From johnbonbailey at hotmail.com Wed Nov 1 12:52:54 2000 From: johnbonbailey at hotmail.com (John Bailey) Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 13:52:54 EST Subject: VV (3) - The Plastic Zone Message-ID: > >I've been searching, but I haven't yet been able to locate the Twilight >Zone >episode in which the girl resists getting her face-job. She's coming of >age >and thus has to pick her new face from a catalogue of choices shared by all >the rest of society. She eventually relents, and it is clear from the >result that her inside has also been changed. > >David Morris >______________________ By sheer synergistic coincidence (or the blind absurdity of lie, depending on yr bent), the episode in question was on the tube TWICE in the last month. It's called "Number 12 looks just like you." There was also an equally interesting and perhaps relevant episode called After Hours, which is where the mannequins in a department store come to life. Remade in the eighties Twilight Zone series as well. I actually remember this episode from the TV of my childhood, and am amazed at how many others cite it as something that sticks in the mind. Much like V.V., at least for me. I think the relation between these episodes and V lies in shared theme of a society which increasingly demands its subjects to experience themselves as objects. Thus, I don't see the 'inanimate' characters of the novel as somehow villainous or malevolent. I think Pynchon is rather showing how social structures force these people to (literally) in-corporate the inanimate into themselves, and to become objects. This is especially important when the V figure is repeatedly depicted in female terms. The great institutions of the 20th Century all to a large degree treat women's bodies as objects and instruct women to see their own selves the same way. Anyway, my brain isn't currently fit to complete any of these thoughts. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From monroe at mpm.edu Wed Nov 1 02:24:42 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 02:24:42 -0600 Subject: Lastra, Sound Technology ... Message-ID: <39FFD34A.F91F34D3@mpm.edu> ... well, checking in after a few days away again, can't help but notice references to Vaucanson. Just reading James Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema, which touches upon all yr favorite automata--Vaucanson's Duck, von Kempelen's Chess Player as well as his speaking machines, Mayer's Euphonia--as well as (esp. relevant, to V.) fictional counterparts like Villier de L'Isle Adam's Hadaly in L'Eve Future (the U of Illinois P trans., Tomorrow's Eve, is out of print, but it's currently available nonetheless as The Future Eve in Zone Books' The Decadent Reader ... and do note what, er, "V[ee]" is backwards ... also, "V.," "vee-period," "Five-Spot") and E.A. Poe's "Maelzel's Chess Player," though he seems to have skipped E.T.A. Hoffmann's Olympia from "The Sandman" (on which, of course, see S. Freud on "The Uncanny," in that long line of estrangements from the Russian futurists, Russian formalists, Brecht, Artaud, Beckett, Godard, et al.), not to mention yr Etienne-Jules Marey, Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas Edison, prosthetics, et al. And that's just the first chapter ... anyway, from James Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity (New York: Columbia UP, 2000), on early phonography ... By preserving the purely contingent, these phonographic systems effectively reversed the rational hierarchy between the essential and inessential, between substance and accident. (46) In fact, these prosthetic senses soon served as models for the general attitude of the investigator himself [and I think the gendering here is appropriate ...]. While devices like the phonautographe, the manometric flame [cf. the "sensitive flame" at a seance], or any one of Marey's many graphical inscriptors outdid the human senses in sensitivity and storage capacity, they also suggested attitudes that could be emulated by human observers.... without regard to prior notions of intrinsic importance.... in the sciences such perceptual "passivity," modeled on the photograpf, emerged in teh nineteenth centuray as the very paradigm for experimental objectivity. It even became fairly common to desribe human perception in mechanical terms, or as aspiring to the unbiased receptivity of a mechanical instrument. one typical instance argues that physicists must overcome the prejudice of the "musical" ear, and learn to give all aspects of a sound equal prominence or attention. (47) [And cf. that trajectory of modernist music noted here, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Cage, Stockhausen, Coleman, even the allegedly cybernetics-inspried feedback of Pete Townshend, et al. ...] In the world of scientific experiment, particularly in the study of movement and vibration, such a reversal was necessary.... This increased sensitivity responded to the fact that, for physiologists [and note from whence terms like "sign" and "symptom" came ...], what had previously seemed "background" phenomena--complexities and oddities of movement--had suddenly assumed the foreground of their reserches. In fact, as Marey repeatedly pointed out, it was precisely our expectations about what should be in the foreground that blinded us from the actualities of physiological complexity. (46-7) ... "passive" mechanical devicers effectively challenged or reversed established cultural and intellectual norms and hierarchies. In the course of this shift, previously "rational" and "objective" categories like "musical/nonmusical," "meaningful/nonmeaningful" or "essential/contingent" came to appear simply prejudicial. In essence, the very devices that initially had been modeled on human perceptual faculties had themselves come to embody a nw paradigm of ideal and decidedly inhuman sensory activity. ,In contrast to centuries of thought to the contrary, the new sensory attitude was passionately devoted to a counter-intellectual, counter-hierarchical sensitivity to the fugitive, teh ephemeral, "the background." (48) The strategic "passivity" of inscriptional devices, which refused to ignore those stimuli that contradicted expected results and which tirelessly and indiscriminately recorded all contingencies regardless of whether they corresponded to more general "types," effectively destroyed the reigning hierarchies of scientific observation, and, even more so, representation. (48) ... which I think bears not only on those Pynchonian texts and the reading thereof, but on the readERs thereof, as well, esp. in re: that "rational," "objective" "category," "meaningful/nonmenaningful." Critiqued, put into play, required, implicating text, author AND reader, all at once. Also reminds me, yeah, that robot vs. human Maria thing in Metropolis, I've been troubled by that as well, though, yes, good observation, very infernal scene indeed there, a la that opening to Gravity's Rainbow, much interested in such instances of "polysemy" or whatever. Ditto the Sphere/Monk/Coleman thing, yep, both of 'em, and then some, perhaps--that ivory/plastic thing is particularly interesting, ditto "something else"--though I think Hollander is on to something there, again, my only real disagreements with his researches have been their tendency to close off other possibilities, but I don't recall Monk coming up much at all before he pointed the connections out. But the great appeal to me of those Pynchonian texts, along with their extraordinary learnedness, extraordinary humor, is the way they manage to keep those "several levels" in play. Which is what happens with religion, mythology, science and technology therein as well, no? Further, on automata, and, esp. the gendering thereof, do do DO see the following: Frank, Felicia Miller. The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice, and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1995. Michelson, Annette. “On the Eve of the Future: The Reasonable Facsimile and the Philosophical Toy,” October 29 (Summer 1984): 3-21 Lathers, Marie. The Aesthetics of Artifice: Villiers's L'Eve future. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1996 Well, have some catching up to do, so ... From KXX4493553 at aol.com Wed Nov 1 03:41:16 2000 From: KXX4493553 at aol.com (KXX4493553 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 04:41:16 EST Subject: NP HOD-related & etc. Message-ID: <64.7ec5565.27313f3c@aol.com> In einer eMail vom 01.11.00 00:43:56 (MEZ) Mitteleuropäische Zeit schreibt millison at online-journalist.com: << A collection of African colonial school books is scheduled to be posted, and the site has already offered scholarship based on this collection, namely two essays: "Ideology in the Schoolbooks of the Belgian Congo" and "Race and Racism in Schoolbooks of the Belgian Congo." >> This reminds me on a small tv serial here in German public tv (ARD) called "Politische Morde" (Assassinations,4 parts) which begins today (23.45 h) with a documentation about the murder of the Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961 by the Belgian secret service. The tragedy that's going on in Congo (Congo-Brazzaville and former Zaire) until today cannot be separated from the assassination. A hint for all German P-List members and those who lives in the "surroundings"... Kurt-Werner Pörtner From monroe at MPM.EDU Wed Nov 1 05:00:35 2000 From: monroe at MPM.EDU (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 05:00:35 -0600 Subject: Solar Mirror Yo-Yo ... Message-ID: <39FFF7D3.6311F14D@mpm.edu> ... and, of course, recall Yoyodyne, yo-yo + dynamo, yo-yo dynamics, yo-yo motion ("Ev'rybody's do-oo-ing abrand new dance now/ C'mon, baby, do the ...") ... but that solar mirror yo-yo thing DOES work, and I've posted some sites with graphics demonstrating as much already, but I realize I didn't make that explicit, at least for the non-mathematical, so ... now, imagine that the center point is the sun, the red ball is the planet going around the sun, and the horizontal line is the mirror. Follow the bouncing blue ball, i.e., the mirrored reflection of the red ball ... http://members.nbci.com/Surendranath/Shm/Shm01.html Now, ev'rybody ... From fqmorris at hotmail.com Wed Nov 1 08:24:16 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 08:24:16 -0600 Subject: Solar Mirror Yo-Yo ... Message-ID: I'd say your "Harmonic Motion" animation link below was what Pynchon meant in the Sun-mirror passage, but his description is still flawed. Once the orbiting planet passed through the line of the mirror it would disappear. The yo-yo that one sees in the animation is the result of both sides of orbit through the mirror-line registering on the mirror. Nice link though. DM From: Dave Monroe .. but that solar mirror yo-yo thing DOES work, and I've posted some sites with graphics demonstrating as much already, but I realize I didn't make that explicit, at least for the non-mathematical, so ... now, imagine that the center point is the sun, the red ball is the planet going around the sun, and the horizontal line is the mirror. Follow the bouncing blue ball, i.e., the mirrored reflection of the red ball ... http://members.nbci.com/Surendranath/Shm/Shm01.html___________________________________________________________ Get more from your time online. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fqmorris at hotmail.com Wed Nov 1 08:48:17 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 08:48:17 CST Subject: McCintic McClintoc Message-ID: Sorry for the double post. MSN email problems. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From keith at pfmentum.com Wed Nov 1 08:48:25 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 06:48:25 -0800 Subject: Political Metaphor Of The day Message-ID: <001501c04414$84fbc0e0$d53e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> >From Today's NY Times: "The left wing seemed to hit something, and then it was just a big roller-coaster ride. Flames were everywhere." - STEVEN COURTNEY, who survived the crash of a Singapore Airlines jet in Taiwan. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 1 10:06:04 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 11:06:04 -0500 Subject: Fergus Message-ID: <3A003F6C.5D291028@earthlink.net> Fergus is an Irish-American Jew: Mixolydian: In music terminology, the mixolydian mode is a major scale with a flatted, aka minor or (appropriate to "the laziest living creature in New York") "lazy" seventh degree. Tim Ware's HyperArt Pynchon If you have read Irish Literature or have read Yeats or Joyce's Ulysses, the name Fergus will set off a few big bangs. Joyce's novel opens with a parody of the Catholic Celebration of The Eucharist and transubstantiation and some talk of Father and Sons, Hamlet, and the funeral of Stephen's recently departed Mother. James Joyce was called home to Ireland, where his mother was dying of cancer and he sang to his mother the lines "Who Goes with Fergus" from Yeats' play *The Countess Cathleen.* The Father & Son and Dead Mother (from Stencil here, to GR, VL, M&D and so on) theme, is critical to both Pynchon and Joyce. Who will go drive with Fergus now, And pierce the deep wood's woven shade, And dance upon the level shore? Young man, lift up your russet brow, And lift your tender eyelids, maid, And brood on hopes and fears no more. And no more turn aside and brood Upon love's bitter mystery; For Fergus rules the brazen cars, And rules the shadows of the wood, And the white breast of the dim sea And all dishevelled wandering stars. --W. B. Yeats What the Hell has this to do with Pynchon's Fergus and the price of mirrors in Dublin? Well nothing I guess, but Joyce's comments on nightmares, history, and the cracked looking-glass of a servant, maybe? It is Stephen's faithless friend Buck Mulligan who quotes Yeats in the tower in the opening pages of the novel: And no more turn aside and brood Upon love's bitter mystery For Fergus rules the brazen cars. And later Stephen is lying drunk and half-conscious in the street, muttering to himself: Who...drive...Fergus now. And pierce....wood's woven shade?... The "Circe" chapter ends with Stephen supine and semi-conscious, murmuring fragments of that most beautiful and enigmatic of Yeats' poems, "Who Goes With Fergus?" while Bloom stands over him muttering masonic phrases and entranced with the vision of Rudy. Rudy is on the scene because Bloom has found a son. Bloom repeats masonic slogans because they represent a kind of religion of man, an ideal of fraternity, in which both the main characters will be united. And Stephen (whose unconsciousness is more significant than the process which brought it about) murmurs phrases from "Who Goes With Fergus?" because he is commending himself to the guidance of a dark, occult principle. who. . . rules the shadows of the wood, And the white breast of the dim sea And all dishevelled wandering stars. http://home.adelphia.net/~hbjames/Intro_to_Ulysses.htm Maybe this has little to do with Ford Foundations, Rabbis, Streets, Dead Mothers, Fathers & Sons, and Profanity. See THE BATTLE OF GARACH and that two handed rainbow sword/engine again, and See also, Yeats' Cuchulan's Fight With The Sea O' From keith at pfmentum.com Wed Nov 1 10:22:21 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 08:22:21 -0800 Subject: The Mirror Message-ID: <001601c0441f$ebc97fa0$893771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> There is a kind of net that is as old as Methusaleh, as soft as a cobweb and as full as holes, yet it has retained its strength to this day. When a demon wearies of chasing after yesterdays or of going round in circles on a windmill, he can install himself inside a mirror. There he waits like a spider in its web, and the fly is certain to be caught." -Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Mirror From jeremy at xyris.com Wed Nov 1 10:36:17 2000 From: jeremy at xyris.com (Jeremy Osner) Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 11:36:17 -0500 Subject: Fergus References: <3A003F6C.5D291028@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3A004681.CA5654B6@xyris.com> O' wrote: > Mixolydian: In music terminology, the mixolydian mode is a > major scale with a flatted, aka minor or (appropriate to > "the laziest living creature in New York") "lazy" seventh > degree. > Tim Ware's HyperArt Pynchon Readers of Plato's *Republic* will recall that the philosopher had unkind words for the lydian and mixed lydian modes; as I recall he said something like, "Even women have no use for them, let alone men!" Jeremy From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 1 10:45:12 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 11:45:12 -0500 Subject: Fergus References: <3A003F6C.5D291028@earthlink.net> <3A004681.CA5654B6@xyris.com> Message-ID: <3A004898.9066BF8E@earthlink.net> Jeremy Osner wrote: > > Readers of Plato's *Republic* will recall that the philosopher had > unkind words for the lydian and mixed lydian modes; as I recall he said > something like, "Even women have no use for them, let alone men!" > > Jeremy See Chapter 26 M&D From fqmorris at yahoo.com Wed Nov 1 11:08:03 2000 From: fqmorris at yahoo.com (David Morris) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 09:08:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: VV (3) - The Party Message-ID: <20001101170803.22234.qmail@web1606.mail.yahoo.com> Just wondering: These aren't your words, are they? Sounds like it came from some sort of religious encyclopedia. --- s~Z wrote: > The whole universe appeared so orderly, so governed by laws, that it could be compared to a giant clock. Drawing on this image, many people after Newton adopted a novel and erroneous view of God. > Obviously, this view represents a rejection of the God of the Bible -- the God who not only created the world, but also continually sustains it and works within it, revealing His ways to man. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? >From homework help to love advice, Yahoo! Experts has your answer. http://experts.yahoo.com/ From grladams at teleport.com Wed Nov 1 11:49:59 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 09:49:59 -0800 Subject: The Mirror References: <001601c0441f$ebc97fa0$893771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: <3A0057C7.E131B43A@teleport.com> This whole mirror thing and Jewish nosejob reminds me of Romans 3:20, and a certain Lutheran Hymn. I'm no biblical scholar, so there's my disclaimer... But the law and the mirror are related... Rom 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law [is] the knowledge of sin. (For by the law is the knowledge of sin. That law which convicts and condemns us can never justify us.. ) Paul Speratus (1484-1531), “Salvation unto Us Has Come,” (LW #355): (Go Down to the Third Stanza.....!) Salvation unto us has come By God’s free grace and favor; Good works cannot avert our doom, They help and save us never. Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone, Who did for all the world atone; He is our one Redeemer. What God did in His law demand And none to Him could render Caused wrath and woe on ev’ry hand For man, the vile offender. Our flesh has not those pure desires The spirit of the law requires, And lost is our condition. It was a false misleading dream That God his law had given That sinners could themselves redeem And by their works gain heaven. The Law is but a mirror bright To bring the inbred sin to light That lurks within our nature. Since Christ has full atonement made And brought to us salvation, Each Christian therefore may be glad And build on this foundation. Your grace alone, dear Lord, I plead, Your death is now my life indeed, For you have paid my ransom. s~Z wrote: > > There is a kind of net that is as old as Methusaleh, as soft as a cobweb and > as full as holes, yet it has retained its > strength to this day. When a demon wearies of chasing after yesterdays or of > going round in circles on a windmill, he > can install himself inside a mirror. There he waits like a spider in its > web, and the fly is certain to be caught." > -Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Mirror From christinekaratnytsky at juno.com Wed Nov 1 12:33:30 2000 From: christinekaratnytsky at juno.com (christine karatnytsky) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 13:33:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: The Truth at Last Message-ID: <391392255.973103610300.JavaMail.root@web114-wra.mail.com> Author Unknown : On the Trail of Anonymous by Donald W. Foster, Don Foster List Price: $26.00 Our Price: $20.80 You Save: $5.20 (20%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Hardcover - 320 pages (November 2000) Henry Holt & Company, Inc.; ISBN: 0805063579 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 3,047 Chapter Five: Wanda, the Fort Bragg Lady From christinekaratnytsky at juno.com Wed Nov 1 12:33:21 2000 From: christinekaratnytsky at juno.com (christine karatnytsky) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 13:33:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: The Truth at Last? Message-ID: <383979516.973103601293.JavaMail.root@web124-wra.mail.com> Author Unknown : On the Trail of Anonymous by Donald W. Foster, Don Foster List Price: $26.00 Our Price: $20.80 You Save: $5.20 (20%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Hardcover - 320 pages (November 2000) Henry Holt & Company, Inc.; ISBN: 0805063579 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 3,047 Chapter Five: Wanda, the Fort Bragg Lady From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 1 12:41:11 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 13:41:11 -0500 Subject: The Mirror References: <001601c0441f$ebc97fa0$893771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> <3A0057C7.E131B43A@teleport.com> Message-ID: <3A0063C7.41E28A70@earthlink.net> jill wrote: > > This whole mirror thing and Jewish nosejob reminds me of Romans 3:20, and a > certain Lutheran Hymn. I'm no biblical scholar, so there's my disclaimer... > > But the law and the mirror are related... Inside and outside Romans 2:28 Vera: Truth-Christ / Veronica: Image of the Truth-Christ From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 1 12:47:04 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 13:47:04 -0500 Subject: VV (3) - The Plastic Zone References: Message-ID: <3A006528.CDC71ACF@earthlink.net> John Bailey wrote: > > I think the relation between these episodes and V lies in shared theme of a > society which increasingly demands its subjects to experience themselves as > objects. Thus, I don't see the 'inanimate' characters of the novel as > somehow villainous or malevolent. I think Pynchon is rather showing how > social structures force these people to (literally) in-corporate the > inanimate into themselves, and to become objects. This is especially > important when the V figure is repeatedly depicted in female terms. The > great institutions of the 20th Century all to a large degree treat women's > bodies as objects and instruct women to see their own selves the same way. > > Anyway, my brain isn't currently fit to complete any of these thoughts. Can't disagree with these thoughts, but I don't think Pynchon says this is any excuse for Malevolence, even Villainy, and we have plenty of both in this novel, and all Pynchon's works. "Acts have consequences, Dixon, they must." From millison at online-journalist.com Wed Nov 1 12:33:48 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 11:33:48 -0700 Subject: vaguely VL-related Message-ID: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/01/arts/01CND-RING.html Ring Lardner Jr., Member of Blacklisted 'Hollywood Ten,' Dies excerpt: "But by the time he began to serve what turned out to be a little more than nine months in 1950, he was quite astonished to learn that Congressman Thomas, was also imprisoned in Danbury after his conviction of defrauding the government by putting fictitious workers on his congressional payroll. Mr. Lardner and Mr. Thomas did not become friends in prison." From christinekaratnytsky at juno.com Wed Nov 1 13:40:46 2000 From: christinekaratnytsky at juno.com (christine karatnytsky) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 14:40:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: more truth than you bargained for Message-ID: <381694835.973107646459.JavaMail.root@web345-wra.mail.com> Sorry about that double posting. Weird post-editing glitch that happens sometimes on machines not my own. ck From Calaman at co.dane.wi.us Wed Nov 1 14:01:58 2000 From: Calaman at co.dane.wi.us (Calaman, William) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 14:01:58 -0600 Subject: vaguely VL-related Message-ID: Thomas, who, because he was assigned to cleaning out the chicken coops in the prison yard, earned the well-deserved moniker "Congressman Chickenshit." http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/01/arts/01CND-RING.html Ring Lardner Jr., Member of Blacklisted 'Hollywood Ten,' Dies excerpt: "But by the time he began to serve what turned out to be a little more than nine months in 1950, he was quite astonished to learn that Congressman Thomas, was also imprisoned in Danbury after his conviction of defrauding the government by putting fictitious workers on his congressional payroll. Mr. Lardner and Mr. Thomas did not become friends in prison." From jbor at bigpond.com Wed Nov 1 16:38:43 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 09:38:43 +1100 Subject: McCintic Message-ID: <22280454816845@domain7.bigpond.com> ---------- >From: Don Corathers > > I took the presence of the other musicians to be an indication that Sphere > was a player to be reckoned with. Yes, I think you are quite right. The paragraph at 59.5 which opens the scene is vivid. It focuses directly on Sphere: it is "the green baby spot" which heightens "every vein and whisker" for those watching and which gives his skin a surreal appearance, and those lines on his face have been formed by his devotion to his music, "etched" there by the "force of his embouchure", as you noted. This, and the appearance of that ubiquitous second person pronoun ("you could see") in what is purportedly detached narration, support the notion that Pynchon is using personal experience to create the scene (Siegel's comments corroborate this), and that the narrator, and the more perceptive members of the crowd with whom the narrative agency aligns (Winsome, Çharisma and Fu), are in hushed and respectful awe of the man's playing. At the end of the section Fu mimes breaking a beer bottle to murder the presumptuous idiot who comments about McLintic "playing all the notes Bird missed". I think narrator, author and reader are (meant to be) in empathy with Fu and the others here: I am, at least. The remark is a backhanded compliment which actually denigrates Bird's genius, and I think it goes right to the heart of that comment of Susan Sontag's (and, similarly, Judith's recent complaint here) about "interpretation being the revenge of the intellect on art". The idea that one jazz musician (any creative artist in fact) is a "reincarnation" of another does credit to neither, diminishes the individuality of the artist and the uniqueness of the art -- and the experience of the art -- particularly with something as spontaneous as freestyle jazz. Not only that, the idiot is talking when s/he should be listening. It is those who are silent -- the other musicians and Winsome, Charisma and Fu -- who are in the right (as far as the text is concerned, at least). And, the fact that the other musicians "listened hard, trying to dig", highlights just how innovative the soloist's performance is. best From keith at pfmentum.com Wed Nov 1 16:41:50 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 14:41:50 -0800 Subject: no beauty without terror Message-ID: <000801c04454$ef947740$ea3e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> http://www.wynd.org/et.html From FrodeauxB at aol.com Wed Nov 1 17:36:07 2000 From: FrodeauxB at aol.com (FrodeauxB at aol.com) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 18:36:07 EST Subject: The Intuitionist Message-ID: <24.c8a2c8c.273202e7@aol.com> Well, (as Ronnie used to say) here I am finally (at least temporarily) catching up with the list. I noticed a reference to a Pynchon blurb/comment/extract of a review on the jacket/cover/faux front of The Intuitionist. Having read it some time ago (not to be bragging, of course), I found it to be interesting (not that any of you would necessarily) and an easy or at least quick read. What drew my attention/money to it was a tag line/brief description of it as Pynchonesque. Well, maybe, but then I am no litcrit, am I? At least not by training/profession/experience(of course, I do , I think, know what I like, but I might not like this 100%, you see). Whoa! Thought I was Dave Monroe for a minute, but you all know Dave Monroe, and I'm no Dave Monroe...much less Thomas R. Pynchon. Here's what is on the jacket: This splendid novel reads as though a stray line in Pynchon or Millhauser had been meticulously unfolded to reveal an entire world, one of spooky, stylish alternate-Americana, as rich and haunted as our own. The care and confidence of the prose, the visionary metaphor beating like a heart at the center-these do not outweigh the poignance and humor, the human presence here. The Intuitionist rises someplace new, and very special.--Jonathan Lethem As the Emperor said in Amadeus, "There you have it." TTFN Frodeauxb PS Imitation is the sincerest for of flattery-yeah, you bet. From johnbonbailey at hotmail.com Thu Nov 2 11:23:32 2000 From: johnbonbailey at hotmail.com (John Bailey) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 12:23:32 EST Subject: McCintic McClintoc Message-ID: Anyways, perhaps I'm stretching some links here but... Along with the Duck, one of the three automata which made M. Vaucanson so famous was the flauteur, or flutist, whose most remarkable property was the hinged mouth which allowed for a mechanical embouchere or pursing of the lips. The lifesized automaton was able to play 12 airs on a real flute, which was considered a rare and difficult instrument at the time. Vaucanson, in fact, became an important historical figure for flutists as he had to work out exactly how the mouth, lungs, lips etc cooperate to blow a tune. I found his manuscripts in my local Music library. Maybe McClintic, through his exceedingly focused devotion to the instrument, becomes more than a little like an automaton. This seems to go against what I gather are TRP's feelings towards jazz, however. Must say, I also re-read Kerouac's evocation of some jazz gigs last night. Pretty wild. You can kind of see how TRP was so impressed by On The Road. Not so impressed, meself. >From: "David Morris" >To: "Jane Sweet" , "Pynchon_List" > >Subject: Re: McCintic McClintoc >Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 12:09:59 -0600 > >Nice. I hadn't noticed that. It could just be describing his, what do you >call the musculature set of a horn-players mouth? Armature? But Terrance >seems closer to the intention: hinged mouth. >From: Jane Sweet > >"twin lines running down from either side of his >lower lip..."___________________________________________________________ >Get more from your time online. FREE MSN Explorer download : >http://explorer.msn.com _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From davidkass at mediaone.net Wed Nov 1 19:24:17 2000 From: davidkass at mediaone.net (David Kassay) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 20:24:17 -0500 Subject: V.V.