisely because of Gravity's Rainbow.
Anybody familiar with any of these?

--Michael Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich (excellent, by far the best of
the lot)
--Yves Beon, Planet Dora: A Memoir of the Holocaust and the Birth of the
Space Age
--Benjamin King and Timothy Kutta, Impact: The History of the German
V-Weapons in WWII
--Dennis Piskiewicz, The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War
--Monkia Rennenberg and Michael Neufeld, eds., Science, Technology and
National Socialism

Also read Walter Dornberger's V-2 (Dornberger was the General in charge of
the program), though I must admit I didn't much get around to von Braun,
except that the Disney Chennel reran some very interesting episodes of "Walt
Disney Presents" or somesuch featuring a smiling WvB going on about space
exploration.  Very creepy.  But anything in particular I should look at, in
re: Pynchon and the V-2?  But I'd not though much about architecture, will
indeed go back and reread.  Any passages in particular?  But I guess I can
find 'em, so ... does make me want to go out and get Paul Virilio's Bunker
Architecture, although I think it went out of print before a paperback (and
thus affordable) ed. was published, so ...

...oh, and, kwp, apparently, at least Horace Walpole wanted to live in a
ruin, one quite literally, if not necessarily theoretically,
"deconstructed," look up his Strawberry Hill one of these days if you're
interested.  That late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century "gothic" craze in
general, though it seems to me that Piranesi might have been an early major
figure interested in architectual ruins.  I'm sure there are no end of
decent architectural works on Strawberry Hill, the gothic revival, but
Anthony Vidler's The Architectural Uncanny might be of particular use,
ineterest, although it might only touch on those particular elements.   See
also Tom Stoppard's recent play, Arcadia--the history of English
landscaping, Romanticism, fractal geometry, you name it, it's in there.
And, of course, Walter Benjamin's The Origins of German Tragic Drama (which
I believe Verso has finally made available again, though I'm still waiting
on a reprinting of the Charles Baudelaire book) has much to say on the
baroque/romantic fascination with ruins which might be applicable here.
Ruins are a recurring trope in twen cen lit'rachure, no?  T.S. Eliot's "The
Waste-Land" being only the most conspicuous example ... and I'll have to
look up that Archtecture of the Jumping Universe--anybody here happen to
take a look at that Chora L Works book, with all the square holes punched
through it? Eisenman and Derrida (hm, perhaps see also Derrida's Cinders,
speaking of ruins, wastelands, ash heaps, what have you) ... but I think
there might well be much to say on the subject, Doug, I'll look into it,
thanks ...




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