(3) schoenberg quartet recordings? Message-ID: <015d01c0446b$9e8241e0$c8f98018@davepc.ne.mediaone.net> Can anyone recommend a recording of the complete Schoenberg quartets refered to in this section? How many quartets did he compose? -- Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nohed36 at hotmail.com Wed Nov 1 21:47:50 2000 From: nohed36 at hotmail.com (Ben McLeod) Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 21:47:50 CST Subject: It will be easier with friends Message-ID: Come on out for the Big Event! The Presidential Election is bigger than sports, because it only happens every 4 years, and these guys actually have the power to have you killed! So when all the marching is done, all the votes cast, and all the hopes abandoned, don�t just sit in your bunker-- Come on down to the New World Resource Center! We�ll get together, fire up the tube, get some beer and pizza, lay some side bets, and watch the whole thing go down in flames. Won�t that sinking �four years of that guy?� feeling go down better with beer, pizza, and some friendly weeping? Tuesday November 7th, starting at 5pm. Bring a black armband and some mad money- and be ready to hoot and weep out loud. The New World Resource Center is at 2600 W Fullerton, in Chicago. You can give us a call at 773-227-4011 _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From o.sell at telda.net Thu Nov 2 02:35:25 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 09:35:25 +0100 Subject: It will be easier with friends References: Message-ID: <003301c044a7$d99dd280$c59106d5@selltelda.net> Hallo Ben, http://www.zeit.de/2000/45/Politik/200045_essay_leggewie.html This essay claims that for Germans November 7th is a day like every other day. Die neue Selbstverständlichkeit Warum der amerikanische 7. November für die Deutschen ein Tag wie jeder andere sein wird Von Claus Leggewie "Würde doch wenigstens Hillary Clinton gegen Colin Powell antreten, also die erste Frau oder der erste Schwarze vor den Türen des White House stehen ..." Otto ----- Original Message ----- From: Ben McLeod To: Cc: ; Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 4:47 AM Subject: It will be easier with friends Come on out for the Big Event! The Presidential Election is bigger than sports, because it only happens every 4 years, and these guys actually have the power to have you killed! So when all the marching is done, all the votes cast, and all the hopes abandoned, don't just sit in your bunker-- Come on down to the New World Resource Center! We'll get together, fire up the tube, get some beer and pizza, lay some side bets, and watch the whole thing go down in flames. Won't that sinking "four years of that guy?" feeling go down better with beer, pizza, and some friendly weeping? Tuesday November 7th, starting at 5pm. Bring a black armband and some mad money- and be ready to hoot and weep out loud. The New World Resource Center is at 2600 W Fullerton, in Chicago. You can give us a call at 773-227-4011 _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From jp4321 at IDT.NET Thu Nov 2 05:28:03 2000 From: jp4321 at IDT.NET (jporter) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 06:28:03 -0500 Subject: Romanian Surrealism Message-ID: http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/current/ffull/jcs00035-1.html From uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de Thu Nov 2 06:52:28 2000 From: uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de (Thomas Eckhardt) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 12:52:28 +0000 Subject: V.V.3: Irving Message-ID: <3A01638B.41713FF5@uni-bonn.de> 45: "called, by virtue of some associative freak, Irving" Irving? Washington Irving? From uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de Thu Nov 2 06:52:35 2000 From: uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de (Thomas Eckhardt) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 12:52:35 +0000 Subject: V.V. 3--Time, place, and mirror-time References: <01C041D8.7A4A3980@port-33-8.access.one.net> Message-ID: <3A016392.A3517EDB@uni-bonn.de> Don Corathers schrieb: > Time and place > > The events of Chapter Two happen in the course of one day (and into the next early morning) in February, 1956. Because Pynchon's treatment of time is effortlessly fluid, and because in this chapter some pains have been taken to call the reader's attention to the importance of time and what's on the other side of it (or whenever), it seems worthwhile to trace the narrative present through the course of the chapter. So: > What is on "the other side of time"? And when, exactly, is "on the other side of time"? Pynchon often uses metaphors that describe temporal processes in terms of space. The phrase "kingdom of death" would be only one prominent example. > Mirror-time > > We are introduced to the concept of mirror-time as Rachel sits in Schoenmaker's waiting room. She occupies herself studying a double-faced clock that is mounted in front of a mirror on the wall. She can see both the face of the clock that is turned to the room, and in the mirror the reflection of the second face, which seems to be running backwards. She (or anyway the narrative voice-it's not really clear if all of this is happening in Rachel's head or if she is in a scene being described to us by an omniscient observer) speculates that real-time and mirror-time might cancel each other out. Or that mirror-time might offer "a promise of a kind" of a "reversal of fortune" that drew people to this place to have their imperfections corrected. It is worth noting that these observations are made through a character whose name means "mirror," while she sits in the waiting room of a plastic surgeon with patients who are particularly sensitive to what's on the other side of the looking! > glass. > The regular movement of the clock corresponds with the branches that whip "back and forth in the February wind, ceaseless and shimmering" (46) as Terrance has noted. The wind, as everybody knows, turns up in Pynchon again and again, not only in this chapter or in V. It is, in other words, a leitmotif of Pynchon's fiction. Here the wind is associated with the mechanical expression of linear, scientifically subdivided time, i.e. the clock. The image hints at a correspondence between natural and mechanical processes. No simple opposition there. The wind, it has been said before, is "inanimate": "Dewey's voice sounded like part of the inanimate wind." (30) At that moment Dewey is sitting, perhaps not accidentally, on the crosstrees of the Susanna Squaducci, singing the French para's haunting tune, i.e. a song Paola learned from a person that was "built like the island of Malta itself: rock, an inscrutable heart" (19), but also a person also who was "tired" of committing atrocities in Algeria. The main characteristic of the wind in these chapters is that it doesn't care about humans or humanity. It just blows. It blows over the bums looking inside the V-Note: "All night the February wind would come barrelling down the wide keyway of Third Avenue, moving right over them all: the shavings, cutting oil, sludge of New York's lathe" (59) and over Charlie Parker: "Since the soul of Charlie Parker had dissolved away into a hostile March wind nearly a year ago (...)" (60) And, as you mentioned, it has "its own permanent gig" outside the bar at the very end of the chapter. The wind is not only inanimate, it is also permanent. It will still be blowing when everybody inside or outside the V-note bar is long dead and gone. I tend to think that this makes the vague correspondence between the sounds coming from Sphere's ivory horn and the wind a very high compliment for the musician. As part of the yo-yo imagery the wind also is related to Benny's feelings towards Rachel - and we might remember that in M&D the wind is described as "a vector of desire" or something like this. The "promise" of mirror-time is that it might be possible to reverse the historical facts, the things that have happened in linear, scientifically subdivided time. The clock running backwards is explicitly linked to the hope of Schoenmaker's patients that the certainties - here: the nose one has been born with - may become possibilities again. By this the mirror-world also is related to the realm of imagination and put in opposition to Isaac Newton's clockwork universe. Of course there are also socio-psychological factors that create the longing for a "perfect return", in this case the desire of people marked by one bodily feature as members of a specific minority. It is the wish to have a bodily appearance that does not distinguish one from the people who form the ruling class or mainstream of society. This is the subject of Rachel's discussion with Schoenmaker (the name is indeed that obvious). Fanon's studies concerning the wish of black people to be white also comes to mind. The desire reveals itself as an expression of an induced minority complex, but it is certainly not less real for this. Just a few thoughts. Thomas From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Thu Nov 2 06:10:35 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 13:10:35 +0100 Subject: V.V.(3) schoenberg quartet recordings? References: <015d01c0446b$9e8241e0$c8f98018@davepc.ne.mediaone.net> Message-ID: <13rJCV-0SH0mfC@fwd00.sul.t-online.com> David Kassay schrieb: > Can anyone recommend a recording of the complete Schoenberg quartets refered > to in this section? a good recording, which also contains string quartets of webern and berg, is the 4 cd box called "second viennese school". it was recorded in 1971 by the lasalle quartet & brought out by deutsche grammophon/hamburg. the catalogue number is 419994-2 [g/cm 4]. kai frederik lorentzen //:: ps: "... 'cause art is the emergency scream of those, who experience at themselves the fate of wo/mankind ... inside, in themselves is the movement of the world; to the outside comes through only the echo: the work of art" (arnold schönberg, 1910) From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Thu Nov 2 06:10:39 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 13:10:39 +0100 Subject: McCintic McClintoc References: Message-ID: <13rJCZ-0SH0mgC@fwd00.sul.t-online.com> John Bailey schrieb: > Must say, I also re-read Kerouac's evocation of some jazz gigs last night. > Pretty wild. You can kind of see how TRP was so impressed by On The Road. > Not so impressed, meself. "against the undeniable power of tradition, we were attracted by such centrifugal lures as norman mailer's essay 'the white negroe', the wide availability of recorded jazz, and a book i still believe is one of the great american novels, o n t h e r o a d, by jack kerouac." (thomas pynchon: slow learner, p. 9) kfl //:: ps: with 16 i tried to read "on the road" in german which didn't work (- this kind of stuff seems just untranslatable). --- years later, a cloudy friday afternoon in the studentenwohnheim. all of sudden i had the chance to, well, support the south american economy. having had started to do so, my glance fell on a copy of the original of "on the road", someone had left in my room. i picked up the book, started to read & ... did not stop untill the book was over on sunday morning ... i guess it was leslie fiedler who first took balint's psychoanalytical term "philobatic" (- wideness loving) to point out the crucial quality of american culture ... [- btw, what's kerouac's second best novel?] From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Thu Nov 2 06:10:34 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 13:10:34 +0100 Subject: vv (3): body as battlefield or: portrait of the artist as a shy guy Message-ID: <13rJCU-0SH0meC@fwd00.sul.t-online.com> on nose job, plactic surgery & the enfetishment of the inanimate: reading again the passages about esther's nose job it came to my mind that this is perhaps not only a diagnostic statement along the lines of cultural criticism, but also a kind of personal liberation. from "lineland" i remember siegel's ex-wife reporting that trp was during the 60s still very ashamed of his hamster teeth. & skimming back through the pages i find on page 11 the story of the engineman ploy who is "in earnest about keeping his teeth". though the terror of normative body politics is most intense in the teenage years, it's, according to my own experience and observations, still a major theme in the first half of the third decade. a-and to write the novel we are currently reading - a book he published when he was still a young man - trp had to miss a lot of parties at an age where this is especially painful. since the themes of plastic surgery & teeth amputation do not play an important role in later novels, i assume that the man did write something off his flesh here. kai frederik lorentzen From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 2 07:37:52 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 08:37:52 -0500 Subject: V.V. 3--Time, place, and mirror-time References: <01C041D8.7A4A3980@port-33-8.access.one.net> <3A016392.A3517EDB@uni-bonn.de> Message-ID: <3A016E30.8A70CBBD@earthlink.net> Thomas Eckhardt wrote: > > The main characteristic of the wind in these chapters is that it doesn't care about humans or humanity. It just blows. It blows over the bums looking inside the V-Note: "All night the February wind would come barrelling down the wide keyway of Third Avenue, moving right over them all: the shavings, cutting oil, sludge of New York's lathe" (59) and over Charlie Parker: "Since the soul of Charlie Parker had dissolved away into a hostile March wind nearly a year ago (...)" (60) And, as you mentioned, it has "its own permanent gig" outside the bar at the very end of the chapter. The wind is not only inanimate, it is also permanent. It will still be blowing when everybody inside or outside the V-note bar is long dead and gone. I tend to think that this makes the vague correspondence between the sounds coming from Sphere's ivory horn and the wind a very high compliment for the musician. Interesting, I read it just the other way round. Let me say, the narrator does compliment his playing and I think the links s~Z provided and the comments that jbor added recently and all that critics have compiled from biographical scraps and so forth all seem to add up to the common reading of Sphere and his stoical statements about love and cool and care, but I think there are some problems with this generally accepted reading. One problem is that they rely on all sorts of things that clash with the novel itself. The symbolism in this novel is very important. One big one is the Ivory sax. Why Ivory? I can't for the life of me explain this one away by saying it's Monk's piano. Ivory? No one plays an Ivory sax so it seems that TRP gave him an Ivory sax not because of Coleman or Monk but because of what Ivory symbolizes in the novel. Why wouldn't McClintic be subjected to the same inanimating forces that affect the others? The description of him begins with his "swinging his ass off" and his "hard skin, as if it were part of his skull: every vein and whisker on that head stood out sharp and clear under the green baby spot: you could see the twin lines running down from either side of his lower lip, etched in by the force of his embouchure, looking like extensions of his mustache." To compare Sphere's gig with the wind: In V. the wind blows through Man's lost and found faith, his threadbare community, his sense of sterility, of alienation, of being alone, vulnerable to entropy, nihilism, despair. The wind, indeed the entire cosmos is indifferent. But this Void, this great big white hole, this un-wholeness, we might say "anti-paranoid" universe is too much for anyone to stand for long and so by a new paranoia, a stencilezed quest, not the religious paranoia of the mythological quests of the past, but of religious dimensions, man becomes a new JOB, a Man caught in a new history, a history that is being controlled by anti-human, anti-mythical, anti-natural, forces. Man (Job) is now caught between cosmic indifference and a conspiracy against life. I think the inanimate affects even Jazz here in V. An Ivory sax is not what Coleman played. There is some Irony of course, after reading GR, that he did play a plastic sax. In any event, that's what I think right now, but I ain't thinkin too good these days, so... Will the wind ever remember/ The names it has blown in the past/ With its crutch, its old age, and its wisdom/ It whispers, no, this will be the last/ And the wind cries Mary... From quail at libyrinth.com Thu Nov 2 07:38:14 2000 From: quail at libyrinth.com (The Great Quail) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 08:38:14 -0500 Subject: V.V.(3) schoenberg quartet recordings? In-Reply-To: <015d01c0446b$9e8241e0$c8f98018@davepc.ne.mediaone.net> References: <015d01c0446b$9e8241e0$c8f98018@davepc.ne.mediaone.net> Message-ID: >Can anyone recommend a recording of the complete Schoenberg quartets >refered to in this section? How many quartets did he compose? Not counting some earlier pieces and experimentations, Schoenberg composed four "official" quartets (Op. 7, 10, 30 & 37). My favorite renditions are from the amazing Arditti Quartet, experts in the modern and postmodern repertoire. All four Schoenberg quartets were released as a 2-CD set from Montaigne: 1994 MO 782024, with the Arditti and Dawn Upshaw as soprano on Quartet II. Unfortunately, I can't find this set at either Amazon or AllClassicalMusic.com, so perhaps it has been deleted? Anyway, if you can find any versions by the Arditti, snatch them up! --Quail -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth: http://www.TheModernWord.com "His fervour for the written word was an interweaving of solemn respect and gossipy irreverence. . . " --Gabriel García Márquez -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fqmorris at hotmail.com Thu Nov 2 08:10:33 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 08:10:33 CST Subject: McCintic McClintoc Message-ID: http://www.database.com/~lemur/dm-vaucanson-flute-english.html The Translator to the Reader. J. T. DESAGULIERS P.S. Whilst this Memoire was printing, I received the Description of the Duck and of the Figure playing on the Tabor and Pipe; which Mr, [sic] VAUCANSON describes in a Letter to a Friend. Therefore to do him Justice in every Respect, and for the Satisfaction of the Curious, I have subjoined the Translation of his Letter. AN ACCOUNT OF THE MECHANISM of an IMAGE Playing on the GERMAN FLUTE, &c. Presented to the Gentlemen of the Royal Academy of Sciences, By Mr. VAUCANSON, the Inventor of it. "My first Care has been to examine the Mouth of WInd- Instruments, to know well how to get Sound out of them, what Parts contribute to produce it, and how it may be modified." "The Figure is about six Foot and an half high, sitting upon a Piece of Rock, placed on a square Pedestal, four Foot and an half high, and three Foot and an half wide. In the forepart of the Pedestal (the Pannel being open'd) on the right Hand there is a Movement, which by Means of several Wheels mov'd by a Weight, car- ries round underneath a steel Axel or Arbor, two Foot and a[sic] half long, with six Cranks in its Length at equal Distances, but looking different Ways. To each Crank are fasten'd Strings which terminate at the End of the upper Boards of six Pair of Bellows, two Foot and an half long, and six Inches Wide each, placed at the Bottom of the Pedestal, where their lower Boards are made fast, so that as the Arbor turns, the six Pair of Bel- lows rise and fall sucessively one after another." "These three Pipes, by different Elbows, end in three small Receptacles in the Breast of the Figure. There they re-unite into one, which goes up thro' the Throat, or Wind-Pipe, and widening makes a Cavity in the Mouth terminated by two Lips which bear upon the Hole of the Flute: These Lips give the Wind a greater or less Issue, as they are more or less open; for the Performance of which, as well as that of coming forward or being drawn back, there is a particular Piece of Mechanism. Within the forementioned Cavity there is a little move- able Tongue, which by its play can open or shut the Pas- sage of the Wind that goes thro' the Lips of the Figure." >From: "John Bailey" Anyways, perhaps I'm stretching some links here but... > >Along with the Duck, one of the three automata which made M. Vaucanson so >famous was the flauteur, or flutist, whose most remarkable property was the >hinged mouth which allowed for a mechanical embouchere or pursing of the >lips. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Thu Nov 2 08:26:45 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 08:26:45 CST Subject: McCintic McClintoc Message-ID: http://www.database.com/~lemur/dm-vaucanson-flute-english.html Mr. VAUCANSON'S Letter to the ABBE De Fontaine "My second Machine, or Automaton, is a Duck, in which I represent the Mechanism of the Intestines which are em- ployed in the Operations of Eating, Drinking, and Digestion: Wherein the Working of all the Parts necessary for those Ac- tions is exactly imitated. The Duck stretches out its Neck to take Corn out of your Hand; it swallows it, digests it, and dis- charges it digested by the usual Passage. You see all the Actions of a Duck that swallows greedily, and doubles the Swiftness in the Motion of its Neck and Throat or Gullet to drive the Food into its Stomach, copied from Nature: The Food is digested as in real Animals, by Dissolution, not Trituration, as some natural Philosophers will have it. But this I shall treat of, and shew, upon another Occasion. The Matter digested in the Stomach is conducted by Pipes, (as in an Animal by the Guts) quite to the Anus, where there is a Sphincter that lets it out." .... "This Machine, when once wound up, performs all its different Operations without being touch'd any more. I forgot to tell you, that the Duck drinks, plays in the Water with his Bill, and makes a gugling Noise like a real living Duck. In short, I have endeavor'd to make it imitate all the Actions of the living Animal, which I have consider'd very attentively." _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fblau at qpass.com Thu Nov 2 13:17:49 2000 From: fblau at qpass.com (Frank Blau) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 11:17:49 -0800 Subject: Mixolydian Message-ID: <753ED2600176D3118334009027CC8A15025FFEBB@ALPS> For a stellar example of the Mixolydian mode have a listen to Bob Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee" off the "Desire" album... and I'll throw the TRP reference to MD and the culture of caffeine. Frank Blau Database Software Development Engineer Qpass "There were three kings and a jolly three too. The first one had a broken nose, the second, a broken arm and the third was broke. "Faith is the key!" said the first king. "No, froth is the key!" said the second. "You're both wrong," said the third, "the key is Frank!" From crawdad at one.net Thu Nov 2 18:19:55 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 19:19:55 -0500 Subject: V.V. 3--Time, place, and mirror-time Message-ID: <01C04501.AFD91FE0@port-28-36.access.one.net> O'Terrance wrote: [a very nice post summarizing the McClintic Sphere problem] The ivory business and all that is suggested by the description of Sphere--especially the image of a hinged mouth--are very persuasive. A-and extra credit for the Hendrix quote, too. Still, I'm having trouble reconciling the ideas of jazz and a soulless inanimacy (Is word? Perhaps not.) But then, I guess trouble reconciling ideas is why we read this stuff, yes-no? Don From davemarc at panix.com Thu Nov 2 20:42:06 2000 From: davemarc at panix.com (davemarc) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 21:42:06 -0500 Subject: Author Unknown Message-ID: <001d01c0453f$baf2bba0$2fc654a6@gmsc20b> It's now available in NYC--at Coliseum books, at least--complete with chapter on Wanda Tinasky. d. From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 2 21:26:57 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 21:26:57 -0600 Subject: McCintic McClintoc Message-ID: <3A023081.831D15DA@mpm.edu> I'd noticed that Pinocchio-esque vibe from McClintic Sphere as well, though I tend to read that bit in the V-Note (cf. Five Spot, cf. V.) as perhaps "sinister" only in the way that such scene might seem to white boys ('n' girls) in general, esp. at the time. But given that is is a descent into the underworld of sorts, given the orphic allusions that abound in those Pynchonian texts, well ... And given that McCS is one of TRPs few African-American characters, and given the publication of V. during the efflorescence of the Civil Rights movement, well ... am interested in how Terrance will play that out, as I think that "keep cool, but care" Not a Bad Piece of Advice at All, is all, but ... But, John, I think you're right to invoke those musical automata, esp. Vaucanson' flute player, again, many nifty notes in James Lastra's Sound Technlogy and the American Cinema: Perception, Represntation, Modernity (New York: Columbia UP, 2000), but see also the following here: Chapuis, Alfred and Edmond Droz. Automata: A Historical and Technical Study. Trans. eric Reid. Neuchatel: Editions du Griffon, 1958. [a classic, and, I suspect, a source for Pynchon] Mayr, Otto. Authority, Liberty and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989. As well as the following short works ... Beaune, Jean-Claude. "The Classical Age of Automata: An Impressionistic Survey from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century." Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Vol. 1. Ed. Michel Feher et al. New York: Zone, 1989. 434-43. Bedini, Silvio. "The Role of Automata in the History of Technology." Technology and Culture 5 (1965): 24-42. de Solla Price, Derek J. "Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy." T & C 5 (1965): 9-24. Fryer, David M. and John C. Marshall. "The Motives of Jacques de Vaucanson." Technology and Culture 5 (1965): 257-69. [that's a really useful issue of Technology and Culture, obviously ...] Obligatory hyperlinks: http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/pschmid1/essays/pynchon/vaucanson.html http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/courses/v610051/gelmanr/ling.html Also, a nifty, multilingual (French, German, English) set of appropraite references @ the follwing site, for a course taught this past spring @ Princeton by Carolyn Abate and Tom Y. Levin (q.v.): http://campuscgi.princeton.edu/~scg/dept/ger/520/syl.s00.shtml Let me know ... From studiovheissu at yahoo.com Thu Nov 2 23:47:23 2000 From: studiovheissu at yahoo.com (Michael Perez) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 21:47:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: V.V.(3) schoenberg quartet recordings? Message-ID: <20001103054723.25866.qmail@web1608.mail.yahoo.com> Kai wrote "David Kassay schrieb: "'Can anyone recommend a recording of the complete Schoenberg quartets refered to in this section?' "a good recording, which also contains string quartets of webern and berg, is the 4 cd box called 'second viennese school.' it was recorded in 1971 by the lasalle quartet & brought out by deutsche grammophon/hamburg. the catalogue number is 419994-2 [g/cm 4]." I have the same collection and it is quite nice. Great notes - 340 pages worth (in German and English), with sketches and citations from letters. In addition to the four quartets with opus numbers, the package also includes a recording of Sch�nberg's 1897 quartet in D Major, written during his few months of counterpoint study with Alexander von Zemlinsky, who looked over and corrected the score. For anyone interested in the Webern string works, there is a more recent and, I believe, better recording available by the Emerson String Quartet, also on DG (445 828-2). Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? >From homework help to love advice, Yahoo! Experts has your answer. http://experts.yahoo.com/ From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 3 00:03:35 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 00:03:35 -0600 Subject: Happy Birthday, Karl Baedeker! Message-ID: <3A025537.FF07FCED@mpm.edu> Happy Birthday, Karl Baedeker! Just thought y'all might be inneressed, is all ... From studiovheissu at yahoo.com Fri Nov 3 00:01:06 2000 From: studiovheissu at yahoo.com (Michael Perez) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 22:01:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: Kerouac's 2nd best [was Re: McCintic McClintoc] Message-ID: <20001103060106.181.qmail@web1609.mail.yahoo.com> Kai wrote: "[- btw, what's kerouac's second best novel?]" _Visions of Cody_ covers roughly the same time period in the big book of Kerouac writings, and is thought by many to be closer to the spontaneous writing style he hoped that _On the Road_ was going to be before it was readied for publication. It is a longer, more jazzy book and contains a transcript of a taped, tea-induced conversation. I would continue with that one. _Desolation Angels_ is also great. Two slimmer books, _The Subterraneans_ and _The Dharma Bums_, would also be in the top five for me. Enjoy, it's great stuff!! Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? >From homework help to love advice, Yahoo! Experts has your answer. http://experts.yahoo.com/ From quail at libyrinth.com Fri Nov 3 05:46:22 2000 From: quail at libyrinth.com (The Great Quail) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 06:46:22 -0500 Subject: V.V.(3) schoenberg quartet recordings? Message-ID: >Can anyone recommend a recording of the complete Schoenberg quartets >refered to in this section? How many quartets did he compose? Not counting some earlier pieces and experimentations, Schoenberg composed four "official" quartets (Op. 7, 10, 30 & 37). My favorite renditions are from the amazing Arditti Quartet, experts in the modern and postmodern repertoire. All four Schoenberg quartets were released as a 2-CD set from Montaigne: 1994 MO 782024, with the Arditti and Dawn Upshaw as soprano on Quartet II. Unfortunately, I can't find this set at either Amazon or AllClassicalMusic.com, so perhaps it has been deleted? Anyway, if you can find any versions by the Arditti, snatch them up! --Quail -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth: http://www.TheModernWord.com Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world. --J.L. Borges -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de Fri Nov 3 07:30:51 2000 From: uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de (Thomas Eckhardt) Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 13:30:51 +0000 Subject: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness References: <01C041D8.7A4A3980@port-33-8.access.one.net> <3A016392.A3517EDB@uni-bonn.de> <3A016E30.8A70CBBD@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3A02BE09.ED491F1A@uni-bonn.de> Terrance wrote: > Interesting, I read it just the other way round. Let me say, > the narrator does compliment his playing and I think the > links s~Z provided and the comments that jbor added recently > and all that critics have compiled from biographical scraps > and so forth all seem to add up to the common reading of > Sphere and his stoical statements about love and cool and > care, but I think there are some problems with this > generally accepted reading. One problem is that they rely on > all sorts of things that clash with the novel itself. The > symbolism in this novel is very important. One big one is > the Ivory sax. Why Ivory? I can't for the life of me explain > this one away by saying it's Monk's piano. Ivory? No one > plays an Ivory sax so it seems that TRP gave him an Ivory > sax not because of Coleman or Monk but because of what Ivory > symbolizes in the novel. Not only in this novel but also in Moby Dick, which we agree is an important source for the imagery of V. - along with The Education of Henry Adams probably the most important. It might be helpful to read the passage in the light of Melville's novel. Ahab's ivory/whale bone leg is a symbol of death-in-life, an emblem of the inanimate universe Ishmael and Ahab are so afraid of. But Moby Dick is all about the union of opposites and the crossing out of lines. The most important dividing line is the one between life and death, which Ishmael finally, with the help of his friend Queequeg, manages to cancel out. The novel ends death-in-life becoming life-in-death. This is the same metamorphosis Ishmael will later (after the time the action of the novel is set in) experience in the Bower in the Arsacides where the whale skeleton becomes a potent symbol of an indifferent nature ceaselessly turning life into death and vice versa. The whale skeleton is white, it is inanimate and indifferent, it is the very image of death, it is related to ivory, yet out of it grows new life. Ishmael, in other words, in the course of the action of Moby Dick learns to acknowledge death as a part of life. As far as V. is concerned I beleive it is useful to distinguish between the inanimateness of, for example, the rock and the wind, and the tendency towards inanimateness in human beings. The latter is related to the inanimateness of the machine. The rock and the wind are inscrutable, just like the skeleton in the Arsacides or the sperm whale's head which is questioned by Ahab about the meaning of the universe, but they are not good or evil. They can't be, they just are. The machine on the other hand can only be understood in terms of the technological progress of mankind and the social and psychological changes it brought about. Machines are part of the human world, which the rock or the wind are not, and they form a realm of the human world that is without emotions or ethics. In the course of technological development and the growing dependency of humans on technology they affect the human psyche, which is a major theme in Pynchon, of course. In V., if I am not mistaken, technology makes it possible for humans to enter a state of mind in which they regard other human beings as objects, and at the same time provides the means for killing people in large numbers and stack up their corpses like "car bodies" (295). Now, in a perhaps futile attempt to return to McClintic Sphere and his saxophone: The ivory sax and the sounds Sphere creates with it - music of the invisible spheres that, as Ishmael suspects, were perhaps "formed in fright" - corresponds with the inanimateness of the wind and the rock, which is, unlest we forget, also a womb. Sphere's music is an acknowledgment of the endurance of the natural world, inscrutable to the listeners, but letting those who have ears experience for a moment the majesty of an indifferent universe. But Sphere is not merely a spokesman for nature's indifference to all things human, a function for which the ivory sax serves as an emblem. He is not only cool, he also cares. But read on below. > Why wouldn't McClintic be subjected to the same inanimating > forces that affect the others? The description of him begins > with his "swinging his ass off" and his "hard skin, as if > it were part of his skull: every vein and whisker on that > head stood out sharp and clear under the green baby spot: > you could see the twin lines running down from either side > of his lower lip, etched in by the force of his embouchure, > looking like extensions of his mustache." Compare this to the following: "There was no hair on his head - none to speak of at least - nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull." There are some more passages about Queequeg's head and face in "The Spouter-Inn", which may or may not be relevant here. For the sake of my argument I of course chose the first option: It seems that McClintic Sphere just like Queequeg represents a union or balance of opposites. Queequeg is so immensely important to the symbolic action of Moby Dick and the development of the novel's narrator precisely because he is on good terms with death. He does not perceive death as the annihilation of the soul or as the separation of the soul from the body, or as a transition from this world to the next, but as a natural part of this world, and paradoxically - Queequeg is explicitly described as a living paradox more than once in the novel - it is this quality which enables him to repeatedly save other people's lives and in the end bring about Ishmael's rebirth. Likewise, McClintic Sphere is able to care for other people precisely because he is familiar with nature's indifference towards human life and death, an indifference he acknowledges with his beautiful music. Thomas, hoping all this makes some sense From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 3 08:23:38 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 08:23:38 CST Subject: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness Message-ID: Thanks Thomas, A very clear and convincing analysis. >From: Thomas Eckhardt Now, in a perhaps futile attempt to return to >McClintic Sphere and his saxophone: The ivory sax and the sounds Sphere >creates with it - music of the invisible spheres that, as Ishmael suspects, >were perhaps "formed in fright" - corresponds with the inanimateness of the >wind and the rock, which is, unlest we forget, also a womb. Sphere's music >is an acknowledgment of the endurance of the natural world, inscrutable to >the listeners, but letting those who have ears experience for a moment the >majesty of an indifferent universe. But Sphere is not merely a spokesman >for nature's indifference to all things human, a function for which the >ivory sax serves as an emblem. He is not only cool, he also cares. But read >on below. >- Queequeg is explicitly described as a living paradox more than once in >the novel - it is this quality which enables him to repeatedly save other >people's lives and in the end bring about Ishmael's rebirth. Likewise, >McClintic Sphere is able to care for other people precisely because he is >familiar with nature's indifference towards human life and death, an >indifference he acknowledges with his beautiful music. > >Thomas, hoping all this makes some sense > _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From o.sell at telda.net Fri Nov 3 08:44:10 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 15:44:10 +0100 Subject: Kerouac's 2nd best [was Re: McCintic McClintoc] References: <20001103060106.181.qmail@web1609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00e601c045a4$880117e0$b34206d5@selltelda.net> Kai, And in addition to the other big ones Michael mentioned you should consider to read some pre-beat stuff, "The Town and the City" from 1950 for example. In my case it wasn't the "Studentenwohnheim" but the Hannover "Kolpinghaus" (no women allowed) where Kerouac helped me to bear it. The German translation of that book wasn't out then (luckily) and I read it because I already had read all his German-translated stuff several times. Stylistically more interesting for you will surely be his "Book of Dreams" (City Lights Books, San Francisco 1961; Maro Verlag + Druck, Benno Käsmayr, Bismarckstr. 7 1/2 Augsburg (quite sure that this old address isn't actual anymore, Mai 1978) and "Lonesome Traveller" from 1960, and I'm sure you will like "Tristessa" (1960) too. Otto ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Perez To: Pynchon List Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 7:01 AM Subject: Kerouac's 2nd best [was Re: McCintic McClintoc] > Kai wrote: > "[- btw, what's kerouac's second best novel?]" > > _Visions of Cody_ covers roughly the same time period in the big book > of Kerouac writings, and is thought by many to be closer to the > spontaneous writing style he hoped that _On the Road_ was going to be > before it was readied for publication. It is a longer, more jazzy book > and contains a transcript of a taped, tea-induced conversation. I > would continue with that one. _Desolation Angels_ is also great. Two > slimmer books, _The Subterraneans_ and _The Dharma Bums_, would also be > in the top five for me. Enjoy, it's great stuff!! > > Michael > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > From homework help to love advice, Yahoo! Experts has your answer. > http://experts.yahoo.com/ From jeremy at xyris.com Fri Nov 3 09:02:03 2000 From: jeremy at xyris.com (Jeremy Osner) Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 10:02:03 -0500 Subject: Kerouac stuff References: <20001103060106.181.qmail@web1609.mail.yahoo.com> <00e601c045a4$880117e0$b34206d5@selltelda.net> Message-ID: <3A02D36B.566461C6@xyris.com> There is a good Kerouac page on Literary Kicks, at http://www.litkicks.com/People/JackKerouac.html Contains brief biography and some good links. Also check out the online text of his sutra "The Scripture of Golden Eternigy", at http://www.litkicks.com/Texts/GoldenEternity.html Jeremy Did I create that sky? Yes, for, if it was anything other than a conception in my mind I wouldnt have said "Sky"-That is why I am the golden eternity. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 3 09:26:27 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 10:26:27 -0500 Subject: McCintic McClintoc References: <3A023081.831D15DA@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A02D923.C73C7B9@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: > > I'd noticed that Pinocchio-esque vibe from McClintic Sphere as well, > though I tend to read that bit in the V-Note (cf. Five Spot, cf. V.) as > perhaps "sinister" only in the way that such scene might seem to white > boys ('n' girls) in general, esp. at the time. But given that is is a > descent into the underworld of sorts, given the orphic allusions that > abound in those Pynchonian texts, well ... > > And given that McCS is one of TRPs few African-American characters, and > given the publication of V. during the efflorescence of the Civil Rights > movement, well ... am interested in how Terrance will play that out, as > I think that "keep cool, but care" Not a Bad Piece of Advice at All, is > all, but ... And what can we make of the fact that this piece of advice belongs not only to Sphere but to SHROUD? From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 3 09:39:37 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 09:39:37 -0600 Subject: McCintic McClintoc Message-ID: <3A02DC39.A230FD3C@mpm.edu> ... keep wanting to add that missing "l," but ... but a quick question for the class here: is there any character, any event, anything (maybe even any thing) whatsoever in V. that doesn't somehow partake of what we're calling, what V. calls, the "inanimate," despite the fact that said "inanimate" is often quite animate indeed, in the sense of "in motion," if not necessarily, say, "having a spirit," an anima (= pneuma = breath = wind? But tres cybernetique nonetheless ...). Everybody and so forth seems nigh unto inevitably to be subjected to some sort of mechanistic trope, tropology, tropism, even (which remind me, Nathalie Sarraute, Tropisms, The Planetarium, et al.), starting with that simple (or not so simple) harmonic yoyomotion factor, starting with Benny Profane, but hardly ending there. That "(in)human use of (in)human beings" pervades the novel (and recall that perhaps implied nostalgia for the so-called organic, the pre-cybernetic, in "Is it O.K to be a Luddite?") ... From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 3 10:22:00 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 11:22:00 -0500 Subject: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness References: <01C041D8.7A4A3980@port-33-8.access.one.net> <3A016392.A3517EDB@uni-bonn.de> <3A016E30.8A70CBBD@earthlink.net> <3A02BE09.ED491F1A@uni-bonn.de> Message-ID: <3A02E628.4F29862B@earthlink.net> Thomas Eckhardt wrote: > > Not only in this novel but also in Moby Dick, which we agree is an important source for the imagery of V. - along with The Education of Henry Adams probably the most important. It might be helpful to read the passage in the light of Melville's novel. Yes, we don't want to get too far out or into the novel, where Veronica and that ivory comb are, but white Ivory here, and even the white Rocket in GR, is quite a different symbol. BTW, The whales shows up in Mondaugen's story, HP.V.283-85 "Not even whales...ivory...it easier not to care as you once had." > > As far as V. is concerned I beleive it is useful to distinguish between the inanimateness of, for example, the rock and the wind, and the tendency towards inanimateness in human beings. The latter is related to the inanimateness of the machine. The rock and the wind are inscrutable, just like the skeleton in the Arsacides or the sperm whale's head which is questioned by Ahab about the meaning of the universe, but they are not good or evil. They can't be, they just are. The machine on the other hand can only be understood in terms of the technological progress of mankind and the social and psychological changes it brought about. Machines are part of the human world, which the rock or the wind are not, and they form a realm of the human world that is without emotions or ethics. In the course of technological development and the growing dependency of humans on technology they affect the > human psyche, which is a major theme in Pynchon, of course. In V., if I am not mistaken, technology makes it possible for humans to enter a state of mind in which they regard other human beings as objects, and at the same time provides the means for killing people in large numbers and stack up their corpses like "car bodies" (295). Yes, for example, see the whales section referenced above, the collection, the statistics, the shared property, the "luxury" (say when a powerful government drops bombs on a less powerful people) of not caring for each and every individual life--the corpses stacked in Germany or in Elmira or in SW Africa. > > Now, in a perhaps futile attempt to return to McClintic Sphere and his saxophone: The ivory sax and the sounds Sphere creates with it - music of the invisible spheres that, as Ishmael suspects, were perhaps "formed in fright" - corresponds with the inanimateness of the wind and the rock, which is, unlest we forget, also a womb. Sphere's music is an acknowledgment of the endurance of the natural world, inscrutable to the listeners, but letting those who have ears experience for a moment the majesty of an indifferent universe. But Sphere is not merely a spokesman for nature's indifference to all things human, a function for which the ivory sax serves as an emblem. He is not only cool, he also cares. But read on below. Not sure about this, I think we can say this about music (Jazz in particular) in GR though. I don't think the Orphic vibe, even in retrospect, reading back from GR, applies in V. V., is closer to the Short Stories and so Pynchon has simply not developed this yet. > Compare this to the following: "There was no hair on his head - none to speak of at least - nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull." There are some more passages about Queequeg's head and face in "The Spouter-Inn", which may or may not be relevant here. For the sake of my argument I of course chose the first option: It seems that McClintic Sphere just like Queequeg represents a union or balance of opposites. Queequeg is so immensely important to the symbolic action of Moby Dick and the development of the novel's narrator precisely because he is on good terms with death. He does not perceive death as the annihilation of the soul or as the separation of the soul from the body, or as a transition from this world to the next, but as a natural part of this world, and paradoxically - Queequeg is > explicitly described as a living paradox more than once in the novel - it is this quality which enables him to repeatedly save other people's lives and in the end bring about Ishmael's rebirth. Likewise, McClintic Sphere is able to care for other people precisely because he is familiar with nature's indifference towards human life and death, an indifference he acknowledges with his beautiful music. > > Thomas, hoping all this makes some sense A beautiful reading of Queequeg, and I agree with it 1000%, but I can't see Sphere as Queequeg. Inside sound, magnetic, even nuclear machinery all day, mirrors and music, and frustrated that Dr. Slothrop's suggestion therapy isn't working and Goldolphin, even in a moment of lucidity has not diagnosed, proscribed a little diet, so I may avoid the fate of so many attenuated ghosts. TWSEHJRKLRMYALPNAXCQOE From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 3 13:27:47 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 14:27:47 -0500 Subject: A warren in Germantown? Message-ID: <3A0311B3.63FEDA0F@earthlink.net> Shoenmaker's office is "between First and York Avenues, at the fringes of Germantown." V.HP.40 Germantown? Never heard of it? Oh! That Germantown! To accommodate population growth during the early part of the 19th century, a new and large German neighborhood developed in the 1840S east of the Bowery and north of Division Street in the tenth and seventeenth wards. It extended to within sight of the East River along Avenue D in the eleventh ward and reached the river in the thirteenth. Known variously as Kleindeutschland, Dutchtown, Little Germany, and Deutschlandle, the neighborhood was the major Gerrnan-American center in the United States for the rest of the century, with more than a third of the city's German-American residents. Other German-American neighborhoods took form directly across the East River in Williamsburg (connected to Kleindeutschland by ferries at Houston Street and Grand Street) and across the Hudson in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1860 Germans in New York City numbered more than two hundred thousand, accounting for one quarter of the city's total population, and made up the first large immigrant community in American history that spoke a foreign language. Natural increase and the arrival of seventy thousand immigrants who were politically and economically dislocated by the coalescing German Empire expanded the city's German population to more than 370,000 by 1880 (about one third of the city's total). New German settlements were established in Yorkville around 3rd Avenue and 86th Street and across the East River in Queens, where Steinway and Sons built a piano factory and company town in the 1870s. The southern part of Kleindeutschland, which had older buildings and was more crowded, was abandoned to more recent Jewish immigrants from central Europe by the 1880s and became known as the Lower East Side. Germans were more religiously diverse than most immigrant groups. The early German settlers, who were predominately Calvinists, were later joined by Lutherans and in the nineteenth century by Catholics from south western Germany. Catholics and Jews formed their own subcommunities within the city's German neighborhoods. Adherents of free thought, an outgrowth of the German Enlightenment, ranged from crusading atheists to members of small congregations with beliefs similar to those of Unitarians; free- thinkers had their own churches, Sunday schools, "anti revivals," and holidays, and were well known for the social events they organized for non religious Germans in New York City. In the nineteenth century Germans in New York City formed numerous socialist political associations, including the Workers' League... The German population in New York City reached a peak of 748,882 in 1900. The population of German Americans in New York City was reduced to 584,838 by 1920, but the numbers again increased when about 98,500 Germans fled the economic and political disorder of their country between the end of the First World War and 1930. Despite their relative decline in importance in New York City in the early twentieth century, Germans continued to shape the city's ethnic politics for many years. From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Fri Nov 3 16:43:18 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 16:43:18 -0600 Subject: Political Metaphor Of The day References: <001501c04414$84fbc0e0$d53e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: <3A033F85.915397CE@mediaone.net> Actually, I kind of enjoyed this one: George W. Bush on the dawn of the new millenium: "That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century." (?) s~Z wrote: > >From Today's NY Times: > > "The left wing seemed to hit something, and then it was just > a big roller-coaster ride. Flames were everywhere." > > - STEVEN COURTNEY, who survived the crash of a Singapore Airlines jet in > Taiwan. From jbor at bigpond.com Fri Nov 3 17:30:51 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 10:30:51 +1100 Subject: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness Message-ID: <23204172723976@domain4.bigpond.com> Just some additional thoughts to add to your excellent comments: Remember also that a term used to describe Negro slaves was "black ivory". Sphere is a black man, and the hunting of African animals for their ivory has definite parallels -- economic, ethical, logistic -- with the hunting of black Africans as slaves in prior centuries. The shape of the instrument, and of the man playing it, resemble that of the mammalian appendage, which in itself is an "inanimate" outgrowth to begin with, like nails or hair, isn't it? And, indeed, 'The Secret Integration' and the Watts article demonstrate Pynchon's commitment to the Civil Rights cause, and the latter piece comprises perhaps the most, or, indeed, the *only* overt and unequivocal statement of a personal socio-political commitment in his entire collected work. But I rather think that the detail of the white ivory sax, which further emphasises McLintic's uniqueness as a musician, is a minor one (as obvious an equation as horn --> horn perhaps.) Being "hand-carved" (which is surely a redundant qualifier unless it is meant as emphasis), it is an ironic echo of the rhinoplasty which is part of Schoenmaker's trade too. Sphere is also a "beauty-maker" in this sense. And thus it provides a new angle on the argument between Rachel and the plastic surgeon which opened the chapter. It seems to me that even in this early novel the "good" guys and the "bad" guys just aren't as cut and dried as some readers might wish them to be. As Henry Holmes Goodpasture writes in his journal early on in *Warlock*: "For what are Right & Wrong in the end, but opinion held to?" Further, ivory being the dentine from the tusks (or teeth) of certain large mammals, there are also possible connections with the psychodontist Eigenvalue, and Pynchon's own self-consciousness about his beaver-teeth, which can be worked into the mix. But it seems to me that that image of the sax player in the baby green spot "lives" as naturalistic description, and as heartfelt tribute. best From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 3 19:24:34 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 20:24:34 -0500 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc Message-ID: <3A036552.9026686A@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: I'd noticed that Pinocchio-esque vibe from McClintic Sphere as well, though I tend to read that bit in the V-Note (cf. Five Spot, cf. V.) as perhaps "sinister" only in the way that such scene might seem to white boys ('n' girls) in general, esp. at the time. But given that is is a descent into the underworld of sorts, given the orphic allusions that abound in those Pynchonian texts, well ...And given that McCS is one of TRPs few African-American characters, and given the publication of V. during the efflorescence of the Civil Rights movement, well ... am interested in how Terrance will play that out, as I think that "keep cool, but care" Not a Bad Piece of Advice at All, is all, but ... One of the few African American characters. Have any idea why that is the case? Is he successful with Sphere? With McAfee? What do you think of Gershom? On the surface what we see, is the white college boy can't dig. Can't dig what? The consonance in the dueling, not so prearranged, not so formal, not a combat between two men settling some point of honor, but something far deeper, not a struggle for domination between two contending instruments, or persons, or groups, or ideas, but a beautiful horny tug of war, a war of music (there are at least 20 of these, all of them inside of mandalas btw, in GR alone), a balance that swings and slings on a cold and windy knife fight February night in NYC. This is the heart of Pynchon, a conflict that cannot be resolved, that is not dialectic, a paradoxically sustained tension. The white college boy, like Slothrop, like Pynchon himself, is a stereotype just like the evil yellow eyed bass player. Do see page 532 of the Oaklahoma City University Law Review, where Joe Boulter discusses stereotyping, in the portrayal of Mr. McAfee, in Thomas Pynchon's short story, "the Secret Integration", published, and we can say written too, just after V. was published. A brief passage, but the whole essay should be read, it's complicated and if you are not familiar with "The Secret Integration" it may not mean that much to you but it goes to the point I want to make and will continue arguing as we read on through V.. Stereotyping in the portrayal of Mr. McAfee, demonstrates that Pynchon's exploration of the limitations of the children's fictional integration can be read as a commentary on the limitations of all translations of black problems into white discourse, including especially the translation made by Pynchon in 'The Secret Integration.' Mr. McAfee, just as much as Carl, is "different" rather than "other." The implication is that African Americans are inevitably misrepresented in fiction, just as their problems are misrepresented in law. "Children And Slaves in the West": Imagining Fraternity Among Outlaws In The Secret Integration Pynchon has a predilection for stock figures (did I mention Dickens?). Some of Pynchon's characters have appropriate allusion and depth of characterization but most of Pynchon's characters are flat. But he uses a multiplication (Stecil, V, Fausto, Slothrop, Greta, Frenesi, Zoyd, Katje, etc., an amalgam, a shattering, a merging, all various forms of the double and doppelgänger (Dickens, Conrad, Eliot, Dostoyevsky). So this flatness is not the traditional flatness that critics once complained about. Stereotypes, and V. is loaded with stereotypes, are projected onto and from, often ironically, the flat figures. What's more important is that characters also embody the often ambiguous interrelation of realistic descriptions and fantastic elements, which of course drives the critics mad, because these apparently flat figures that multiply also have an ontological uncertainty (notice I didn't say indeterminacy ;-). The fantastic force, the machine is present in that bar, on Sphere's face. He fights it off, but it will keep coming at him, electronic, stochastic, zero and one, maybe it's in his brain, in the molecule. From keith at pfmentum.com Fri Nov 3 20:08:24 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 18:08:24 -0800 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc Message-ID: <000a01c04604$248ce1c0$843771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Sphere really generates a lot of discussion, eh? Pretty powerful image in a relatively small portion of text. This V.V. is going pretty well so far. Agree? From o.sell at telda.net Fri Nov 3 22:28:43 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 05:28:43 +0100 Subject: NP war on drugs Message-ID: <004501c04617$b7e7fc80$d14806d5@selltelda.net> WHAT WAR ON DRUGS ? "I keep hearing politicians talk about the "War on Drugs." Why can't they just come to the realization that there is no war- the drugs won a long time ago. Americans were toking when we started colonizing. We were toking when the Harlem Renaissance took place. We puffed through the hippie era. And we're still hitting the greens in the new millennium. If politicians stopped looking at "the drug problem" as a criminal issue, and started looking at it like it was a medical problem, the issue would solve itself. After all, if someone robs or kills someone while they are high, they're criminals -but not because they're high. These type of people would commit crimes without drugs. A couple of college kids sitting around in a dorm passing a bong watching Tarantino flicks are not criminals, they're normal, and most importantly, they're harmless. Actually, why do politicians care if people get high? Those are the people that don't usually vote anyway. And the people who are in favor of the "War on Drugs" have probably never even done drugs. In fact, it gives politicians a lot more power if people are using drugs because those people typically fall into the cracks and become generally "accepting" of public policy. So the "War on Drugs" is not actually a war on drugs at all. It's a war to keep people believing that drugs, and more specifically, the drug-users, are bad." from: http://www.uncensoredu.com/ From keith at pfmentum.com Fri Nov 3 22:56:59 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 20:56:59 -0800 Subject: NP war on drugs Message-ID: <000801c0461b$ab8bc8a0$ca3e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> if someone robs or kills someone while they are high, they're criminals -but not because they're high. ...and people who post bad posts while high are bad posters- but not because they're high. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sat Nov 4 00:32:53 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 00:32:53 CST Subject: NP war on drugs Message-ID: A bad post is a bad post is a bad post, and don't ya smell it! It'd kill that high! >From: "s~Z" >...and people who post bad posts while high are bad posters- but not >because they're high. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From jbor at bigpond.com Sat Nov 4 00:56:19 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 17:56:19 +1100 Subject: Hip-Hop Heidegger Message-ID: <06453248871213@domain5.bigpond.com> http://www.smh.com.au/news/0011/04/spectrum/spectrum2.html best From crawdad at one.net Sat Nov 4 00:57:54 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 01:57:54 -0500 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc Message-ID: <01C04602.8CACFD00@port-cvx1-51.access.one.net> s~Z sez: Sphere really generates a lot of discussion, eh? Pretty powerful image in a relatively small portion of text. This V.V. is going pretty well so far. Agree? Well, yeah, I think kinda so. Nice work by Terrance, Thomas, and jbor on Mr. Sphere. There are still some important things in Chapter Two we haven't talked about yet. For one thing, I am very disappointed that nobody has taken on the challenge to finiish the last verse of Rachel's song. And then there's Stencil, who is after all a Major Goddamn Character making his debut here. We meet Stencil at Fergus's party and a page and a half after making his acquaintance we have received a substantial portion of the total amount of straightforward exposition that we're going to get on his hunt for V. We are told that after decades of lassitude, he is energized by the pursuit of V. to the point that "what love there was to Stencil" was directed toward "this acquired sense of animateness." And we are explicitly shown the contrast between Stencil's V-inspired activity and the Whole Sick Crew's lethargy. How do we read this in the context of the human/inanimate duality that is so important in these early chapters? One of the ways that I read it is that V. is being assigned a role in the play between life and unlife. Precisely what that role is is not yet clear (and maybe it never will be), but for Stencil she (it?) is a force that draws him toward life. What do you think? Don ---------- ---------- From: s~Z[SMTP:keith at pfmentum.com] Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 9:09 PM To: pynchon-l at waste.org Subject: Re: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc Sphere really generates a lot of discussion, eh? Pretty powerful image in a relatively small portion of text. This V.V. is going pretty well so far. Agree? From jbor at bigpond.com Sat Nov 4 01:37:43 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 18:37:43 +1100 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Message-ID: <07265708175354@domain5.bigpond.com> Are we so sure that it isn't Stencil himself, with his penchant for referring to himself in the third person, who is generating this introduction to the reader in these somewhat idealised, if not idolised, terms? The chapter is subdivided rather ominously, and that setpiece script between Stency and the Margravine at 53.9 is particularly stylised and, well, Stencillesque, in tone as well. And, as we will see later, Stencil's "activity" in pursuit of V isn't all that it is purported to be here. I think the WSC might be getting a bit of a hard rap, too, and particularly if it is Stencil who has here mooted himself as a positive contrast. Isn't he, as revealed by the potted bio. in this chapter, little more than a (self-)glorified moocher? best ---------- >From: Don Corathers >To: "'s~Z'" , "'p-list'" >Subject: RE: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc >Date: Sat, Nov 4, 2000, 5:57 PM > snip > And then there's Stencil, who is after all a Major Goddamn Character making > his debut here. > > We meet Stencil at Fergus's party and a page and a half after making his > acquaintance we have received a substantial portion of the total amount of > straightforward exposition that we're going to get on his hunt for V. > > We are told that after decades of lassitude, he is energized by the pursuit > of V. to the point that "what love there was to Stencil" was directed > toward "this acquired sense of animateness." And we are explicitly shown > the contrast between Stencil's V-inspired activity and the Whole Sick > Crew's lethargy. How do we read this in the context of the human/inanimate > duality that is so important in these early chapters? From uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de Sat Nov 4 05:14:14 2000 From: uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de (Thomas Eckhardt) Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 11:14:14 +0000 Subject: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness References: <23204172723976@domain4.bigpond.com> Message-ID: <3A03EF86.D8C8B@uni-bonn.de> "Black ivory"... Very interesting. Hadn't heard this expression before. The passage certainly is a heartfelt tribute, and I guess it could be read as just an naturalistic description. But on the other hand Terrance's reading of the passage in terms of the imagery/symbolism of V. is very interesting: Sphere's music seems indeed related to the relentless blowing of the inanimate wind, and the whiteness of the ivory appears to be the emblematic colour of inanimateness in this novel. Thus, as you yourself brilliantly demonstrate when you emphasize the possible correspondences between the horn and Eigenvalue's and Schoenmaker's respective professions, the ivory sax seems to be related to the imagery of inanimateness. And, as Terrance's posts made clear, there is the need to reconcile this - perhaps - negative symbolic aspect of the narrator's description of Sphere with the positive opinion most of us have about this character. Thanks. Thomas From uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de Sat Nov 4 05:14:25 2000 From: uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de (Thomas Eckhardt) Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 11:14:25 +0000 Subject: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness References: <01C041D8.7A4A3980@port-33-8.access.one.net> <3A016392.A3517EDB@uni-bonn.de> <3A016E30.8A70CBBD@earthlink.net> <3A02BE09.ED491F1A@uni-bonn.de> <3A02E628.4F29862B@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3A03EF91.3427A7A2@uni-bonn.de> I can't remember too good what happens in the latter parts of the novel. I am sure we will come back to this. The Queequeg connection admittedly is a little tenuous. Thanks. Thomas From crawdad at one.net Sat Nov 4 09:47:22 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 10:47:22 -0500 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Message-ID: <01C0464C.9F42FC40@port-34-20.access.one.net> jbor wrote: Are we so sure that it isn't Stencil himself with his penchant for referring to himself in the third person, who is generating this introduction to the reader (snip) It's a very good question. And since under the terms you propose Stencil would be a profoundly unreliable narrator, one that probably cannot be resolved. For now at least I'm inclined to take Stencil's bio at face value, if only because that way there's one less set of contradictions and ambiguities to try to hold in my head. I don't read the biography as all that laudatory. He is, as noted, pretty much a mooch, one who wandered purposelessly until he was 38 years old, and his pursuit of V. is "grim, joyless," unproductive, and conflicted. But for the sake of argument, where would you say Stencil's narration might begin and end? With the sentence "Young Stencil the world adventurer..." (52.18)? And ending when Stencil leaves Fergus's apartment near the bottom of page 57? I guess there's a good case for a change in the narrative point of view on page 52, right after the intimately second person description of Rachel. ("You felt she'd done a thousand secret things to her eyes," which is incidentally reminiscent of the p 59 descripton of McClintic Sphere: "you could see the twin lines...") But there's not a similar change of voice when Stencil leaves the apartment. We stay at the party and watch Esther getting hooked up with the fraternity boy Brad. Don From keith at pfmentum.com Sat Nov 4 09:59:09 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 07:59:09 -0800 Subject: Excellent Hosting Job Of The Day Message-ID: <002501c04678$2bef5960$ea3e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Well, yeah, I think kinda so. Nice work by Terrance, Thomas, and jbor on Mr. Sphere. There are still some important things in Chapter Two we haven't talked about yet. For one thing, ........ ______________________________ Thanks to Don From keith at pfmentum.com Sat Nov 4 10:25:36 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 08:25:36 -0800 Subject: V.V. Re: Things [In]anima[te] Message-ID: <000401c0467b$dea74600$e13e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Two by Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy emperor awake; Or set upon the golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. Byzantium BYZANTIUM THE unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miraclc than bird or handiwork, Planted on the star-lit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood. The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. From monroe at mpm.edu Sat Nov 4 10:43:56 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 10:43:56 -0600 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc Message-ID: <3A043CCC.FCDCD3D4@mpm.edu> Well, this is going to be a tricky day for me here, as the copy of V. I've been hauling around has gone fugitive, couldn't find the couple of other copies I should have around the house, and I won't be able to get out to the library across the street for a couple of hours, so ... and I'm still amazed by the time some of you have for this, but ... But, first off, Terrance, I agree, it's almost beside the point to talk about those Pynchonian characters in Forsterian terms like "round" and "flat," not to mention in terms of "realism" and/or "naturalism" (tricky terms, there), except, perhaps, in terms of pointed contrast. And I agree about those undialectically unresolved tensions, that's for sure ... (Speaking of "flat," reminds me, think of that mirror as two-sided if you must, but I believe the point is that schematic, that mapping of that 2D orbit to that 1D yoyo. I recall Terrance bringing up Edward Abbott's Flatland here ... but such schematic representations, mappings and remappings, of harmonic motion abound in V. And note again that such motion can be represented by a sine [=sign] wave, a signal, if you will, as well ...) Will indeed consult that essay in that Oklahoma City Law Review "Pynchon and the Law" issue (which, everyone, see), though, again, am not so sure how safely one can use stereotypes, despite one's "good" "intentions." Alleged "misreadings" are always possible, and, her, highly probable, and I'm not one to necessarily blame the reader for that. Or the author, for that matter, a funadmental condition of language, but ... but I will grant the responsibility of not attempting to appropriate the experiences of others, Others, so ... But I think there are a few binaries, some attendant valorizations, being assumed, put into play here, e.g., Organic/inorganic, Human/machine, which, indeed, are being put into play by the text as well, but perhaps with no small ambivalence. Again, seems to me that those machinic, mechanistic, cybernetic tropes--not to mention those machines, mechanisms, cyborgs--pervade the novel. To the point where it's not so safely assumed that, if McClintic Sphere has something of the automaton about him, or if he and SHROUD (who I don't recall as being entirely unsympathetic, but I've not reread that bit yet, and, again, I don't have the book at hand) seem to espouse the same ethic, that that's necessarily a Bad Thing. Or being presented as such. And while I'm reticent to rely too much on subsequent writings, much less on "authoritative" statements by an author, I've no problem admitting, say, comments made in "Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?" as one of many useful possible commentaries on Pynchon's work, one that gains its "authority" not as an "authorial" statement, but as one which is relevant to, and suggestive of, strong readings of those Pynchonian texts. Recall again those waves of Luddism Pynchon proposes. Schematically, they involve the nostalgic, conservative, even, appropriation, construction, even, of allegedly bygone discourses in critique of contemporary probelms, problematics, here, in re: technology, science, economics, politics, society. Irrationalist Gothicism at the dawn of Rationalism and Industrialism (and, by the way, note that Vaucanson also devloped a precursor to that infamous Jacquard loom), exemplified by Gothic literature, followed by--and adopting ironically positions intitally reacted against by Old Skool Luddism--Rationalist Humanism at the dawn of Posthumanism, Postindustrialism, Cyberneticism, exemplified by science fiction. "So, in the science fiction of the Atomic Age and the cold war, we see the Luddite impulse to deny the machine taking a different direction. The hardware angel got de-emphasized in favor of more humanistic concerns [...] most of it sharing [...] a definition of 'human' as particularly distinguished from 'machine.' Liek tehir earlier counterparts, 20th-century Luddites looked back yearningly to another age--curiously, the same Age of Reason which had forced the first Luddites into nostalgia for the Age of Miracles." Thomas Pynchon, "Is it O.K. to Be a Luddite?" The New York Times Book Review, 28 October 1984, pp. 1, 40-1. Conveniently online @ http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html Thanks, O Mighty Quail! And note that Halloween weekend timing, and the year ("As if being 1984 weren't enough") ... but I'm reading that organic/inorganic (reminds me, Erwin Schrodinger, What is Life? [er, crystals, ES sez ... will post]), animate/inanimate, human/inhuman, er, thing in those Pynchonian texts along such lines, as both put into play and critiqued, undialectically, unresolvedly, nostaligically invoked in Pynchon's own new skool luddism even as tehy are problematized, deconstructed. Meaning, I'm not so sure it's all to safe to make easy, obvious valorizations here, is all .... From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sat Nov 4 13:17:24 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 14:17:24 -0500 Subject: V.V.1 Paola and the pigs Message-ID: <3A0460C4.87A2FC53@earthlink.net> Pig Bodine, Pappy Hod, Benny Profane, Dewey Gland, Teflon, the para, and Paola. The character that interests me most in these early chapters is Paola: "American movies had given them stereotypes all, all but Paola Maijstral Paola knew scraps it seems of all tongues" V.HP.7 All but her! Sounds like we should pay attention to Paola. She's much more important that McClintic Sphere, imho. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14776c.htm http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09574a.htm http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11469a.htm She was taken as bride by Pappy Hod when she was quite young, sixteen she said, but her birth records were destroyed along with most of the buildings on her island of Malta. Pappy lied about her age and her nationality and borrowed 500-700 from Mac the cook to bring her stateside. She was a bartender there, the Metro Bar, on Strait street. The Gut. Valletta, Malta, http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/malta-map.html She wanted out of Malta, every Mediterranean barmaid's deftness, to marry out, to get out of hell, to go, perhaps to America, a land of Peace. To go some place where "there was enough food, warm clothes, heat all the time, buildings all in one piece." As the piggish and riggish Pappy Hod is describing her to his deck apes, to amuse them, he seems to almost wake up to the fact that the score, the calculated, purchased relationship, he has been in, may not figure so easily now. This doesn't prevent him from abusing her, cheating on her and beating her. And what is Pig Bodine's interest in the girl? Wants to take her on his Bike, replace a love object for a love object, to the West. To the grave of Sailors, (comic, parodic, fantastic, and tragic) where the degeneration of the Virgin Mary towards the inanimate is the spirit that presides over the ceremonies and rituals there. The Profane maternal power of the mechanical bride, the machinery that produces Hollywood legs and WASP noses and stereotypes, is swollen with buffoonery and the mockery of that holy night, Christmas Eve, where a hymn celebrating the Virgin, her gift of Peace, is disconnected like a juke box by the atheist Pig Bodine and the parodic celebration, the ritual that is "suck hour", where white foam flows from rubber breasts, causes Mrs. Buffo, Beatrice(s), a comic profanation of Dante's Virgin light and guide to Paradise, to undertake a crying jag, an inhuman blubbering, and the carnage sends Paola, the girl from one of he most bombarded island in history, down to the floor where she presses her face against Profane's leg and pleads for a little peace, while Pig Bodine sits in as voyeur until the shore patrol shows up, when he says, "grab the broad", meaning Paola, and takes off, by chance, in the direction they are heading. At Teflon's ( Pig's friend who takes soft porno photos) place Paolo is in shock, her needs manage to bring out the healing and sympathetic talents of Benny, talents he doesn't really have, but now Dewey and Pig lust after the girl, asking for seconds, as if they could meet her needs, and when Profane suggests that she is trying to recover from her abuse at the hands of men, that's why she's with Benny after all, a fat ameba with pig's eyes, Pig Bodine rejects the explanation. Profane sees in her eyes something we will learn more about, her refusal to share a bed, but ask him to be good to her. Teflon and camera send them out in the snow, where it's not cold but Paola can't stop shivering, and Benny seems to have used up his transient sympathetic talent and so he doesn't comfort her. She presses against him on the ferry, but he is alienated from the living, she ends up dancing the dirty boogie with Pig and taking comfort in the company of women, one of the Beatrices and on New Years, when Benny asks her about the para's song, the para, who had haunted the week, she says, "Je suis ne. Being Born." Paola was born on Malta. As with all the women in this novel we should ask, What is her relationship to V? At this point it is hard to say, but I suspect that she is an important character and that the dark days of V may be countered or counterbalanced not by Sphere and stoicism but by a collection of women in the novel (not that we should discount their unique qualities) and that this enigmatic female force-Paola for example, may function as Nora and a collection of women do in GR. Paola seems to possess something very human, some human value, being born. Each of us is born, unique, individuals, vulnerable. If we are to understand Sphere, we must, I think, understand Paolo. She is introspective and critical and she will develop the ability to analyze her own actions and then, if only then, take responsibility for them. Paola's Maltese heritage and experience during the war help to mold her attitudes. Maijstral writes to Paola, that "having been abandoned so early to a common underground, questions of want or possession never occurred to you." Paola and Benny go to NYC. She asks him to call her, please, but he says, Right, maybe. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sat Nov 4 15:00:09 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 16:00:09 -0500 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc References: <3A043CCC.FCDCD3D4@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A0478D9.EB00AAEA@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: > > But I think there are a few binaries, some attendant valorizations, > being assumed, put into play here, e.g., Organic/inorganic, > Human/machine, which, indeed, are being put into play by the text as > well, but perhaps with no small ambivalence. Again, seems to me that > those machinic, mechanistic, cybernetic tropes--not to mention those > machines, mechanisms, cyborgs--pervade the novel. > > To the point where it's not so safely assumed that, if McClintic Sphere > has something of the automaton about him, or if he and SHROUD (who I > don't recall as being entirely unsympathetic, but I've not reread that > bit yet, and, again, I don't have the book at hand) seem to espouse the > same ethic, that that's necessarily a Bad Thing. Or being presented as > such. Humpty: Nothing is safe, assumed or valorized. Dumpty: Ambivalence will always play at a language game when the critic is handing out left handed compliment. Alice: Don't get paranoid? Red Queen: Just amazing how much time some idle hands have for assumptions and valorizations you know. Humpty Dumpty: That's "authority" for you. Alice: But authority doesn't mean it's OK to be an assumption. Red Queen: Off with their hands. http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/papers_berger.html From jbor at bigpond.com Sat Nov 4 15:39:42 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 08:39:42 +1100 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Message-ID: <21294781904832@domain2.bigpond.com> I guess I'd give him the whole section, from the chapter subdivision, where he makes the observations about the party unwinding like clockwork and Rachel disliking him, right through to the line break at the bottom of p. 58. Stencil objectifies, extrapolates, invents, so the fact that he has left the party would not preclude him from narrating its continuance, particularly as he seems to have been taken into Esther's confidence previously. (52.24) The parenthetic "(e.g.)" after mention of "the promiscuous Debbie Sensay" is an affectation which further supports the theory. The presumption (in being able to predict what will happen after the party, at 57.10-23 for example) and disdain (for the members of the WSC) are certainly his I think. best ---------- >From: Don Corathers >To: "'p-list'" >Subject: RE: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" >Date: Sun, Nov 5, 2000, 2:47 AM > > But for the sake of argument, where would you say Stencil's narration might > begin and end? With the sentence "Young Stencil the world adventurer..." > (52.18)? And ending when Stencil leaves Fergus's apartment near the bottom > of page 57? From jbor at bigpond.com Sat Nov 4 16:01:30 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 09:01:30 +1100 Subject: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness Message-ID: <21510099105850@domain2.bigpond.com> But, and as you seemed to be pointing to as well in your consideration of Ahab and Queequeg, the wind, mirror-time et. al., the animate/inanimate nexus in *V.* isn't just a simple binary opposition with the one privileged over the other at all times. I have no doubt that Pynchon, in a typically dialectical or perspectival way, problematises interpretation so's that it just ain't that easy to say: animate = "always good" and inanimate = "always bad". If the wind outside the V-Note and the breath with which McLintic is able to create the "music of the spheres" are being equated, which is very feasible to me and an excellent observation, then I'd say that the animate/inanimate opposition which we have perhaps taken for granted is suddenly being reversed, or subverted. The scene affords a new perspective on the debate which began the chapter -- it is an argument shown rather than told -- and this I think is indicative of the relativism inscribed in Pynchon's fictional mode. I'd be extremely wary of reductionist approaches which try to latch onto convenient examples of "positive" and "negative" symbolism simply in order to prove or justify a prior attitude or ideology which has been brought into the text. best ---------- >From: Thomas Eckhardt >To: jbor >Subject: Re: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness >Date: Sat, Nov 4, 2000, 10:14 PM > snip > Sphere's > music seems indeed related to the relentless blowing of the inanimate wind, and > the whiteness of the ivory appears to be the emblematic colour of inanimateness > in this novel. > the possible correspondences between the horn and Eigenvalue's and Schoenmaker's > respective professions, the ivory sax seems to be related to the imagery of > inanimateness. > there is the need to > reconcile this - perhaps - negative symbolic aspect of the narrator's > description of Sphere with the positive opinion most of us have about this > character. From crawdad at one.net Sat Nov 4 19:48:18 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 20:48:18 -0500 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Message-ID: <01C046A1.0E7E2180@port-31-42.access.one.net> I agree that the observations about the WSC--from 56.7, "he presented to Stencil a horrifying spectacle" to Stencil's departure from the party on page 57--are made through his consciousness. But I don't think I'm ready to ascribe the narration of the whole section to him. The description of what happens at the party after he actually leaves has a different quality from the paragraph above, which can be read as Stencil speculating what *would* (and that use of the conditional auxiliary or whatever the hell you call it is the major difference) happen after he left. I think when Stencil leaves the apartment his voice leaves the narrative. Where it begins is harder to define (and a lot more important, if you think Stencil might be shading, embroidering, or Stencilizing the story). What I think right now is that the first part of the section, including Stencil's biography up to the present moment at the party, is related to us by the omniscient narrative voice that has been telling us the story so far. Don ---------- From: jbor[SMTP:jbor at bigpond.com] Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2000 4:35 PM To: pynchon-l at waste.org Subject: Re: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" I guess I'd give him the whole section, from the chapter subdivision, where he makes the observations about the party unwinding like clockwork and Rachel disliking him, right through to the line break at the bottom of p. 58. Stencil objectifies, extrapolates, invents, so the fact that he has left the party would not preclude him from narrating its continuance, particularly as he seems to have been taken into Esther's confidence previously. (52.24) The parenthetic "(e.g.)" after mention of "the promiscuous Debbie Sensay" is an affectation which further supports the theory. The presumption (in being able to predict what will happen after the party, at 57.10-23 for example) and disdain (for the members of the WSC) are certainly his I think. best ---------- >From: Don Corathers >To: "'p-list'" >Subject: RE: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" >Date: Sun, Nov 5, 2000, 2:47 AM > > But for the sake of argument, where would you say Stencil's narration might > begin and end? With the sentence "Young Stencil the world adventurer..." > (52.18)? And ending when Stencil leaves Fergus's apartment near the bottom > of page 57? From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sun Nov 5 02:09:27 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 02:09:27 CST Subject: VV (3) - The Third Person Message-ID: Stencil is a representation of a person. A stencil is a very conscious marking. It is made for a mass-production of markings. The mass-production if an image invokes Warhol, who was surely the leader of His Own Sick Crew. Warhol's Wig? Talk about self as representation! Stencil has purposefully "fictionalized" his person to facilitate the pursuit of a goal he doesn't want. He wants to have his distance from himself so that he can be numb from the pain of his own self-imposed emptiness. Stencil's is a substitute for, a pornography of, a life. David Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sun Nov 5 02:11:31 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 02:11:31 CST Subject: VV (3) - Stencil's Awakening Message-ID: The War shook Stencil out of his drifting sleep-walk. Reluctantly so. "He didn't particularly care to wake; but realized that if he didn't he would soon be sleeping alone. (54)" [Side: This is surprisingly close to my deliberations before proposing marriage to the Mrs.] Re-evaluation is what War forces. Stencil will be sleeping alone eventually. For now, during the War, he's doing what's expected of an upstanding Son of a Spy: He's joining the Foreign Office. War seems to have become him. After the War he "flirted w/ the idea of resuming that prewar sleepwalk." The he saw the sentence about V. V saved Stencil from near-death, sleep. But sleep is not "inanimate." Sleep can be exhausting. Dream a little dream for me. "INANIMATE" Main Entry: in�an�i�mate Pronunciation: (")i-'na-n&-m&t Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin inanimatus, from Latin in- + animatus, past participle of animare to animate Date: 15th century 1 : not animate: a : not endowed with life or spirit b : lacking consciousness or power of motion 2 : not animated or lively : DULL - in�an�i�mate�ly adverb - in�an�i�mate�ness noun _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From jp4321 at IDT.NET Sun Nov 5 05:34:19 2000 From: jp4321 at IDT.NET (jporter) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 06:34:19 -0500 Subject: For Jill, "Loss of Teeth" Message-ID: I had a dream...last night. After I awoke, I decided that it wasn't too surrealistic, but maybe I was just too hypnogogic to realize. It would have been more surrealistic if my p.o.v. had come zooming in low across the water, gradually focusing in on a tiny barely discernable speck in the distance, along a narrow ribbon of Dover Beach at low tide, until finally, I could see, against the looming cliffs, a dentist's chair. But it wasn't like that. Instead, it began vaguely, in a multi (but not too) storied professional building. I think I had an office on one of the lower levels. A dentist moved into a recently vacated office on the upper floor. Not particularly old, but avuncular and slightly corpulent, with a deeper voice than mine, he was black, and always wore dark (but not too) greenish suits. He was not the Jewish dentist of my childhood. Your first teeth are called milk teeth. They are replaced by your secondary, or, mourning teeth. I was in a rush, as always, with "clients" of some sort, in the waiting room. I had just gotten back from lunch, or a meeting. My hair was wispy and dry, but not yet noticeably thin. I was in the bathroom when I discovered that one of my upper incisors was loose. As I felt it, it painlessly came out in my hand. In the mirror my smile was not right. I decided to make my "clients" wait, hurried out the back entrance and took the elevator up to the dentist's office, hoping, as it groaned upwards, that he was competent. The door was ajar. He was just about set up. There were still some boxes... "J--, nice to meet you. I have an office on the second floor." "Louis. Likewise." I smiled and pointed to my smile. "It just happened." "Things do," he said, and revealed two perfect gleaming rows. The office, which was more like a studio, was, for some reason, split level. He told me to "go in there" and wait a sec. He would be right with me. I went down a few steps and crossed a well lit room to a mirror and a sink. To my horror, I now discovered that all my teeth were loose, and as I tried them, one by one, they came out in my hands. There was no pain, but the teeth- now free of my gums- seemed larger and more curved than they should have been. I thought I detected hair around the roots of some. There was a small tray by the sink. I arranged the teeth on it. Louis came back and I showed him the tray. "Oh for heaven's sake," he said, and told me to sit in the recliner. He took the tray and said he'd be a minute. I leaned back and thought about my clients waiting down stairs, and how I would face them. When Louis returned, he asked me to sit forward and fastened something- a bib I thought- around my neck. "The past is solid but it's not gone," he said. "Take another look." I got up and went to the mirror. My teeth were on a lovely gold chain around my neck. I woke up. jody From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 5 06:06:13 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 07:06:13 -0500 Subject: Reading Soup Cans Message-ID: <3A054D35.CBBFDEB8@earthlink.net> I can't provide what I usually provide--a paragraph or two from the article so you can determine if you want to read it all--because my idle hands are busy painting the roses red and much to my own amazement in these days of miracle and wonder I'll be getting out of my bubble tomorrow and maybe even get to the library and so my time, this amazing amount of time I share with you all, my cyber friends, well, it will be better spent I'm sure, watching the children at the park, dreaming of youth and reading Yeats to old Mrs. Hamilton...so with no authorial or authoritative claims...Pynchon does have at least two relative essays http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/pynchon.paper.watts.html http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html I'll simply provide the httpthingy and you can open it all by yourself, and besides, I'm sure my choice of paragraphs would only upset those that are so concerned that I have both/&/or/and/both/middles/not assumed binary/non valorized/ non-reductionist/relativistic/niether "positive" nor "negative" ideologically assumed bias and ISMisms to the readings of the texts here posted. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/05/arts/05KIMM.html Jane says, the history of nunneries and whore house might interest the group. She should know. "Take thee to a nunnery." Is Paola mad? As in, she got mad mental instability. Jane says, Pynchon writes a lot about sanity and insanity. Well, it's an old yarn spinners thing I guess. From o.sell at telda.net Sun Nov 5 08:35:51 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 15:35:51 +0100 Subject: THE HEDONISTIC IMPERATIVE Message-ID: <001101c04735$b34ed260$884f06d5@selltelda.net> "This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Nanotechnology and genetic-engineering allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Post-humans will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world." http://www.hedweb.com/hedab.htm Now what do we make of this? Or of this: "God has No Allergies": Immanent Ethics and the Simulacra of the Immune System http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.196/mackenzie.196 Are "post-humans" still to be called homo sapiens? just to bring to attention, still reading... Otto From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Sun Nov 5 09:10:27 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 16:10:27 +0100 Subject: vv: beings in the mirror are closer than they might appear! ::: rmr Message-ID: <13sRRD-1fuYqmC@fwd00.sul.t-online.com> " ... i was still laughing while i disguised myself, and over that i completely forgot what i actually wanted to present. well, it was new and exciting to decide this not until later in front of the mirror. the face i tied on smelled peculiarily hollow, it superimposed my own tightly, but i could easily look through, and i chose only when the mask was already fitting a good deal of shawls, which i winded in a sort of turban around my head, so that the edge of the mask that below was reaching into a huge yellow coat was also above and at sides nearly completely covered. eventually, when i couldn't go on anymore, i considered myself to be sufficiently masked. else i picked up a large wand, i let, as far as my arm reached, walk at my side, and trailed like this, not without effort but, as it appeared to me, full of dignity, into the spare room on to the mirror. now this was really great, above all expectation. the mirror reflected it also immediately, it was too convincing. it wouldn't have been necessary to move oneself much; this appearance was perfect, even though it did not do anything. but there was to experience what i may actually am, a-and so i turned around a little and, eventually, raised both of the arms: vast, as it were evoking movements, that was, as i already realized, the only right thing. but just in this solemn moment i heard, muffled by my mummery, pretty close to me a multiply compounded noise; very scared, i lost that being over there out of the eyes and was badly out of tune to realize that i had overthrown a small round table with heaven knows what for, probably very breakable things. i bended as well as i could and found my worst expectations confirmed: it looked as if everything was broken. both of the superfluous green-magenta porcelain parrots were of course, each in a different evil way, smashed. a box, out of which sweets were rolling that looked like silky pupated insects, had thrown far away its lid, one saw only its one half, the other was on the whole gone. but the most annoying was an into thousand tiny pieces shattered phial, out of which the rest of some old essence had spouted, which now was forming a stain of very repugnant physiognomy on the clear parquet. rapidly i dried it up with something, that was hanging down at me, but the stain only became more black and more uncomfortable. i was rather desperate. i lifted myself and looked for some thing with which i could turn everything to be alright. but none was found. also i was so handicapped in seeing and in every movement that rage came up in me against my senseless state i couldn't understand anymore. i pulled by everything, but it only closed at even narrower. the laces of the coat strangled me, and the stuff on my head pressed, as if there were still things coming along. thereby the air had gone cloudy and like steamed up with the oldish fumes of the spilled liquid. hot and furious i rushed in front of the mirror and looked laboriously through the mask to see my hands working. but for that he only had waited. the moment of retaliation had come for him. while i was, in boundlessly increasing constriction, struggeling to somehow get out of my mummery, he forced me, i do not know with what, to look up and dictated me a picture, no, a reality, a strange, inconceivable monstrous reality, with which i got filled against my will: 'cause now he was the stronger one, and i was the mirror. i stared at this big, terrible unknown in front of me, and it appeared awful to me to be with him alone. but in that same moment i thought this thought the most ultimate happened: me lost all sense, i simply fell out. for one second i had an undescribable, painful and fruitless yearning after myself, then there was only still him: there was nothing except for him. i ran away, but now it was him who ran ..." (rainer maria rilke: "die aufzeichnungen des malte laurids brigge" [1910], insel paperback edition, pp. 87-9: own translation) kfl ps --- " ... and all of sudden, solitary, m i r r o r s: which recreate one's streamed out beauty back to the own countenance." (die zweite elegie) From monroe at mpm.edu Sun Nov 5 10:12:45 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 10:12:45 -0600 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc Message-ID: <3A0586FC.26F43126@mpm.edu> Not so sure we understand each other here, Terrance. "Left-handed compliment"? Certainly not intentionally, though, of course---and this is a point I've at least attempted to make here, elsewhere, often--authorial intentions do not necessarily guarantee their reception, cannot enforce meaning. Am I on the receiving end of a right-handed insult here? Not entirely sure, but that paranoia ... but I THINK we agree on much of importance, or, at any rate, to a great extent on what might prove to be important. Religion, politics, relativism (and a critique thereof), and so forth ... That Berger paper you hyperlinked, @ http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/papers_berger.html (and thanks again, Great Indeed Quail!), I agree, nostalgias, not Nostalgia. Though I don't know that I'd necessarily suggested that putative (on my part, but it does seem suggested not only by the "Luddite?" essay, but by V. as well) Pynchonian nostalgia for the precybernetic is a Bad Thing. But I do think Pynchon, those Pynchonian texts, quite reasonably, quite rightly, quite responsibly, display a certain ambivalence toward, problematization of, that nexus of binaries, animate/inanimate, organic/inorganic, human/inhuman, which aren't all QUITE the same thing, which aren't all QUITE--and I think this is Important--life/death (and, again, think Wiener, Schroedinger, maybe even Heidegger, might have written underappreciated intertexts here) ... Though we are all Borg nonetheless, certainly here, certainly everywhere, always already technologized. Me, I wouldn't be doing even what little reading I can were it not for my (owlish, even) glasses, but, think, language, memory, even (mnemotechnics, e.g., Frances Yates, The Art of Memory [q.v.], but also that ineviatable tropology of storage and retrieval, or writing and reading, as noted by, say, Jacques Derrida in Disseminations, "impressions," the tabula rasa, the mystic writing pad, and so forth), as technology, technique, technic, techne. That fine, flickering line ... but there should indeed prove a difference (...) betwixt Pynchonian deconstruction and the deconstruction of Pynchonian texts, so ... again, I envy those who have the time to do this properly, is all ... From monroe at mpm.edu Sun Nov 5 11:43:41 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 11:43:41 -0600 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc Message-ID: <3A059C4D.F98A546C@mpm.edu> ... 'course, having been slapped around, presumably by parties of either chirality, like a red-headed stepchild (and I'm a brunet[te]). But particularly responsive to that Benjaminian, utopian "nostalgia for the future" identified in that James Berger paper ("Cultural Trauma and the 'Timeless Burst': Pynchon's Revision of Nostalgia in Vineland, again, @ http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/papers_berger.html). Have been, er, "theorizing" my own particular interests, obsessions, even, and there's a "nostalgia for the future," or, more precisely, "nostalgia for a future that never quite came to pass" on my part that lends productions like Beethoven's Ninth, "Telstar" by The Tornadoes, and the works of various neglected American (pre-WWII) and French (postwar) abstract painters a certain poignancy for me. Am reminded here of William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" (collected in Burning Chrome) as well. And I recall Doug (?) making reference to, posting a citation from, if not this paper, something a la Walter Benjamin in re: the traumatic (and there's something no doubt to be said about the pathological origins of all those terms, sign, symptom, nostalgia, et al. ...) (re)marking of the past (or, for that matter, the present) in those Pynchonian texts. Very good ... From monroe at mpm.edu Sun Nov 5 12:09:43 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 12:09:43 -0600 Subject: Krell, "Lifedeath" Message-ID: <3A05A266.E956850F@mpm.edu> >From David Farrell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992), Chapter Seven, "Lifedeath: Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud" (pp. 217-51). Again, thanks to a certain someone out there for mentioning Krell to me ... Earlier we noted how disconcerting it was for life-philosophers such as Georg Simmel who became convinced that death could no longer be regarded as standing apart from life as its opposite. Studies by biologists on the life-duration of individual members of the various genuses and species suggested that the causes of dissolution and death were immanent in life; if not the telos [Krell here uses Greek letters] of life's unfolding, death was certainly not merely contingent truncation of a vital development that was in principle endless. Neurophysiological research on nerve tissue and germn plasm and psychoanalytic speculations on the types of drives and pulsions at work in living creatures expanded on these medical and biological studies, wqhich, as we have seen, had already (especially through Eugen Korschelt) had already had their impact on Heidegger's existential ontology. If Dasein was reborn at each instant of its ecstatic existence, and if it was dying in each such instant as well, then the immanence and imminence of its death had to alter whatever sense its factical "life" might possess. (217) Nevertheless, Heidegger's fundamental ontology leaves the question of immanent and imminent death untouched insofar as it suppresses or at least subordinates "ontology of life." If existential ontology always need the question of being (die Frage nach dem Sein) to have been "clarified eforehand" [citations available upon request ...], it also always needs "life" to have been clarified in precisely thev same way. As though being and life were inseparably joined--perhaps one and the same. For Nietzsche, as we heard, they were: "'Being'--we have no other way of representing this than as 'living.'--How can anything dead 'be'?" [...]. Heidegger, however, who explicitly acknowledges the circularity of ontology of Dasein and the question of being, holds the circles of the living at a distance, no matter how persistently and incorrigibly Dasein dies. (217) For both Nietzsche and Freud, as we know, death is immanent in life. Life "itself" and death "itself" can be written only as lifedeath. (217) nietzsche's thought of lifedeath--of becoming and of life bodying forth from chaos and ash--arises from a thinking that according to Heidegger is not biological, but eminently metaphysical. (218) ... Heidegger acknowledges that for Nietzsche's "perspectivism" the very distinction between organic and inorganic too has its own perspective, and all becoming Let us be on guard! [n.b.--Krell occasionally inserts italicized text in the midst of sentences set off from the "normal" text by several character widths of blank space] must be acknowledged as perspectival. Heidegger explains as follows: "The mechanistic representation of 'inanimate' nature is only a hypothesis for purposes of calculation; it overlooks the fact that here too relations of forces and concatenations of perspectives hold sway." Thus for Nietzsche there is no inorganic world; wahtver is in any way "real" is alive, that is, "perspectival." (218-9) Not surprisingly, Heidegger realtes Nietzsche's new interpretation of comprehensive sensuousness to Leibnitzian mopnadology, except of course that now truth and semblance fall on the same side of an impossible distinction, so that the very difference between truth and error collapses along with the distinction bewtween the living and the nonliving. If a residual distinction between the inanimate and the animate realms persists, it is only in order to stress the equation of truth with error: "Truth is the kind of error without which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately decides" [...]. (219) ... and so forth. Again, "the opinions expressed do not necessarily ...," but seemed of interest anyway. Let me know ... From monroe at mpm.edu Sun Nov 5 13:53:45 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 13:53:45 -0600 Subject: Wissmann Message-ID: <3A05BAC8.A831745D@mpm.edu> Finally got my copy of Johannes Fabian's Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000), and I notice there's some mention of one Herman (von) Wissmann, "Deutschlands groesster Afrikaner" ("Germany's greatest African"), "one of the first to employ the Maxim gun in putting down the Bushiri revolt in East Africa" (p. 273, though Fabian of course has the benefit of an umlaut and that nifty German double-"s"). Imagine he's come up before, if not here, elsewhere, in re: of course, Weismann/Blicero, but ... well, will report back ... From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 5 13:50:00 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 14:50:00 -0500 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc References: <3A0586FC.26F43126@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A05B9E8.D7010312@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: > > Not so sure we understand each other here, Terrance. "Left-handed > compliment"? Certainly not intentionally, though, of course---and this > is a point I've at least attempted to make here, elsewhere, > often--authorial intentions do not necessarily guarantee their > reception, cannot enforce meaning. Am I on the receiving end of a > right-handed insult here? Let me say, unequivocally, I apologize for my post. I was wrong. I am sorry. Terrance From monroe at mpm.edu Sun Nov 5 15:53:49 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 15:53:49 -0600 Subject: V.V. 3--McClintic Sphere and Inanimateness Message-ID: <3A05D6EC.622ACED8@mpm.edu> ... of course, whilst we might indeed always already be Borg(ed), we are not always so (cy)borged in the same way, at the same time, at the same place, there is certainly history, there are certainly histories, to attend to here, and this I think is what those Pynchonian texts are attending to, attentive of, mapping that history, those histories. Cybernetics, petrochemicals, surveillance ... A question for the class: what sort of development(s) do those Pynchonian texts display? I can't say I've been much contemplating the question myself, but I do think that Something Happened betwixt V. and Gravity's Rainbow. The 60s for starters, The Crying of Lot 49 for certain. Wonder perhaps if, indeed, The Crying of Lot 49, and, in particular, the hermeneutic tribulations of Oedipa Maas, is not symptomatic of this ... Relativism? Circumspection, rather, I think. Hence those noted, notorious uncertainties, ambivalences, indeterminacies, whatever. Complexities. Complications. The feeling that Something is, indeed, being Said, but that the difficulties involved in said Saying are simulataneously being taken into consideration, being spoken alongside. Question is, what is that Something? But, certainly, no text exists without contexts, can expect not to accrue them, certainly not ... But there's a history of the wind to be written, esp. in re: those fabled 1960s, no? "The answer my friend ...," "You don't need a weatherman to know which way ...," culminating, perhaps, perhaps nihilistically, in those post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post-60s 70s, "All we are is dust in the ..."? A Trope, a Sign of The Times, to be sure. And in light of both latent existentialism and the nascent ecological movement ... From jbor at bigpond.com Sun Nov 5 16:30:28 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 09:30:28 +1100 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Message-ID: <22194410013717@domain2.bigpond.com> Quite plausible; and we need to allow the other possibility that the entire section is simply detached narration. As you noted, how can it be definitely resolved one way or the other anyway? It is indeterminate. I think one of the main themes which comes through in all of Pynchon's texts is to do with the unreliability of all narrative utterance, and never more so than when it pretends to detachment and objectivity, and lulls the reader into that cozy suspension of disbelief which traditional story-telling (and lying -- q.v. oratory, political) are able to achieve. That embroidery/stencillisation of the past is an unavoidable aspect of individual perception (and it is no accident that Pynchon alludes to that particular Varo painting, 'Bordando El Manto Terrestre', in *Lot 49*). Where do the layers of fiction end? Do they ever end? Where is "the real"? So, insofar as Stencil aspires to objectify himself and his past by using the third person there's no reason to think that the brief bio., if it is narrated by the man himself, is any more false than it would be otherwise. He is certainly critical of himself, and aspires to a quite brutal frankness at times, as when he recalls discussing his newfound resolve with the Margravine, explicitly referring to himself in the third person then as well: "It may be that Stencil has been lonely and needs something for company." (54.1 up) This certainly cues the reader to Stencil's unusual mode of self-reference, and supports the Stencil-as-narrator contention. If he is at least partly or even wholly responsible for narrating his adventures, both past and present, then the next question, I guess, is who is Stencil's assumed audience? (And, connected to this, why does he feel obliged to narrate his own life in this manner?) It seems to link in with Fausto's need to write up the histories and raisons d'être of the various "Faustos" later on (and, of course, with Stencil père's journal). Certainly, in both cases it becomes the pretext for Pynchon's fictional narrative, but I see somewhere behind this a larger consideration of the continuous process of the fictionalisation of self which is tied in with those uniquely human characteristics: (self-)consciousness and memory. For both men it is self-justification, a variety of narcissism (or perhaps a deliberate anti-narcissism) or navel-gazing, which motivates these interminable expositions-of-self. If Benny is phenomenological man, living just in the present in order to escape both the experiences of the past and the potential responsibilities of the future; then Stencil is somehow the opposite, where the past and the future have assumed such potentially gargantuan significance that considerations of the self in the immediate present have been all but engulfed. I think that ultimately we might find both reflexes to be merely different sides to the same coin -- the loss of the human as an adjunct of attempting to avert the essential meaningless of existence. The other thing I'd add just to explain what might be a change in the tone of the narration after Stencil has left the party is that he has allowed jealousy to seep into his projection of what happens next. As he leaves he "shrugged irritably" (57.24), which pairs up with the way he "waggled his shoulderblades like wings" at the opening of the section. I think it is significant that Brad touches Esther's spine "exactly in that spot every man she ever knew had been able to find" and that she "squeezed her shoulderblades together" too. (58.9) It seems to me that the course of the seduction scene between Brad and Esther might be one which Stencil had previously had the experience of, and would explain how he is involved with the WSC in the first place and why Esther had taken him into her confidence regarding what Rachel had to say about him. And, that last question which Esther asks, her "line", seems to be one which Stencil himself has been responding to earlier in the episode. Read this way Stencil becomes quite human, despite his own best efforts to establish the contrary. best ---------- >From: Don Corathers > > > I agree that the observations about the WSC--from 56.7, "he presented to > Stencil a horrifying spectacle" to Stencil's departure from the party on > page 57--are made through his consciousness. But I don't think I'm ready to > ascribe the narration of the whole section to him. The description of what > happens at the party after he actually leaves has a different quality from > the paragraph above, which can be read as Stencil speculating what *would* > (and that use of the conditional auxiliary or whatever the hell you call it > is the major difference) happen after he left. I think when Stencil leaves > the apartment his voice leaves the narrative. > > Where it begins is harder to define (and a lot more important, if you think > Stencil might be shading, embroidering, or Stencilizing the story). What I > think right now is that the first part of the section, including Stencil's > biography up to the present moment at the party, is related to us by the > omniscient narrative voice that has been telling us the story so far. > > From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sun Nov 5 17:38:14 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 17:38:14 CST Subject: For Jill, "Loss of Teeth" Message-ID: This was so wonderful. This was a dream worth writing down. DM >From: jporter >I had a dream...last night. [...] My teeth were on a lovely gold chain >around my neck. I woke up. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sun Nov 5 17:45:29 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 17:45:29 CST Subject: THE HEDONISTIC IMPERATIVE Message-ID: >From: "Otto Sell" > >Are "post-humans" still to be called homo sapiens? What does one call a girl who has a few polar-bear genes spliced in? Furry? Salmon-breath? DM _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From crawdad at one.net Sun Nov 5 22:43:59 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 23:43:59 -0500 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Message-ID: <01C04782.1F3D3740@port-cvx1-694.access.one.net> I'm with you, jbor, right up to the assumption that it is a preoccupation with the past and future that is blotting out Stencil's present and his sense of self. The past--well, yeah, Stencil is obsessively pursuing an understanding of something that tortured his father fifty years ago. I'm not so sure about the future. There are only two possibilities for Stencil's future, neither very inviting. Either he will find V., something he tries not to think about because he would then have nothing to do but lapse "back into half-consciousness." Or he will not, in which case the rest of his life will be spent "grim, joyless; a conscious acceptance of the unpleasant for no other reason than that V. was there to track down." Let's make one more observation about Stencil, for the record, before we move on to Chapter Three, wherein we will doubtless speculate about him further. I think his biography is remarkable for what it does not contain, which is any information at all about how and with whom his childhood was spent. He never knew his mother, and his father, a career foreign service officer whose journals were "warped by the humid air of many European cities," was apparently similarly unavailable to him. I'm not suggesting we should do a therapeutic workup on Stencil, but this emotionally barren landscape seems to have some implications for his devotion to the pursuit of V. He says as much to the Margravine: "You'll ask next if he believes her to be his mother. The queston is ridiculous." And: "It may be that Stencil has been lonely and needs something for company." And two other Stencil questions, both about his conversation with the Margravine: --When the M. says to Stencil "You are so close" (53.15), what the hell is she talking about? --And the exchange about V., in which M. says "A woman" and Stencil replies "Another woman," who is the first woman who makes it possible for there to be another one? Don -------- From: jbor[SMTP:jbor at bigpond.com] Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2000 5:23 PM To: pynchon-l at waste.org Subject: Re: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Quite plausible; and we need to allow the other possibility that the entire section is simply detached narration. As you noted, how can it be definitely resolved one way or the other anyway? It is indeterminate. I think one of the main themes which comes through in all of Pynchon's texts is to do with the unreliability of all narrative utterance, and never more so than when it pretends to detachment and objectivity, and lulls the reader into that cozy suspension of disbelief which traditional story-telling (and lying -- q.v. oratory, political) are able to achieve. That embroidery/stencillisation of the past is an unavoidable aspect of individual perception (and it is no accident that Pynchon alludes to that particular Varo painting, 'Bordando El Manto Terrestre', in *Lot 49*). Where do the layers of fiction end? Do they ever end? Where is "the real"? So, insofar as Stencil aspires to objectify himself and his past by using the third person there's no reason to think that the brief bio., if it is narrated by the man himself, is any more false than it would be otherwise. He is certainly critical of himself, and aspires to a quite brutal frankness at times, as when he recalls discussing his newfound resolve with the Margravine, explicitly referring to himself in the third person then as well: "It may be that Stencil has been lonely and needs something for company." (54.1 up) This certainly cues the reader to Stencil's unusual mode of self-reference, and supports the Stencil-as-narrator contention. If he is at least partly or even wholly responsible for narrating his adventures, both past and present, then the next question, I guess, is who is Stencil's assumed audience? (And, connected to this, why does he feel obliged to narrate his own life in this manner?) It seems to link in with Fausto's need to write up the histories and raisons d'être of the various "Faustos" later on (and, of course, with Stencil père's journal). Certainly, in both cases it becomes the pretext for Pynchon's fictional narrative, but I see somewhere behind this a larger consideration of the continuous process of the fictionalisation of self which is tied in with those uniquely human characteristics: (self-)consciousness and memory. For both men it is self-justification, a variety of narcissism (or perhaps a deliberate anti-narcissism) or navel-gazing, which motivates these interminable expositions-of-self. If Benny is phenomenological man, living just in the present in order to escape both the experiences of the past and the potential responsibilities of the future; then Stencil is somehow the opposite, where the past and the future have assumed such potentially gargantuan significance that considerations of the self in the immediate present have been all but engulfed. I think that ultimately we might find both reflexes to be merely different sides to the same coin -- the loss of the human as an adjunct of attempting to avert the essential meaningless of existence. The other thing I'd add just to explain what might be a change in the tone of the narration after Stencil has left the party is that he has allowed jealousy to seep into his projection of what happens next. As he leaves he "shrugged irritably" (57.24), which pairs up with the way he "waggled his shoulderblades like wings" at the opening of the section. I think it is significant that Brad touches Esther's spine "exactly in that spot every man she ever knew had been able to find" and that she "squeezed her shoulderblades together" too. (58.9) It seems to me that the course of the seduction scene between Brad and Esther might be one which Stencil had previously had the experience of, and would explain how he is involved with the WSC in the first place and why Esther had taken him into her confidence regarding what Rachel had to say about him. And, that last question which Esther asks, her "line", seems to be one which Stencil himself has been responding to earlier in the episode. Read this way Stencil becomes quite human, despite his own best efforts to establish the contrary. best ---------- >From: Don Corathers > > > I agree that the observations about the WSC--from 56.7, "he presented to > Stencil a horrifying spectacle" to Stencil's departure from the party on > page 57--are made through his consciousness. But I don't think I'm ready to > ascribe the narration of the whole section to him. The description of what > happens at the party after he actually leaves has a different quality from > the paragraph above, which can be read as Stencil speculating what *would* > (and that use of the conditional auxiliary or whatever the hell you call it > is the major difference) happen after he left. I think when Stencil leaves > the apartment his voice leaves the narrative. > > Where it begins is harder to define (and a lot more important, if you think > Stencil might be shading, embroidering, or Stencilizing the story). What I > think right now is that the first part of the section, including Stencil's > biography up to the present moment at the party, is related to us by the > omniscient narrative voice that has been telling us the story so far. > > From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Sun Nov 5 23:12:03 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 23:12:03 -0600 Subject: NP Voting Schedule Change Message-ID: <3A063DA3.5D0381A9@mediaone.net> NOTICE: Due to the large anticipated voter turnout for the Presidential Election, the polling facilities fear that they may not be able to handle the load. Therefore, Democrats are requested to vote on Tuesday, November 7, and Republicans on Wednesday, November 8. Please pass this message along and help us make sure that nobody gets left out. From JBFRAME at aol.com Mon Nov 6 01:35:39 2000 From: JBFRAME at aol.com (JBFRAME at aol.com) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 02:35:39 EST Subject: Wissmann Message-ID: <36.d9edb28.2737b94b@aol.com> FYI http://www.dnai.com/~soongliu/SavageAndSoldier/articles/africa/GermanWars.html From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Mon Nov 6 05:43:07 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 12:43:07 +0100 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" References: <22194410013717@domain2.bigpond.com> Message-ID: <13skg7-0OAeXpC@fwd06.sul.t-online.com> jbor schrieb: > For both men it is > self-justification, a variety of narcissism (or perhaps a deliberate > anti-narcissism) or navel-gazing, which motivates these interminable > expositions-of-self. If Benny is phenomenological man, living just in the > present in order to escape both the experiences of the past and the > potential responsibilities of the future; then Stencil is somehow the > opposite, where the past and the future have assumed such potentially > gargantuan significance that considerations of the self in the immediate > present have been all but engulfed. "the first (and primary) function of mind is the perceptual (and participatory) function of the mind. the second (and secondary) function of mind is the conceptual (and abstract, analytical, or interpretive) function of mind. the first (or primary) function of mind is the natural and naturally intelligent perceptual awareness (or natural feeling-awareness) of arising conditions, without any necessarily accompanying effort to separate from them. the second (or secondary)function of mind is the conceptual awareness of arising conditions (and of verbal thoughts or abstract analytical concepts themselves), and it is necessarily associated with an effort to separate (or withdraw) from arising conditions (whether they are gross, subtle, or causal) and to exceed (or strategically escape from) arising conditions, because it is always associated with an effort to know a b o u t (or to abstract, analyze, and interpret) arising conditions. the perceiving mind knows whatever it perceives. what it perceives, exactly as it is perceived, is what it knows. perception, prior to verbal, abstract, and interpretive thoughts, is p a r t i c i p a t o r y conditional knowledge. the conceptual mind knows whatever it thinks. whatever it thinks, whether or not the thought is informed or confirmed by perception, is what it knows. conception (or conceptual thought), loosely or not at all associated with perception, is a b s t r a c t conditional knowledge. ... the activities of the conceptual function of mind generally serve a useful purpose in the common world, which is the communication and development of conventional knowledge and practical invention. even so, all conceptual knowledge is an abstraction, the purpose of which is to give conditional beings (or knowers) power over themselves, their objects, their environments, and other conditionally manifested beings. therefore, if this function of mind is not kept in right perspective (subordinate to participatory mind and the wisdom of reality), the motives of power and control tend to dominate mind itself (and, therefore, the total body-mind and the total collective society, or social culture, of conditionally knowing beings). secondary mind, or conceptual (and, typically, verbal) thought, must be diciplined, if it is to be effective in its proper sphere. likewise, it must be understood, kept in right perspective, and, at will, freely set aside when the analytical and interpretive function is not presently necessary or useful. you must realize the natural (and inherent) ability to set aside the secondary or conceptual function of mind, or else you will be dominated by a compulsive and obsessive effort to think conceptually (by dissociating from perception), to seek knowledge about, to interpret, and to separate from (or to strategically dominate, or even to strategically escape from) the perceived conditional worlds. you must enjoy the natural, inherent, moment to moment ability to merely perceive, to feel, to be with, and to wholly participate in the phenomenal conditions of your psycho-physical existence, or else you will not truly understand what arises conditionally, nor will you transcend the limitations of conditional existence." (avatar adi da: the dawn horse testament, pp. 233-5) be perceiving you: kai > I think that ultimately we might find > both reflexes to be merely different sides to the same coin -- the loss of > the human as an adjunct of attempting to avert the essential meaningless of > existence. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 6 07:53:24 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 08:53:24 -0500 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" References: <01C04782.1F3D3740@port-cvx1-694.access.one.net> Message-ID: <3A06B7D4.E1867A87@earthlink.net> "On an evening in 1946 on the western coast of Mallorca; the sun was setting into think clouds, turning all the visible sea into a sheet of pearl-gray. Perhaps they may have felt like the last two gods-the last inhabitants-of a watery earth; or perhaps-but it would be unfair to infer. Whatever the reason, the scene played as follows:" V.HP.48 Graves wrote The White Goddess on the island of Mallorca. I think we might bear in mind that Stencil, a typical Pynchonian character, a character like Slothrop or Greta, with too many identities, is invested not only with the writings of Henry Adams, Robert Graves, several others, but with their biographies as well. Note how Berger, in his essay on VL, demonstrates that Pynchon works with overlapping stereotypes, ideologies of extreme, generating huge laughter through the use of parody and irony. Heidegger, now that's really good stuff Dave Monroe. We disagree, I think, about that Borgness, but as an old hand-nailer replaced by the nail-gun, I call my computer my hammer btw, I know a bit about the unlocking of nature's energy and her its transformation, its storage, its distribution. There she sits, the gas powered compressor, her hoses stiff with the wind of the machine, clack, clack, clack, clack, a college boy laying down ten square of roofing by the clock. He never thinks of the sun, the wind, the extension of his human primordial immersions in the Zeug, that intuitive swinging, not the job, the roof, the finished product, but the act of building. The goal of the carpenter, in Aristotle's sense, may be, a sound structure, but it is in the Activity of the soul, that we should find the virtues. http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/reviews/ancient-goddesses/ From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 6 08:02:51 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 09:02:51 -0500 Subject: vv: beings in the mirror are closer than they might appear! ::: rmr References: <13sRRD-1fuYqmC@fwd00.sul.t-online.com> Message-ID: <3A06BA0B.F439DAFA@earthlink.net> Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote: > > hot and furious i rushed in front of the mirror and looked laboriously > through the mask to see my hands working. but for that he only had waited. the > moment of retaliation had come for him. while i was, in boundlessly increasing > constriction, struggeling to somehow get out of my mummery, he forced me, i do > not know with what, to look up and dictated me a picture, no, a reality, a > strange, inconceivable monstrous reality, with which i got filled against my > will: 'cause now he was the stronger one, and i was the mirror. i stared at this > big, terrible unknown in front of me, and it appeared awful to me to be > with him alone. but in that same moment i thought this thought the most ultimate > happened: me lost all sense, i simply fell out. for one second i had an > undescribable, painful and fruitless yearning after myself, then there was > only still him: there was nothing except for him. Nice! Very Nice, thank you! FWIW, Stephen Mitchell's translation is very close to your own here, but an interesting difference is that the the third person pronoun "HE" is not used for the mirror until this sentence: Yours: "then there was only still him: there was nothing except for him." Mitchell's: "For one second, I felt an indescribable, piercing, futile longing for myself, then only HE (Mitchell's emphasis here, first substitution of the pronoun "it" with the pronoun "he" for the noun "mirror") remained: there was nothing except him." From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 6 08:09:18 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 09:09:18 -0500 Subject: VV (3) - The Party References: <20001101170803.22234.qmail@web1606.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3A06BB8E.3249FF13@earthlink.net> David Morris wrote: > > Just wondering: These aren't your words, are they? Sounds like it came from > some sort of religious encyclopedia. > > --- s~Z wrote: > > The whole universe appeared so orderly, so governed by laws, that it could be > compared to a giant clock. Drawing on this image, many people after Newton > adopted a novel and erroneous view of God. > > Obviously, this view represents a rejection of the God of the Bible -- the > God who not only created the world, but also continually sustains it and works > within it, revealing His ways to man. > Whoever said this is on to a major theme, that DNA spiraling of Science and Religion. Newton was, by his own account, his works, again by his own account, he call them philosophical, his inspiration is biblical, his God is the Almighty God, and his Almighty God continues to exercise absolute dominion over the forces of nature. Newton's god is a creator, not a spectator. Remember that Newton was in the air when Slothropian pigs were given gnostic wings. From monroe at mpm.edu Mon Nov 6 10:50:30 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 10:50:30 -0600 Subject: Le Baton ivre Message-ID: <3A06E155.D45401CF@mpm.edu> >From Lawrence Kramer, After the Lovedeath: Sexual Violence and teh Making of Culture (Berkeley: U of California P, 1997), "Le Baton ivre," pp. 61-4: Probably the most phallic of objects, so common as to be almost invisible, is a stick: any of teh myriad forms of stick--ruler, scepter, pointer, switch, wand, thyrsus, staff--that simultaneously serves a practical function and makes a symbolic statement. Call the general form of this stick the rod: at once the traditional symbol of authority, discipline, and punishment, and a simple tool for measuring, pointing, upholding, divining, and beating. (61) The rod is the familiar appendage of the master, who alone is entitled to bear and to wield it. It embodies the coalescence of virility, truth, and violence, as Hector Berlioz once recognized by metaphorically idnetifying the symphony conductor's baton with both a tomahawk and, by double entendre, the penis. A woman who picks up the rod is taken for ridiculous or dangerous. The sorcerer's apprentice of legend is harried by a pestle (not the pedestrian broom of later versions) theat he is helpless to control. The shrew threatens with a raised index finger, teh dominatrix with the butt end of a whip. (61) The rod is also the implicit referent of a typographical mark known technically as the virgule, a term deriving from the Latin virgula, which means "little rod." Also known by the ominous name of the slash, the virgule is the mark that articulates polarities: either/or, true/false, masculine/feminine. (62) Yet even the rod is subject to gender synergy. In "The Thyrsus," a prose poem celbrating the jusic of Liszt, Baudelaire interprets teh archaic symbol of the thyrsus as teh wmbodiment of enius. He explainds that the thyrsus is a simple rod or stick, which is adorned with a garland of flowers. In essence it is a virile form. When he describes the thyrsus in detail, however, the floral adornments prove to be just as essential as the rod. They are not really adornments at all, but essential feminine forms taht must be present in order for the masculine to show itself. (62) [and here he quotes Baudelaire's prose poem:] The rod is your will, steady, straight, and firm, and the folwers, teh wanderings of your will, the feminine element executing its bewitching pirouettes around teh male. Straight line and arabesque ... [ellipsis in Kramer's text] all-powerful and indivisible amalgam of genius, what analyst would have the detetable courage to divide and separate you? (62) [by teh way, Mary Ann Caws has a nice discussion of rococo painting, as I recall, in terms of the "line and arabesque," see her The Eye in the Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern. And now back to Kramer ...] To some degree, this passage trades on a nineteenth-century cliche that defines teh genius as a man whose rich humanity embraces a feminine aspect. There is no parallel category for women. But the a passage also disrupts this cliche; written in praise of intoxication, it is intoxicated by gender delirium. (63) To begin with, teh "feminine element" does not subordinate itself to the masculine rod, but instead initiates a wandering and dancing movement taht has no clear boundaries. This "arabesque" movement takes the rod as a center, but not necessarily as a rule or curb. (63) Perhaps the most hopeful thing about this passage is the way its routine polarization of the phallus and the flower gradually truns into something else entirely, something dizzy and unexpected. (63) ... and so on, in either directon. Now, first off, "my" French isn't all too much "mine," but, from what I can tell, "le baton ivre" is "the drunken baton." Seems that "le bateau ivre"--"the drunken boat" (The Ship of Fools?)--is an idiom of some sort as well, that "ivre" is involved in all sorts of interesting phrases ... I at first read "le baton ivre," in a moment of wishful thinking, as "le baton ivoire" (?), "the ivory baton," but, hey, it IS rather conjured there, no(n)? "Ivre" as a (near) homophone, a cognate (?) of "ivoire," "ivory"? Hm ... But am also interested, obviously, in that virgule, that slash factor there. Not SO much in the gender issues, but, certainly, in those notion of "line/arabesque," "genius," and so forth. But try substituing, say, organic/inorganic, (hu)man/machine, and so forth for masculine/feminine, at first approximation ... Forgot to haul along Heinrich von Kleist's "On the Marionette Theater," conveniently next to an "impressionistic survey of the golden age of automata" (Jean-Claude Beaune) in Michel Feher, et al., Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Vol. 1 (New York: Zone, 1989), but do see on such notions as "gravity" and "grace." Will post some excerpts when I can ... From monroe at mpm.edu Mon Nov 6 11:00:00 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 11:00:00 -0600 Subject: V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc Message-ID: <3A06E390.46BABDF1@mpm.edu> ... well, the, esp. in this context, possible equivocation of "unequivocably" aside, hey, no problem. I honestly (...) do think that we are in greater agreement and/or less disagreement than might be apparent, is all. Gotta be SOME commensurability there to begin with in order to haggle over the details, no? But you can never tell, esp. with e-mail, just waht someone "intends"--ironically (!), I tend to take most everything at face value ... But, thanks, O Mighty Quail, for reminding me about that address change (which i recall you posting ehre some time ago now). Thanks, JBFRAME, for that nifty link on Hermann von Wissmann. And, thanks, Dedalus, for posting that handy reminder about that voting schedule, esp. as some I've forwarded it to report that their Republican acquaintances had the days reversed. Don't want any unfortunate mishaps tomorrow ... Have had a few dreams of note as well, but most are too involved (for starters ...) to post here. Do recall dreaming that I was Annie Potts in a rubber dress riding a bicycle around a baseball diamond, but ... but my favorite draem was one a freind told me aout, where she draemed that she made Peter Tork of the Monkees (or was it Mickey Dolenz? No, Peter Tork) a pork chop in a microwave. What provokes stuff like that? Armchair psychoanalysts, start your engines ... From o.sell at telda.net Mon Nov 6 11:43:47 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 18:43:47 +0100 Subject: Stalinorgel Message-ID: <003c01c04819$1ea22920$dd9a06d5@selltelda.net> from: http://www.nzz.ch/2000/10/17/fb/page-article6SQ0O.html Ästhetisches Freischärlertum Mit seiner analytischen Schärfe und erzählerischen Radikalität in der Darstellung des Schreckens schliesst Ledig zu ästhetischen Freischärlern wie John Hawkes, Thomas Pynchon undClaude Simon auf, die das Erzählen von Geschichte in einheits- und zusammenhangsorientierten Formen und damit in Kategorien desSinns löschen, das Geschehen ins Phantasmagorische verwandeln und, anders freilich als Ledig,die Irrationalität in die Psyche des Erzählers verlegen. So wird der Geschichte ihre Geschichtenförmigkeit abgesprochen, die Geschichtserzählung in der Selbstaufhebung wird zu einem Akt erzählerischen Widerstands. Dabei kommt es, namentlich bei Pynchon, zu erzählten Dialektiken der Aufklärung. Die mit Sorgfalt geschriebenen Nachworte von Volker Hage und Florian Radvan beantworten die Frage des Lesers nach Person und Leben eines Autors, der alles in seiner Macht Stehende tat, um eine Randfigur der Literaturgeschichte zu bleiben. Das freilich hat seine Trilogie verhindert, zu der als dritter der 1957 erschienene Roman «Faustrecht» gehört. Gert Ledig: Stalinorgel. Roman. Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000. 229 S., Fr. 26.-. From o.sell at telda.net Mon Nov 6 11:47:10 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 18:47:10 +0100 Subject: In/Animations Message-ID: <004201c04819$97d3db40$dd9a06d5@selltelda.net> Schriftenreihe Literaturwissenschaft, Band 27 Andrea Best: In/Animations Die Medien in den Romanen von Thomas Pynchon ISBN 3-88476-154-4, 186 S., kt., DM 42,50 (1995) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Das Werk Thomas Pynchons, einer Ikone der Postmoderne, wird hier unter dem Aspekt des Einflusses der Medien auf die zeitgenössische Literatur betrachtet - ein Zusammenhang, der in Deutschland noch weitgehend ignoriert wird. Pynchons Romane verweisen stets auf die Interfaces von Körper, Bild und Bewußtsein sowie auf ein zentrales Problem heutiger Texte - die Krise der Reprä;sentation. Steht Gravity's Rainbow, das monumentale Buch zum (Kriegs)Film, ganz im Zeichen einer Kino-Welt, so werden V. und The Crying of Lot 49 vom Medium Fernsehen dominiert. In Vineland, seinem jüngsten Werk, verabschieden sich schließlich die letzten gängigen Realitä;tskonzepte, um virtuellen Wirklichkeiten Platz zu machen. Daß Pynchon keineswegs der einzige amerikanische Autor ist, für den die neuen Medien gleichermaßen Faszination und Inspiration sind, zeigt ein Blick auf die Romane von Don DeLillo, Robert Coover und William Gaddis. from: http://www.wvttrier.de/top/Beschreibungen/ID129.html From jeremy at xyris.com Mon Nov 6 11:57:40 2000 From: jeremy at xyris.com (Jeremy Osner) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 12:57:40 -0500 Subject: LSD R & D Message-ID: <3A06F114.C30A909F@xyris.com> The current issue of Feed has a good article on recreational psychosis, by Erik Davis: http://www.feedmag.com/drugs/DrugIssue_ErikDavis.html From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 6 12:04:40 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (O') Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 13:04:40 -0500 Subject: Le Baton ivre References: <3A06E155.D45401CF@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A06F2B8.28E4FEE6@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: > > >From Lawrence Kramer, After the Lovedeath: Sexual Violence and teh > Making of Culture (Berkeley: U of California P, 1997), "Le Baton ivre," > pp. 61-4: > > Probably the most phallic of objects, so common as to be almost > invisible, is a stick: any of teh myriad forms of stick--ruler, scepter, > pointer, switch, wand, thyrsus, staff--that simultaneously serves a > practical function and makes a symbolic statement. Call the general > form of this stick the rod: at once the traditional symbol of authority, > discipline, and punishment, and a simple tool for measuring, pointing, > upholding, divining, and beating. (61) Not sure I agree with this. Well anyway, a matter of "the most" or "the traditional." The cigar, Freud I think, but the Pipe, the pipe of Pan, the poet's pipe, the ivory sax, that btw, Sphere will think, exasperated with the college boys again, he'd like to shove up some Ivy League ass. No one is immured. Anyway, Jeremy Osner, commenting on Fergus wrote: > > Readers of Plato's *Republic* will recall that the philosopher had > unkind words for the lydian and mixed lydian modes; as I recall he said > something like, "Even women have no use for them, let alone men!" > > Jeremy This is in Chapter III, Plato's Republic and again, see Chapter 26 M&D and also see Aristotle's De Poetica 1448b-1449b. http://home1.gte.net/jazcraft/threnodynp.htm From keith at pfmentum.com Mon Nov 6 12:27:36 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 10:27:36 -0800 Subject: V-Day; Spiritula Nourishment Of The Day Message-ID: <001801c0481f$4f5aa320$8b3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Browsing around looking for a source for the French lyrics sung hillbilly style by the Gland, I stumbled across this: Why blame the war? http://www.nathan.co.za/message.asp?sermonum=931 From jbor at bigpond.com Mon Nov 6 15:56:25 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2000 08:56:25 +1100 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Message-ID: <21455058408860@domain7.bigpond.com> ---------- >From: Don Corathers > --When the M. says to Stencil "You are so close" (53.15), what the hell is > she talking about? Perhaps "close" in the sense of secretive or reticent? > --And the exchange about V., in which M. says "A woman" and Stencil replies > "Another woman," who is the first woman who makes it possible for there to > be another one? The Margravine? It seems that between the wars Stencil had used his father's diaries "only by way of learning how to please the blood-conscious 'contacts' of his legacy". (54.18) This sounds somewhat dubious, as though he has been pimping himself in some way. Having worked for the British F.O. -- a spy, in other words, as we shall see -- the sort of information contained in old Stency's journals would be much like that in the dossiers on Slothrop, Pokler and the rest in *GR* I imagine; juicy secrets, personal peculiarities and peccadilloes, incriminating stuff like that. The only legacy of his childhood -- of any sense of "The Family" (which provokes a couple of bitter reflections at 54.10 and 55.28-30), which, for young Stency, is conspicuous by its absence as you note -- is the journals; there wasn't "much in the way of pounds and shillings".(54.7) Perhaps this is why he has decided to exploit the institution of "The Family", out of resentment and bitterness that he had never been part of one? Anyway, I can envisage the Margravine as an older women, a dowager type, with whom Stencil has been engaging in some sort of mercenary love-tryst. There is a piquancy in her words in their scripted exchange, an undercurrent of emotional intensity, as if pleas and protestations are being suppressed in order to maintain a sense of decorum and dignity. This would certainly fit in with Stencil "having" something on her by virtue of his dad's notes, too. Another Stencillic affectation is the way inverted commas are placed around certain words in the narration: "contacts" and "blood" a couple of times on 54-55; "soul" at the bottom of 56. I think this affectation -- the textual equivalent of the "air quote" perhaps -- is Stencil questioning or undermining his own integrity as much or more than these notions themselves. I think he regards himself and his past life with something which approaches distaste. Thanks again, best From fqmorris at hotmail.com Mon Nov 6 19:11:17 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 19:11:17 CST Subject: VV (3) - Stencil's Love Message-ID: ---------- (55) Work [...] far form being a means to glorify God and one's own godliness (as the Puritans believe) was for Stncil grim, joyless; a conscious acceptance of the unpleasant for no other reason than that V. was there to ttrack down. ---------- (55) what love there was to Stencil had become directed entirely inward, toward this acquired sense of animatedness. ---------- _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Mon Nov 6 19:30:50 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 19:30:50 CST Subject: VV (3) - Stencil's Love Message-ID: ---------- (55) Work [...] far form being a means to glorify God and one's own godliness (as the Puritans believe) was for Stencil grim, joyless; a conscious acceptance of the unpleasant for no other reason than that V. was there to track down. ---------- (55) what love there was to Stencil had become directed entirely inward, toward this acquired sense of animatedness. ---------- There is a schism in these two statements. Stencil has no love for his chosen task. "Grim" & "Joyless" is his chosen mission. Yet he does love his own newfound "animatedness." He loves himself for _doing something_, but not for WHAT he's doing, and he surely doesn't love the actual task. He loves the idea of himself as a man of action, his fictionalized self. By choosing a motive for action an object which does not move him, a task in which he invests no feeling and a grail he hopes to never find he has freed himself from everything but himself. His isolation is complete, unless some feeling manages to break through. Stencil has succeeded in making himself his own automaton. David Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Mon Nov 6 19:32:23 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 19:32:23 CST Subject: VV (3) - Stencil's Love Message-ID: ---------- (55) Work [...] far form being a means to glorify God and one's own godliness (as the Puritans believe) was for Stencil grim, joyless; a conscious acceptance of the unpleasant for no other reason than that V. was there to track down. ---------- (55) what love there was to Stencil had become directed entirely inward, toward this acquired sense of animatedness. ---------- There is a schism in these two statements. Stencil has no love for his chosen task. "Grim" & "Joyless" is his chosen mission. Yet he does love his own newfound "animatedness." He loves himself for _doing something_, but not for WHAT he's doing, and he surely doesn't love the actual task. He loves the idea of himself as a man of action, his fictionalized self. By choosing a motive for action an object which does not move him, a task in which he invests no feeling and a grail he hopes to never find he has freed himself from everything but himself. His isolation is complete, unless some feeling manages to break through. Stencil has succeeded in making himself his own automaton. David Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Mon Nov 6 19:32:51 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 19:32:51 CST Subject: VV (3) - Stencil's Love Message-ID: ---------- (55) Work [...] far form being a means to glorify God and one's own godliness (as the Puritans believe) was for Stencil grim, joyless; a conscious acceptance of the unpleasant for no other reason than that V. was there to track down. ---------- (55) what love there was to Stencil had become directed entirely inward, toward this acquired sense of animatedness. ---------- There is a schism in these two statements. Stencil has no love for his chosen task. "Grim" & "Joyless" is his chosen mission. Yet he does love his own newfound "animatedness." He loves himself for _doing something_, but not for WHAT he's doing, and he surely doesn't love the actual task. He loves the idea of himself as a man of action, his fictionalized self. By choosing a motive for action an object which does not move him, a task in which he invests no feeling and a grail he hopes to never find he has freed himself from everything but himself. His isolation is complete, unless some feeling manages to break through. Stencil has succeeded in making himself his own automaton. David Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From millison at online-journalist.com Mon Nov 6 19:00:26 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 18:00:26 -0700 Subject: Lady V Message-ID: > > >LADY V: The Pleasure Pill for Women! > >Men Have Their ViagraÆ! Finally, A Pill for Women! > >It's Here! The Revolutionary Woman's Sexual Sensation is Now > Available. > >Researchers are calling Lady V the greatest breakthrough >for women since the Birth Control Pill. And you don't even need >a prescription to get it! > > Welcome to the New Sexual Revolution! > >It's no secret that men have been having the time of their >lives since the wonder pill ViagraÆ was made available. But, >women were left out in the cold with no pill... nothing! >Well now thanks to an all-star team of medical researchers >who have been working around the clock, those days are finally >over. The perfect female "pleasure pill" has been created and >you don't even need a prescription. You can now get it from >Lion Sciences! > >Lady V is the world's first pleasure pill scientifically >designed for women. Lady V is an all-natural proprietary >herbal blend of prosexual nutrients from around the world >synergistically blended to naturally stimulate neurotransmitter >endorphin signals. This magical combination increases targeted >blood flow, unleashes natural stimulator for maximum stimulation, >triggering pleasure responses quickly. Lady V is safe, natural >and doctor-recommended. >Since its introduction Lady V has been taking the world by storm! >>From Malibu to Miami women are enjoying the most intense pleasure >of their lives! > >ï 100% Natural >ï Safe >ï The Highest Quality Pharmaceutical Pure Nutraceuticals >ï Guaranteed Potency >ï Certified Purity > > Lady V is Sweeping the Nation! > >Women are going crazy over Lady V. Suddenly couples are falling >in love all over again. The passion and pleasure that women are >reporting is off the charts! Lady V has an incredible 88% success >rate. Best of all, while Viagra costs $10 a pill, Lady V costs >less than $1 a pill! It's not just a man's world anymore! > >Just look at what a few women have to say: > >"I thought my love life was good before, but now it is out of >this world! Lady V is remarkable." ó Mary J., Interior Designer > >"I haven't smiled like this in a long time. My husband and I >feel like a couple of 19 year olds again!" ó Debra T, Assistant Buyer > >"Imagine what it would feel like to have incredible passion >and pleasure anytime you want." ó Jennifer C., Film Editor > >"Suddenly my husband and I are spending more time in the bedroom >instead of the TV room." ó Angie R., Realtor > >Ingredients: Vitamin D, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, >Vitamin B12, Avena Sativa, Kava Kava, Guarana, White Willow Extract, >Mura Puama, St. John's Wort, Siberian Ginseng, Cordyceps, Damiana, >and L-Taurine. > >Each bottle of Lady V contains 30 tablets. >Take three capsules one hour before romantic activity >as a dietary supplement. > >Risk Free: Double Your Money Back Guarantee > >If Lady V does not give the desired results as stated >above, simply return the unused portion for a >double-your money back refund. No questions asked! > >Order Now: Safe, Fast, Secure, Private > >Lady V with its DOUBLE YOUR MONEY BACK GUARANTEE is >available only through this special promotional offer. >Herbal V arrives in plain packaging for your privacy. >Any and all information is kept strictly confidential. > >Payment Methods > >You may FAX or Postal Mail Checks, MasterCard, Visa, >& American Express.payments. Money Orders >are accepted only by Postal Mail. > > >Each bottle of Lady V contains 30 tablets. > > >Step 1: Place a check by your desired quanity. > > >______ 1 Bottle of Lady V $24 > > >______ 2 Bottles of Lady V $44 > > >______ 3 Bottles of Lady V $59 > > >Please add $6 shipping and handling for any size order. >[ Total cost including shipping & handling, >1 bottle=$30, 2 bottles=$50, 3 bottles=$65 ] > >International Orders >Please add $18 shipping and handling for any size order. >[ Total cost including shipping & handling, >1 bottle=$42, 2 bottles=$62, 3 bottles=$77 ] >We cannot accept foreign checks. >International money orders or credit cards only. > >Step 2: Place a check by your desired payment method >and complete fields if necessary. > > >_____Check or CHECK-BY-FAX [details below] > > >_____Money Order > > >_____American Express >Account Number__________________ Exp____/____ > >_____Visa >Account Number__________________ Exp____/____ > >_____MasterCard >Account Number__________________ Exp____/____ > > >Please make your check or money order payable to >"Lion Sciences National". > > >Step 3: Please complete and print the following fields clearly. > > >Name ___________________________________________________ > > >Address _________________________________________________ > > >City ____________________________________________________ > > >State ___________________________________________________ > > >Zip _____________________________________________________ > > >E-mail __________________________________________________ > > >Signature _________________________________________________ >[ required for check and credit card orders] > > > > Toll Free FAX Order Line: 1-800-940-6590 >If faxing in your order, please state whether you require >a fax, email, or no confirmation at all. >Allow up to one day for confirmation, if requested. >FAX orders are processed immediately. > > Or, print & mail to: LSN > 3502 N. Powerline Rd. #525 > Pompano Beach, FL 33069 > > > ______________________________________________________ > > >*CHECK BY FAX ORDERS: Complete the check as normal. Tape >the check in the area below. Below the check, clearly write >the check number, all numbers at the bottom of the check, >& your name. Tape the check below and fax the check to the >toll free FAX number above. Void the check. Our merchant >will electronically debit your account for the amount of >the check; your reference number for this transaction will >be your check number. Nothing could be safer & easier ! > > TAPE CHECK BELOW > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >_____________________________________________________________ > >This is a one time mailing: Removal is automatic and no further >contact is necessary. Please Note: Lady V is not intended to >diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. As individuals differ, >so will results. Lady V helps provide herbal and nutritional support >for female sexual performance. The FDA has not evaluated these >statements. For details about our double your money back guarantee, >please write to the above address, attention consumer affairs >department; enclose a self addressed stamped envelope for this and any >requested contact information. >Thank You. -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 6 20:52:12 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Thing) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 21:52:12 -0500 Subject: V.V.2.--Rachel & things Message-ID: <3A076E5C.E96E1BAC@earthlink.net> I don't know if we noted that Rachel Owlglass is quite different now. The car, the MG, the bragging about the men she dated, her trivial suburban life, now seem almost the story of a different character. The inexplicable relationship with Benny, that "umbilical tug", that centering navel connection that sends and returns Benny around Rachel is the same, but Rachel's move from suburban land to upstate NY to the City changes her and now she is working in Manhattan at an employment agency, connecting people with, well, with what? Jobs? Things? Stencil says job, not in the puritan sense. Rachel's ability to walk in heels is a definite sign that she is a city girl now. Her walking is a sign of some kind of drive, some confidence, some conviction perhaps. Can you imagine the girls with daddy's MG walking into Schoenmaker's office and telling him that men like him kill themselves and have bad dreams? Can you imagine the egotistical girl who dated the captain of the Harvard crossbow team walking into an office on fringes of german town and calling a powerful and rich doctor a hypocrite? What is it about NYC, or maybe her involvement with the people in NYC that changes her? Her relationships, particularly with Esther, have changed her. She even begins to wonder about the long daisy chain of victimizers and victims, screwers and screwees. And she also wonders who it is that she might be screwing. We get some information from Slab, he contends that Esther needs Rachel for money, that Rachel needs Esther to "feel like a mother, " and that lending Esther money is like adding a strand to the "umbilical cord." The umbilical cord, Benny to Rachel, Rachel to Esther, the daisy chain, the long unbroken chain to Eve, the idea of family, of mother and father and children and the idea of blood, genes, nationality, the human family, these are of course being discussed in chapter 3 by Stencil. The cord, the chain, the human bond, what is it? Maybe it is not an it, but her. Whom? Why does Stencil's father makes V. an it. Rachel reads a note from Paola: "proper nouns." The narrator compares the orientation of the two women: The girl lived proper nouns. Persons, places. No things. Had anyone told her about things? It seemed Rachel had to do with nothing else. The main one now being Esther's nose. So Rachel is not quite changed after all. Or is she? Paola has changed too. She's one to watch. I think she holds the key to the ivory sax. From crawdad at one.net Mon Nov 6 21:31:24 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 22:31:24 -0500 Subject: V.V. (3) "Young Stencil the world adventurer" Message-ID: <01C04841.C0915D00@port-29-7.access.one.net> Is it possible that Stencil d o e s believe the V. described in his father's journals might be his mother? His response to the Margravine when she asks if it is V. he is pursuing has a studied, structured ambiguity about it. He denies it by comparing it to another absurdity, that he might believe V. is the mother he never knew. One could speculate that if in fact the first proposition is true, and it is, then perhaps the second one is too. On Stencil's use of his father's journals: I read that more benignly than you, jbor. I took it to mean he used the information he found in the journals to endear himself to his father's friends--by, for example, pretending to share an interest in some passion of theirs, or showing up on the doorstep with just the right bottle of wine. I acknowledge there could be a more sinister interpretation, but I imagine Stencil to be more of a harmless freeloader than somebody who would employ Sidney's spookcraft in blackmail or coercion. Now, pandering to the unique and meticulously recorded sexual requirements of the Margravine or others? I suppose that might be within what Herbert considers to be his scope of work. Don From crawdad at one.net Mon Nov 6 22:03:59 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 23:03:59 -0500 Subject: V.V.2.--Rachel & things Message-ID: <01C04845.A59AC1E0@port-29-7.access.one.net> Thing says: I don't know if we noted that Rachel Owlglass is quite different now. The car, the MG, the bragging about the men she dated, her trivial suburban life, now seem almost the story of a different character. (snip) We did not, and of course she is. Nice observation. "She kept on the grating just to show off. To herself." Six months earlier she was making ostentatious displays of her various acquisitions to show off to anybody who would listen. What about, since you brought up the scene, that "brave sensual trudging"? Is it that hitting the X's of the grating is causing her to walk in a peculiar way? Is she really in some sense "nose-deep in snowdrifts, and yet on route to meet a lover," or is it just that she happens to walk that way? Don From crawdad at one.net Mon Nov 6 22:31:12 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 23:31:12 -0500 Subject: VV (3) - Stencil's Love Message-ID: <01C04849.A437B2A0@port-29-7.access.one.net> David Morris wrote: By choosing a motive for action an object which does not move him, a task in which he invests no feeling and a grail he hopes to never find he has freed himself from everything but himself. His isolation is complete, unless some feeling manages to break through. Stencil has succeeded in making himself his own automaton. (snip) Interesting that in the next paragraph after the ones you quote, "the impasse had become acute." That seems to be the closest thing Stencil can achieve to comfortable equilibrium: some set of circumstances that are outside of his control blocking the hunt for a while. Still he is not able to sustain that for very long. "It was dithering, it was a stagnant period and Stencil knew it." He is compelled to be active, but activity, moving him closer to his objective, will eventually extinguish itself, and then he's really fucked. Please excuse me, David, for restating your restatement of Mr. Pynchon's exposition of Stencil's dilemma. This stuff seems to me to be thematically close to the Big Root, and now that I've run it through my own fingers and keyboard I've got a better sense of it. Don From o.sell at telda.net Tue Nov 7 01:17:01 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2000 08:17:01 +0100 Subject: The End of the Tunnel Message-ID: <006701c0488a$b9e42fc0$898e06d5@selltelda.net> The End of the Tunnel By Fayza Hassan http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/506/li2.htm "For the time being, America is a sick society. Most Americans are wrapped up in misguided religious beliefs, as well as guilt and fear about the way they treated African Americans. They also have to deal with a large number of ugly skeletons in their closet. Israel is their way of atoning for their sins. They nurse and protect it and claim it can do no wrong. Israel is their good deed, they believe, a shining star in their flawed record. Of course they have created a monster, but they refuse to see it for what it is, like a father whose son is a confirmed killer but who continues to assert his innocence despite the blinding evidence. Mark my words, Israel will be their undoing." In the same edition: Blinded by the truth By Noam Chomsky http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/506/re9.htm Otto From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 7 08:59:04 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Thing) Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2000 09:59:04 -0500 Subject: Century's child raised Motherless Message-ID: <3A0818B8.8784BC4B@earthlink.net> Herbert's relationship to V., his dilemma, his situation, "the situation", is constructed, influenced directly by his views of his father's view of V & Company and by his motherlessness. "There is more behind and inside V. than any of us had suspected. No who, but what: what is she." HP.V.49 And it is the "the Situation" which appears to be structuring events, the events of the novel even. This is of course Pynchon's first "THEM" or "THEY." And the power, the inexplicable nature of Them or "the Situation", whoever, whatever "They" are, has got Stencil and maybe a few other characters, maybe even this paranoid reader, maybe even YOU, thinking that They are calling the tune. Sidney is like a child, the century's child. That clock is Shoenmaker's office has quite tale to tell, a century. In the Chicago chapter of The Education, Adams discusses Silver and Gold, morality, the tower of babel, and the Banking system: "Blindly some very powerful energy was at work, doing something that nobody wanted done. Evidently the force was one; its operation was mechanical; its effect must be proportional to its power; but no one knew what it meant, and most people dismissed it as an emotion-a panic-that meant nothing." Henry, referring to himself in the third person, also takes note of brother Brook's view of History, a law of history that involves paradox, well actually the big paradox is every day existence, the day's facts that overrun, outpace and erase even the collected thoughts of history, accelerating and breaking the boundaries of history and another paradox within this paradox that, " in the social disequilibrium between capital and labor, the logical outcome was not collectivism, but anarchism." I would type up a few paragraphs from that fine essay by Graham Benton in that Oklahoma City University Law Review, "Thomas Pynchon and the Political Philosophy of Anarchism", but I've got but one working hand here and I'm getting out today, well only a short yo-yo to the Radiological Imaging Center for tests, more tests, and tests, and forms and forms and, but there is this beautiful vampire and her pricking the bruised crotches of my atrophied arms always yields some scarlet indulgences. In the dynamo I go, as natural as the sun, the nuclear medicine, the scan of bone, profusion of lungs, radionuclide cystogram, for reflux, scan these poems on the board, the machine as natural as the sun and we expect to understand one as little as the other. What a child! What babbling futility, what ignorance, yes, sit down on the ivy league steps and benches and turn and brood Fergus, what nonsense we have allowed ourselves to teach our children, but we can take some solace, some comfort, some passion to trudge as towards a lover, to learn to place the heels just so, if we allow a metaphysical, a theological, a political history, a sequence, some unity of natural force, but this history, children of the 20th century, belongs to the mechanical force, oh century's child, "the whole consolidation of mechanical force, which ruthlessly stamped out the life of the class into which Adams was born, created monopolies capable of controlling the new energies that America adored." Blood, "sons and friends of the originals", bloody situation, bloody Chiclitz, "they had been opponent once" now doesn't that sound familiar, Enzian? Motherless children have a hard time when mother is dead, lord. Motherless children have a hard time when mother is dead, lord. They don't have anywhere to go; Wandering around from door to door. Nobody treats you like a mother will when your mother is dead, lord. From jeremy at xyris.com Tue Nov 7 11:39:13 2000 From: jeremy at xyris.com (Jeremy Osner) Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2000 12:39:13 -0500 Subject: Twentieth-century lit Message-ID: <3A083E41.E7069EC6@xyris.com> In today's Feed -- http://www.feedmag.com/templates/daily_master.php3?a_id=1388 -- Jefferson Chase says that "Midnight’s Children, One Hundred Years of Solitude, perhaps even Gravity’s Rainbow are unthinkable without it"; "it" is *The Tin Drum*. Jeremy From keith at pfmentum.com Tue Nov 7 12:16:29 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2000 10:16:29 -0800 Subject: Twentieth-century lit Message-ID: <000e01c048e6$dd3b41a0$e73e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> I've never been able to get past page 25 of any of his other novels, but _The Tin Drum_ remains near the top of my all-time favorite reads. Brilliant from first page to last. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 7 12:42:31 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2000 12:42:31 CST Subject: Century's child raised Motherless Message-ID: >From: Thing > >Herbert's relationship to V., his dilemma, his situation, "the situation", >is constructed, influenced directly by his views of his father's view of V >& Company and by his motherlessness. This seems to be strongly implied. When Stencil says "ANOTHER Woman" for me he means "other than my mother." And he also seems to harbor a premonition that this she-it might actually be his mother. Stencil's passionlessness might be seen as his defense against his "situation:" Mysterious Motherless[and Father]ness. >"There is more behind and inside V. than any of us had suspected. No who, >but what: what is she." HP.V.49 > >And it is the "the Situation" which appears to be structuring events, the >events of the novel even. This is of course Pynchon's first "THEM" or >"THEY." And the power, the inexplicable nature of Them or "the >Situation", whoever, whatever "They" are, has got Stencil and maybe a few >other characters, maybe even this paranoid reader, maybe even YOU, >thinking that They are calling the tune. Maybe They are, and maybe not. So far anyway the only "THEM" is distantly implied and only in Stencil's ruminations. He's aware also that his inner Whitehall might be the house of a mad prophet. Whatever may be the truth, Stencil is only literally "going through the motions," which is at odds with his having a deep-seated emotional need at the base of his actions. If his earlier malaise, and that of TWSC, is the result of being in a world of Their Making, just accepting the Forces That Be, then his present action is still only a false virility. It is only an approximation of real-life. Put before us is a challenge to evaluate the two conditions side by side. Which is "better?" I'd say the condition of TWSC is prefered, though possibly only slightly. Theirs is a relationship of Souls, governed by Fortune and virtue (to be explored in VV4). So far Stencil's Paranoia is thus: ---------- (56) He'd taken to roving the city, aimlessly, waiting for a coincidence. None came. ---------- He is actively seeking correspondences out of the aether. Unlike Slothrop's situation, they (THEY) don't actively seek him. Stencil's might be the infancy of a Creative Paranoia, but he has no developed "They." He must first conjure a viable "They." Without that he won't even begun to touch the fringes of a "WE." So far his "creative paranoia" is employed predominately against his own lethargy. David-Gomez-Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 7 14:32:17 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Thing) Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2000 15:32:17 -0500 Subject: Century's child raised Motherless References: Message-ID: <3A0866D1.D6D640AE@earthlink.net> David Morris wrote: > > Maybe They are, and maybe not. So far anyway the only "THEM" is distantly > implied and only in Stencil's ruminations. He's aware also that his inner > Whitehall might be the house of a mad prophet. Whatever may be the truth, > Stencil is only literally "going through the motions," which is at odds > with his having a deep-seated emotional need at the base of his actions. Sidney creates a structure that imposes order on otherwise exasperatingly random events, allowing some sort of response. The catch 20, 20th century boy and girls, is that it is not "real" and only permits private meanings and interpretations. Herbert's desire to discover what V. is, what is it, is his legacy from his father" and it leads him to make connections that others, including the narrators, even the Stencils and the readers, suspects may be spurious. Stencil, then, highlights the problems inherent in discerning reality and interpreting reality reliably. Stencil embodies a search for meaning and identity which, even this early in the novel, he seems to fear. Is Stencil only ostensibly seeking V. and knowledge of how his father died? Will he learn the "truth" about either? He is motivated by information about V. contained in Sidney's diary: There is more behind and inside V. than any of us has suspected. Not who, but what: what she is. The change from "who" to "what" parallels the searches of Robert Graves and Henry Adams or V.s change from human to non human. Margravine's playful suggestion that V. is "for victory" describes V.' s in this doubled role, this mirrored yo-yo, the force, the mechanical force of history described by Adams and the historical but very personal life of Herbert since V. may very well be his mother, a clue we can be sure he won't follow. If she were his Mother he would not be he who looks or searches for V. He would have to have been conditioned, say like A Slothrop. Searching provides some purpose, some guide, some cord that tugs, but if it were him MOM, finding her would not be a question of what now? He would fill himself with human love, mother's love, and it would burst out of his heart with songs and love for the world, but love has been directed entirely inward,toward this acquired sense of animateness. Having found this, he finds it hard to release, it is so dear to him. To sustain it he must hunt her but not find her. For if he finds her there will be nothing but half self consciousness and motherlessness for real. He will try, like a child that has lost her mother, not to think, therefore, about any end to the search for her. He will yo-yo, tug and pull the cord. Ironically, Stencil's "sense of animateness" is supported by the search for inanimateness. And the search for the inanimate, is also a search for death. So, there is this old problem, the one almost all the major characters in TRP's fiction have to confront, the Modern questers given, that Modern man quests and he may even acquire some knowledge of the grail, the gods, the machine, THEM, V., but communion, complete knowledge or faith brings with it annihilation. Of course this could all be nothing more than extensions of my own overactive imagination nurtured by a desire for identity. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 7 14:48:00 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Thing) Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2000 15:48:00 -0500 Subject: Twentieth-century lit References: <000e01c048e6$dd3b41a0$e73e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: <3A086A80.22B87921@earthlink.net> s~Z wrote: > > I've never been able to get past page 25 of any of his other novels, but > _The Tin Drum_ remains near the top of my all-time favorite reads. Brilliant > from first page to last. http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05/reviews/001105.05sheehat.html From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Wed Nov 8 03:43:19 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 10:43:19 +0100 Subject: Twentieth-century lit References: <3A083E41.E7069EC6@xyris.com> Message-ID: <13tRlH-0QbtRYC@fwd05.sul.t-online.com> Jeremy schrieb: > In today's Feed -- > http://www.feedmag.com/templates/daily_master.php3?a_id=1388 -- > Jefferson Chase says that "Midnight’s Children, One Hundred Years of > Solitude, perhaps even Gravity’s Rainbow are unthinkable without it"; > "it" is *The Tin Drum*. if one is saying that gravity's rainbow is unthinkable without ulysses, dem mann ohne eigenschaften or dr. strangelove: alright. but blechtrommel?! och nö, kinners, nö, dat is doch dumm tüch ... kfl From o.sell at telda.net Wed Nov 8 04:22:18 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 11:22:18 +0100 Subject: Twentieth-century lit References: <3A083E41.E7069EC6@xyris.com> <13tRlH-0QbtRYC@fwd05.sul.t-online.com> Message-ID: <005a01c0496d$c7200040$af9406d5@selltelda.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Lorentzen / Nicklaus To: Cc: Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 10:43 AM Subject: Re: Twentieth-century lit Jeremy schrieb: > In today's Feed -- > http://www.feedmag.com/templates/daily_master.php3?a_id=1388 -- > Jefferson Chase says that "Midnight's Children, One Hundred Years of > Solitude, perhaps even Gravity's Rainbow are unthinkable without it"; > "it" is *The Tin Drum*. if one is saying that gravity's rainbow is unthinkable without ulysses, dem mann ohne eigenschaften or dr. strangelove: alright. but blechtrommel?! och nö, kinners, nö, dat is doch dumm tüch ... kfl Apart from the fact that GR, TD and MC are revisiting history ironically, thus can be seen in the corner of "historiographic metafiction" I think it is too far stretched to see a deeper relation of "The Tin drum" and "Gravity's Rainbow," indeed, as we say in lower German, "Tünkram, wat der Lorbass da verteld." (I remember they used the east-Prussian dialect word "Lorbass" in the movie, but checking it in the text, the scene with the eels in the horsehead, it isn't there, it appears to be an invention of the script author). Otto From o.sell at telda.net Wed Nov 8 01:57:14 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 08:57:14 +0100 Subject: Twentieth-century lit References: <3A083E41.E7069EC6@xyris.com> Message-ID: <004a01c04959$82b08f60$af9406d5@selltelda.net> Hi Jeremy, Hi Keith I can only fully subscribe to that view. Besides, what do you say to the description of our national Oprah, MRR: "Leading critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki -- picture a seventy-year-old Toad from X-Men-- described Grass as having "written himself dry" over a tome containing "five good pages," and most of his colleagues followed suit." (he, he, sez Otto) Keith is right too. "The Tin Drum" is doubtless the best novel of Grass but at the same time the best and most important novel of the German past-ww2 literature. "They" hated him for it as "They" hated him for "Cat and Mouse" which surely is readable past page 25 - one misses the scene where the main character masturbates on the "Ritterkreuz" (or not? - too lazy to check now). I loved Grass at first, I admit, because those militarists had to vomit, but learned later to love his books for the beautiful literature and for the insights into the real bad history of my country. I always preferred him to Böll. Having read all four mentioned books at least twice I can assure you that in the case of Rushdie's "Midnight Children" the verdict is absolutely right. Not so sure about Marquez and Pynchon, but in fact no reading of MC wouldn't make sense without keeping in mind what Rushdie has taken over from "The Tin Drum." Just in short: The first chapter of both novels are about a piece of clothing which becomes important (of course, therefore the chapter-headline) for the "family-(hi-)story(ies) we read about in both books, starting at the generation of the grand-parents. Rushdie has written his opening chapter with images who are strictly contrary to the images Grass had used: Whereas _The wide skirt_ is important for the "quickie" which fathers Oskar's mother into his grandmother to hide his grandfather from the policemen in that plain nowhere between Poland and Germany, _The perforated sheet_ stands for the nearly endless encounter of Saleem's grandparents in the Kashmir mountains between in what are to become India and Pakistan. Both books are telling stories of people living at the border of countries who are in conflict, telling of real "private" relations across the borders of the nationalities, thus claiming for tolerance among the nationalities and religions. Otto PS assuming there aren't many republican p-listers I offer my condolences. ----- Original Message ----- From: Jeremy Osner To: p-list Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 6:39 PM Subject: Twentieth-century lit In today's Feed -- http://www.feedmag.com/templates/daily_master.php3?a_id=1388 -- Jefferson Chase says that "Midnight's Children, One Hundred Years of Solitude, perhaps even Gravity's Rainbow are unthinkable without it"; "it" is *The Tin Drum*. Jeremy From MalignD at aol.com Wed Nov 8 10:17:48 2000 From: MalignD at aol.com (MalignD at aol.com) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 11:17:48 EST Subject: Twentieth-century lit Message-ID: <6.d9bf37e.273ad6ac@aol.com> <<"The Tin Drum" is doubtless the best novel of Grass but at the same time the best and most important novel of the German past-ww2 literature.>> I've long loved and admired Grass and I think Dog Years is quite as fine as Tin Drum. I also liked The Flounder, although I know many who didn't. They share ambitions and encylopedic aspects, but I have never thought of Tin Drum as an influence on GR. I would be surprised to learn TP was unaware of Tin Drum, but I don't see influence particularly. <> Me too, although I like Billiards at Half Past Nine very much. From trailerman44 at hotmail.com Wed Nov 8 10:22:20 2000 From: trailerman44 at hotmail.com (J L) Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2000 16:22:20 GMT Subject: No subject Message-ID: dedalus: >Therefore, Democrats are requested to vote on Tuesday, November 7, and >Republicans on Wednesday, November 8. >Please pass this message along and help us make sure that nobody gets >left out. uh - yep, looks like that message got through ok. JL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ and now i wonder who's boss and who he's leavin' behind? [ - talking heads ] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From keith at pfmentum.com Wed Nov 8 10:27:54 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 08:27:54 -0800 Subject: Twentieth-century lit Message-ID: <001001c049a0$da1e7cc0$ab3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> >>>PS assuming there aren't many republican p-listers I offer my condolences.<<< We're all 'republicans' in that we vote for others to vote for president. If we were 'democrats' Gore would be suffering a hangover instead of a migraine right now. If we were 'green'.......well, I suppose many of us are. From crawdad at one.net Wed Nov 8 20:39:39 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 21:39:39 -0500 Subject: Test Message-ID: <001b01c049f6$aaecc500$ce6332d1@bob> One, two, you know what to do. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fqmorris at hotmail.com Wed Nov 8 23:16:13 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2000 23:16:13 CST Subject: Century's child raised Motherless Message-ID: Great post Terrance! What follows are not disagreements, just ruminations. >From: Thing > >Sidney creates a structure that imposes order on otherwise exasperatingly >random events, allowing some sort of response. The catch 20, 20th century >boy and girls, is that it is not "real" and only permits private meanings >and interpretations. Collecting information and ordering it into plausible/likely outcomes (aka modern prophecy, or fiction writing) is the job of a spy organization. And as you say, the order thus imposed is not "real." For what is a spy but a glorified (sub-rosa) tourist, right? >Herbert's desire to discover what V. is, what is it, is his legacy from his >father" and it leads him to make connections that others, including the >narrators, even the Stencils and the readers, suspects may be spurious. >Stencil, then, highlights the problems inherent in discerning reality and >interpreting reality reliably. Yes, especially in the upcomming "Impersonations." He stretches this "reliability" problem to its limits. Black-diamond slopes ahead! But maybe the reader is meant to ingest (believe?) everything in fluxtuating degrees? The yes/no switch of acceptable information might rely less on a single pattern than on the overlay of patterns. Moire patterns? Slothrop's map comes to mind. >Stencil embodies a search for meaning and identity which, even this early >in the novel, he seems to fear. Is Stencil only ostensibly seeking V. and >knowledge of how his father died? Will he learn the "truth" about either? >[...] V. may very well be his mother, a clue we can be sure he won't >follow. If she were his Mother he would not be he who looks or searches for >V. He would have to have been conditioned, say like A Slothrop. Searching >provides some purpose, some guide, some cord that tugs, but if it were him >MOM, finding her would not be a question of what now? He would fill himself >with human love, mother's love, and it would burst out of his heart with >songs and love for the world, but love has been directed entirely >inward,toward this acquired sense of animateness. Having found this, he >finds it hard to release, it is so dear to him. To sustain it he must hunt >her but not find her. For if he finds her there will be nothing but half >self consciousness and motherlessness for real. I love you starting premise above: Stencil desperately searches for meaning embodied (he hopes & fears) in his missing history, er, parentage. Finding her might be glorious, "fill himself with human love, mother's love, and it would burst out of his heart with songs and love for the world." But why then would finding her reduce him, as you suggest, to "half self consciousness?" I would suggest that he fears Herbert's fate: finding it-her might also kill him. Approach-Avoid. >So, there is this old problem, the one almost all the major characters in >TRP's fiction have to confront, the Modern questers given, that Modern man >quests and he may even acquire some knowledge of the grail, the gods, the >machine, THEM, V., but communion, complete knowledge or faith brings with >it annihilation. Indeed! That's why G-D only let Moses have a side-wise glimpse at G-D's Big-Assed backside as he passed out of view. A full gander would have meant instant obliteration. David Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Wed Nov 8 23:29:51 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2000 23:29:51 CST Subject: Century's child raised Motherless Message-ID: I think I meant Sidney here, but who can keep track? >I would suggest that he fears Herbert's fate: finding it-her might also >kill him. Approach-Avoid. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 9 06:25:38 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrence) Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 07:25:38 -0500 Subject: The End of the Tunnel References: <006701c0488a$b9e42fc0$898e06d5@selltelda.net> Message-ID: <3A0A97C2.97C80E00@earthlink.net> Otto Sell wrote: > > The End of the Tunnel > By Fayza Hassan > > http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/506/li2.htm > > "For the time being, America is a sick society. Most Americans are wrapped > up in misguided religious beliefs, as well as guilt and fear about the way > they treated African Americans. They also have to deal with a large number > of ugly skeletons in their closet. Israel is their way of atoning for their > sins. They nurse and protect it and claim it can do no wrong. Israel is > their good deed, they believe, a shining star in their flawed record. Of > course they have created a monster, but they refuse to see it for what it > is, like a father whose son is a confirmed killer but who continues to > assert his innocence despite the blinding evidence. Mark my words, Israel > will be their undoing." Just what we need, more prophets and wise men. I think I'll write to this jack ass and ask him to tell us who is going to president of the USA. Power unanointed may come - Dominion (unsought by the free) And the Iron Dome, Stronger for stress and strain, Fling her huge shadow athwart the main; But the Founders' dream shall flee. Age after age has been, (From man's changeless heart their way they win); And death be busy with all who strive - Death, with silent negative. Yea and Nay - Each hath his say; But God He keeps the middle way. None was by When He spread the sky; Wisdom is vain and prophecy. --Herman Melville From KXX4493553 at aol.com Thu Nov 9 06:48:11 2000 From: KXX4493553 at aol.com (KXX4493553 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 07:48:11 EST Subject: Wtr: Nordhausen: Demonstration "Antifaschistisch Leben, H... Message-ID: <15.b7aa5b8.273bf70b@aol.com> News from Nordhausen from German anti-fascist groups... but in German. I found it in a mailing list for "social movements". Kurt-Werner Poertner -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: aktuell at nadir.org Subject: Nordhausen: Demonstration "Antifaschistisch Leben, Handeln, K�mpfen" Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 13:15:01 +0100 Size: 8067 URL: From millison at online-journalist.com Thu Nov 9 11:08:16 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 10:08:16 -0700 Subject: music to recount votes by Message-ID: Try "Plastic People" by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, from the Absolutely Free album, I think. They're playing it on KPFA in Berkeley right this minute. -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From millison at online-journalist.com Thu Nov 9 13:35:12 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 12:35:12 -0700 Subject: dogs and falling rockets Message-ID: "...during the last year of the Second World War, the Germans were firing supersonic V2 rockets at London. These missiles were launched from Holland and headed upward at about 45 degrees. Their engines cut out after a minute or so, and they followed a ballistic trajectory, reaching speeds of over 2,000 miles per hour as they plunged downward, arriving unseen and unheard. They took only five minutes to reach their targets in England, some 200 miles away, carrying a ton of high explosives. They were particularly terrifying because their explosion was preceded by no warning and they could strike anywhere in southeast Engliand at any time of day or night. Dr. Roy Willis, who was seventeen at the time, was living in Essex, just east of London. 'I noticed that our dog [a German Shepherd-Norwegian Elkhound cross] was seemingly able to sense the imminent arrival of a V2 rocket. The dog, called Smoke, would go to the window and stare out, hackles raised, as if in anger and fear. After about two minutes, during which time he remained in the same aggressive posture at the window, I would hear the ominous crump of an exploded rocket.' At least one other dog owner had a very similar experience, his animal reacting shortly before the explosions. Assuming that these accounts are reliable, and I have no reason to doubt that they are, the dogs could not have heard these missiles coming, however acute their hearing, precisely because they were both silent and supersonic. If animals were not anticipating air raids by hearing the approaching bombers or rockets, how did they know the attacks were coming?" --Rupert Sheldrake, _Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals_, 1999. -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From crawdad at one.net Thu Nov 9 18:06:15 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 19:06:15 -0500 Subject: dogs and falling rockets References: Message-ID: <000c01c04aa9$e1915360$fc0e17d8@bob> Doug reported: The dog, called Smoke, would go to > the window and stare out, hackles raised Too bad Dr. Willis didn't think to look u n d e r the dog. Don From o.sell at telda.net Fri Nov 10 00:32:22 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 07:32:22 +0100 Subject: music to recount votes by References: Message-ID: <00ab01c04adf$fc9ec580$e44306d5@selltelda.net> Can't believe it, such a good Zappa-song on the radio! In the sixties the stations didn't play it and over here in Europe we only get the nasty and discriminating "Bobby Brown" on the radio. Take a day And walk around Watch the nazis Run your town Then go home And check yourself You think we're singing 'bout someone else With such a crazy voting system how can you be sure that any of the former presidents has been elected legally? I was very pleased to read that assumingly most of the p-listers are green voters. Even if Mr. Nader maybe will have helped Bush jun. into the Oval Office in the end someone has to try a third way in the US. It was hard over here, even with our system of splitting the vote between candidate and party (which has helped our Greens) - it will be much harder for you within a voting system that includes the possibility of making someone elected president who's got less votes than his opponent. No wonder that so many people don't vote at all. I hope that this theater will speed up discussions. I have stopped watching parliamentary debates on TV a long time ago but when the German Green Party was discussing the Nato-war against Yugoslavia (and heavily criticizing and one even hurting fresh Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the greatest success the party ever had in their short political history) I watched the convent on Phoenix-TV. Never before I saw such a lively and good discussion of politicians and delegates in Germany, a lesson in democracy. The other parties and parts of the media criticized the Greens for the way the discussions were hold, they called it chaotic. I was very proud of it (though not being a member of the party), proud that this was possible within a ruling party in Germany. Don't forget that our Greens came out of the 68-generation which got parts of their major impulses from the anti-Vietnam movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the Hippies, thus from the USA. looking forward to Sesame Street tonight Otto "The Count" ----- Original Message ----- From: Doug Millison To: Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 6:08 PM Subject: music to recount votes by > Try "Plastic People" by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, > from the Absolutely Free album, I think. They're playing it on KPFA > in Berkeley right this minute. > -- > d o u g m i l l i s o n From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Fri Nov 10 05:56:46 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 05:56:46 -0600 Subject: V.V.(4) Update Message-ID: <3A0BE27E.45BBBFFD@mediaone.net> V.V.(4) is on the way, guys & gals. . . . of course, assuming my internet service provider is up and running and permits me to post on Sunday night. Lots of problems with the ISP of late. V.V.(4) will consist of several postings --- one will summarize the Prologue and each of the Impersonations 1 thru 3, and subsequent posts will focus on notes, critical commentary, and questions pertaining to the four sections. Finally, one post will collect my "wayward thoughts", i.e. questions and observations I couldn't really fit in anywhere else. On a separate note, I've noticed lately that on the list no one has gotten into the defamatory flame-baiting that was so common back in GRGR, which I think partly makes this VV so pleasant and enjoyable. I mention this only because it occurs to me right now, and not as a commentary on the potential reception of VV(4). Have a great weekend, all! Dedalus (the un - Presidented) From crawdad at one.net Fri Nov 10 06:49:43 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 07:49:43 -0500 Subject: V.V. 3 wrap and Rachel's blues Message-ID: <001a01c04b14$956dbd00$df1317d8@bob> Any final thoughts or ruminations as we wind up V.V. 3? No takers on the Rachel Owlglass Finish the Blues Contest? It's a little tune that goes something like this: You going to have a hard time Finding you a kind hearted man. Because a kind hearted man Is the kind who will... Don -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 10 07:59:14 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 07:59:14 CST Subject: music to recount votes by Message-ID: >I was very pleased to read that assumingly most of the p-listers are green >voters. You are assumingly a lot there, buster! _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 10 10:23:46 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Mustadid Sumbody Rong) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 11:23:46 -0500 Subject: V.V. 3 wrap and Rachel's blues References: <001a01c04b14$956dbd00$df1317d8@bob> Message-ID: <3A0C2112.A2E55629@earthlink.net> > Don Corathers wrote: > > Any final thoughts or ruminations as we wind up V.V. 3? > > No takers on the Rachel Owlglass Finish the Blues Contest? > It's a little tune that goes something like this: > > You going to have a hard time > Finding you a kind hearted man. > Because a kind hearted man > Is the kind who will... > > > Don Listen to Robert Johnson's blues and bring you daisy chains and take away your screws. So Rachel is singing the blues and the light, why it's the light in Paola's room, the girl that lives proper nouns, no things, she never had that Long Island five towns suburban Daddy's MG world, that Paola light and nothing--no things--cause where she's coming from, interests that Stencil, that angel flapping his wings, that light it leaks like water right out the window and up, not down, up the air shaft the light accompanied by the sounds, the toiletries, the things of Rachel, even the nearly imperceptible sounds of Rachel fixing her hair accompanies the light up into the sky. And Rachel turns off the all the light, but there, why it's Paola's clock, an electric clock now, no minute hand visible, hands nearly dividing the clock's face symmetrically, six o'clock, now the hand moves to and passed twelve, the other side, now as if through the surface of a mirror, here we go and it's as if it had to, it had now to repeat in mirror-time what it had done on the other side of real-time. Kind hearts and unkind hearts can break so take care of yours. You are never too young, too strong, too genetically ill-disposed.... T. From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Fri Nov 10 10:52:28 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 17:52:28 +0100 Subject: in the zone ::: the "bizarro world" remix Message-ID: <13uHPg-1XVC7cC@fwd05.sul.t-online.com> "as the war ended, the founders of aerojet started looking for a way to make the firm viable, because its future was suddenly very uncertain. it is ironic that parsons' work, despite its anti-military beginnings and goal, had become the backbone of military operations, so much so that his company was virtually dependent on war. how he was able to reconcile his profession with his personal life, which, while hedonistic, he ostensibly viewed as spiritual, is a quirk of the human mind in general, as millions of others have been able to do the same. fortunately, the firm was able to convince general tire to invest in it. if it succeeded, fine; if not, general tire was big enough to absorb the loss as a tax write-off. with the purchase, aerojet became aerojet general, today known as gencorp aerojet. once general tire bought in, it decided it wanted the whole pie but none of the oldtimers hanging around, so it sent its people out to strong-arm aerojet's founders into relinquishing their stock. all sold out but malina who happened to be in london at the time and who later wrote that sunspot activity disrupted the telegraph transmission, such that he never got the offer. the solar storm proved a boon, however, as he became a millionaire as a result. in the '60s, von kàrmàn calculated that if he himself had held onto his stock he would have been worth $12 million. but is was hard to resist the offer aerojet general was making. the war was ending, the future was uncertain, the group had achieved what they had intended to achieve with rockets, and now aerojet was offering them $50.000 apiece for their stock. charles bartley remembers parsons and forman coming into his office at jpl quite excited, bragging how they had managed to get out of the company while they were still ahead. the war was over, they told him, and rockets were finished. the field had no future. the were going to start a chain of laundromats with their money and become rich men. it is difficult to understand how the two obviously passionate men could have given up their youthful goals about rockets so easily, particularly since they still hadn't launched anything into space. in fact, parsons had actually sold out before the war ended and intended to continue his hazardous passions. in a letter dated december 14, 1944 to grady mcmurtry, parsons wrote that he had 'sold out at aerojet, purchased 1003 (s. orange grove ave.), and am starting a new company engaged in chemical research.' evidently interested in other dangerous pursuits, he added that he was trying to get the ex-high priestess regina kahl to return to the lodge. in apparent response to a question from mcmurtry as to whether he could send parsons anything from europe, parsons replied a 'a witch, young, red headed ...' his letters to mcmurtry are full of references to europe being 'witch country.' ... parsons and forman formed adastra research, a small explosives company that was investigated for 'espionage' when the two were caught with a large quantity of 'x-nitrate,' a powerful explosive. it was determined that the compound had been procured for experimental reasons, and the charges were dropped. parsons then went to work for the vulcan powder company in pasadena, where he would remain for the next two years. back in new mexico, robert goddard had his own problems. at the end of the war, he fell into a depression, became ill, and died before the year was out. certainly his failure with rockets---and caltech's success---was a contributing factor. in late august of 1945, lou goldstone brought l. ron hubbard over to meet parsons, who liked hubbard immediately. as noted, hubbard has been the model for d. vance wimple in white's r o c k e t t o t h e m o r g u e. he told a lot of war stories, which, though hard to believe, were well-liked by most, and he fit right in with the unusual people who lived there. ... the parsons circle included not only a circuit connecting hubbard and crowley, but also one linking crowley to lovecraft, whom hubbard had met through lovecraft biographer frank belknap long. (writers have tried for years to link lovecraft and crowley in one way or another, but this is a direct connection that has not yet been explored.) in addition, hubbard and parsons associated with people in pasadena who had met clark ashton smith, one of lovecraft's regular correspondents, as well as of crowley's 'inner circle.' lovecraft's 'the colour out of space' had appeared in the september 1927 issue of a m a z i n g s t o r i e s, the publication ed forman had written about, so parsons had probably read it. he may also have read w e i r d t a l e s, which regularly featured the work of lovecraft in the teens and twenties. judging by crowley's remark in december 1943 in his letter to jane wolfe, this was simply the sort of 'magazine trash' parsons was reading. ... hubbard charmed parsonage resident alva rogers who, like hubbard, was a redhead. indeed, hubbard confided his believe that all redheads descend from the neandertal rather than pure h o m o s a p i e n s. 'needless to say,' rogers wrote, 'i was fascinated.' the redhead-neandertal connection is interesting to keep in mind when reading williamson's d a r k e r t h a n y o u t h i n k, the story of werewolves who return to their atayistic state." & later also this: "some of parsons' letters to cameron are from alabama, where paperclip rocket scientist wernher von braun was a prisoner of war, and it is possible the two had met." ('john carter': sex and rockets. the occult world of jack parsons. venice, ca 1999: feral house. pp. 100-2, 193) kfl //:: ps: thanks for the hint to rich romeo! From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Fri Nov 10 13:08:04 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 13:08:04 -0600 Subject: music to recount votes by References: Message-ID: <3A0C4793.3653A38C@mediaone.net> True enough! Back before the actual election, the Green Party ticket looked like a nifty, albeit an impractical idea: even though most voters *knew* Nader won't actually win, casting a vote as such was a political statement, a "fuck you" to "da Man," a way to say, oh so subtly, "Hey, I think it's time for some serious Reform, and although it's not gonna happen in this lifetime, I'm gonna clear my conscience by casting a vote, but not for a Dem or Rep." It sounds good and political and all, but now we see how it can fuck things up. On Tuesday, I shook my head and smiled pityingly at Nader voters; today, I'd like to throttle them all . . . because we are now a gnat's ass away from having the biggest dipshit on the planet running our country . . . But hey, at least "my dreams have wings . . ." You gotta admit: the recount and overseas ballot controversies that keep springing up make for deliciously paranoid speculations. I'm waiting for a postal service conspiracy to emerge out of this! Dedalus David Morris wrote: > >I was very pleased to read that assumingly most of the p-listers are green > >voters. > > You are assumingly a lot there, buster! > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. From slothrup at saber.net Fri Nov 10 13:54:27 2000 From: slothrup at saber.net (glenn fuller) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 11:54:27 -0800 Subject: music to recount votes by References: <3A0C4793.3653A38C@mediaone.net> Message-ID: <3A0C5273.2699699F@saber.net> I voted Green... Campaigned for Nader.. I'm proud of it.. I'd do it again... My only regrets are that so many Greens wimped out and voted for Gore. So we're stuck with four years of the 'biggest dip shit on the planet running the country', instead of the second biggest dip shit? Can Bush be any WORSE a president than his daddy? Worse a president than Reagan? Glenn Fuller Dedalus wrote: > True enough! Back before the actual election, the Green Party ticket looked > like a nifty, albeit an impractical idea: even though most voters *knew* Nader > won't actually win, casting a vote as such was a political statement, a "fuck > you" to "da Man," a way to say, oh so subtly, "Hey, I think it's time for some > serious Reform, and although it's not gonna happen in this lifetime, I'm gonna > clear my conscience by casting a vote, but not for a Dem or Rep." > > It sounds good and political and all, but now we see how it can fuck things > up. On Tuesday, I shook my head and smiled pityingly at Nader voters; today, > I'd like to throttle them all . . . because we are now a gnat's ass away from > having the biggest dipshit on the planet running our country . . . > > But hey, at least "my dreams have wings . . ." > > You gotta admit: the recount and overseas ballot controversies that keep > springing up make for deliciously paranoid speculations. I'm waiting for a > postal service conspiracy to emerge out of this! > > Dedalus > > David Morris wrote: > > > >I was very pleased to read that assumingly most of the p-listers are green > > >voters. > > > > You are assumingly a lot there, buster! > > _________________________________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > http://profiles.msn.com. From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Fri Nov 10 15:43:24 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 15:43:24 -0600 Subject: music to recount votes by References: <3A0C4793.3653A38C@mediaone.net> <3A0C5273.2699699F@saber.net> Message-ID: <3A0C6BFC.A457EE6B@mediaone.net> glenn fuller wrote: > So we're stuck with four years of the 'biggest dip shit on the planet running the > country', > instead of the second biggest dip shit? Can Bush be any WORSE a president than his > daddy? Worse a president than Reagan? > Yes! Dubya is up to that challenge! D From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 10 18:27:36 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 18:27:36 CST Subject: music to recount votes by Message-ID: >From: glenn fuller > >I voted Green... So we're stuck with four years of the 'biggest dip shit >on the planet running the country', instead of the second biggest dip shit? > Can Bush be any WORSE a president than his daddy? Worse a president than >Reagan? One more restatement of the "There's no difference between the two" argument. I sincerely disagree. But that's as far as I'll take this here. DM _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From crawdad at one.net Fri Nov 10 18:57:39 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 19:57:39 -0500 Subject: V.V. 3 wrap and Rachel's blues References: <001a01c04b14$956dbd00$df1317d8@bob> <3A0C2112.A2E55629@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <002601c04b7a$40d88980$786332d1@bob> T. Mustadid wrote: > Listen to Robert Johnson's blues > and bring you daisy chains > and take away your screws. Me I been having a hard time figuring out the meter and rhyme scheme of that blues. Rachel's I mean, not Terrance's. Rachel's last line seems to want another couple of syllables, and is it supposed to rhyme with "time" or "man," or none of the above? Not that we're a stickler for the rules of composition in this juke joint. Two pages earlier is Rachel's meditation on the manipulative quality of relationships, particularly (she seems to think) in Nueva York, "this long daisy chain of victimizers and victims, screwers and screwees." That mechanistic assessment of how people treat each other is neatly turned from a figurative to a literal reference to the sex act in the next sentence, when Rachel wonders who it is s h e is screwing, and "she thought first of Slab... between whom and a lack of charity toward all men she'd alternated ever since coming to this city." The song might trail off into ellipsis because the narrator decided we had spent enough time in the shower with Rachel and it was time to move on and have a look at Paola's clock. Or it could be that Rachel let the song go because she's not sure how to finish the line. What does she want? The schlemihl Benny Profane? That's what she said on the phone New Year's Eve. What quality that Benny possesses makes him a good man? Or a kind-hearted man? Or anyhow a man worthy of the attention of Rachel ("You felt she'd done a thousand secret things to her eyes") Owlglass? Jes' wonderin' what y'all think. Don From crawdad at one.net Fri Nov 10 19:17:32 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 20:17:32 -0500 Subject: music to recount votes by References: Message-ID: <002b01c04b7d$0867f600$786332d1@bob> > One more restatement of the "There's no difference between the two" > argument. I sincerely disagree. But that's as far as I'll take this here. > > DM What he said. We're all going to find out what the differences are in the next few months and years, and we're none of us going to like it, least of all the Green voters. The long view: 1968 was a long time ago, and we have forgot some shit. I guess we were due for another lesson in the uses and perils of idealism. Damned expensive tuition, though. Don From crawdad at one.net Fri Nov 10 19:27:54 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 20:27:54 -0500 Subject: V.V. 3 wrap and Rachel's blues Message-ID: <004e01c04b7e$7b196c00$786332d1@bob> Resending this cause the first attempt seems to be lost in the server someplace. T. Mustadid wrote: > Listen to Robert Johnson's blues > and bring you daisy chains > and take away your screws. Me I been having a hard time figuring out the meter and rhyme scheme of that blues. Rachel's I mean, not Terrance's. Rachel's last line seems to want another couple of syllables, and is it supposed to rhyme with "time" or "man," or none of the above? Not that we're a stickler for the rules of composition in this juke joint. Two pages earlier is Rachel's meditation on the manipulative quality of relationships, particularly (she seems to think) in Nueva York, "this long daisy chain of victimizers and victims, screwers and screwees." That mechanistic assessment of how people treat each other is neatly turned from a figurative to a literal reference to the sex act in the next sentence, when Rachel wonders who it is s h e is screwing, and "she thought first of Slab... between whom and a lack of charity toward all men she'd alternated ever since coming to this city." The song might trail off into ellipsis because the narrator decided we had spent enough time in the shower with Rachel and it was time to move on and have a look at Paola's clock. Or it could be that Rachel let the song go because she's not sure how to finish the line. What does she want? The schlemihl Benny Profane? That's what she said on the phone New Year's Eve. What quality that Benny possesses makes him a good man? Or a kind-hearted man? Or anyhow a man worthy of the attention of Rachel ("You felt she'd done a thousand secret things to her eyes") Owlglass? Jes' wonderin' what y'all think. Don -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Sat Nov 11 05:08:26 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 12:08:26 +0100 Subject: m&d related Message-ID: <13uYWI-0Z56rAC@fwd03.sul.t-online.com> "the allotment between the gore and bush voting states follows in a terrifying way exactly the mason-dixon line ... with the only exception of the highly conservative new hampshire ..." (stewart o'nan in today's frankfurter allgemeine zeitung, page 44) kfl From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sat Nov 11 08:04:05 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 09:04:05 -0500 Subject: Limbo? References: Message-ID: <3A0D51D5.F4392DFE@earthlink.net> Didn't Dali have a chocolate room. New York must have been for her a city of smoke, its streets the courtyards of limbo, its bodies like wraiths. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09256a.htm Stencil, seated on the sink, wagging his shoulder blades like wings? Interregnum between kingdoms of death. Work, far from being a means to glorify God and one's own godliness (as the Puritans believed) was for Stencil grim, joyless; a conscious acceptance of the unpleasant for no other reason than that V. was there to track down. The sense of "blood" weakened. Hothouse sense of time Sons and friend of the originals The girls stood silent. They were camp followers of a sort and expendable. Or at least could be replaced. Slab, a dissolute angel with sad purple rings beneath his eyes. http://dalionline.com/purgat.html From popbonk at tiac.net Fri Nov 10 15:19:50 2000 From: popbonk at tiac.net (popbonk at tiac.net) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 16:19:50 -0500 Subject: No Gore, No Bush Message-ID: Because Scott b. was good enough to insist and persist, we caught the Chronos Quartet/Glass/Lugosi collaboration last night at the Orpheum....WELL worth the expense and hassle. Catch it at a bijou near you..... love, cfa, who can be dragged to culture, but doesn't drink.... From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sat Nov 11 13:20:23 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:20:23 -0500 Subject: Dickens and novel that never ends References: <3A0D7C1C.54014BBE@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3A0D9BF7.8AA3BD3B@earthlink.net> What makes Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon a poetic act is not just its fanatic ignorance of current fashion (this historical novel almost makes a reader forget that beneath his cocky demeanor and hipster' s cant Pynchon has always been a throwback), but its use of means, in its languors as well as its language, more properly poetic. There have always been fiction writers of poetic temperament: Joyce and Faulkner not surprisingly began as poets; minor poets, perhaps, but they took their early understandings of language through a form very different from fiction in its pretense, its rhythm, its design. In the last century Dickens, the novelist then closest to poetry, composed occasional verses as metrically right as they were poetically wrong. Though he has learned from the modernists by coming after them, Pynchon is a novelist of old-fashioned sentiments, not just in historical curiosity (his novels of contemporary life, Vineland and the thinly mannered The Crying of Lot 49, have been his weakest), but in his adoption of Dickensian comedy, beginning with his absurd and fantastic names. The narrator of Mason & Dixon is Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke, a name Pynchon almost gets away with. One difference between Dickens and Pynchon is that Dickens usually gets away with his namesDickens invents characters so true to their names they are false to their unreality; Pynchon loathes the idea of character, and his names wither into whimsy at the expense of character. The philosophy of names is too divisive to have bearing here; but there are few words more Falstaffian, considering the worlds they include, than poem or novel. Our unwillingness to deny anything with the ambition of being a poem the honor of the name may make discretion impossible, yet most readers have a Platonic sense of what a poem is and is not that sense may be merely typographical). Though it may be modified by experience or experiment, this sense is unlikely ever to admit a doughnut, a desk lamp, or any literary act wearing the clothes of other conventions whether diary, play, or novel, though there may be novels in verse, verse plays, and perhaps rhymed diaries-they may use poetry without being poems). What calls itself a poem may, within limits, be taken as poem; but those limits are less enclosing boundaries than liberated tyrannies. Mason & Dixon is a novel, and yet the experience of reading it is at times purely poetic. Pynchon has embraced in his arguments and actions the crowded ambiguity and frothy imagery of poetry; and to examine them is not to suggest these means lie outside the novel, but to recall how long they have been estranged, not just from recent fiction, but from recent poetry as well. Logan, William, Pynchon in the poetic. Vol. 83, Southwest Review, 01-01-1998, pp 424. From monroe at mpm.edu Sat Nov 11 18:46:13 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 18:46:13 -0600 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 Message-ID: <3A0DE855.B3D3D643@mpm.edu> ... howzabout that election there, hey? I voted for Tilden, but I fear those disputed electoral returns will be handed underhandedly to Hayes. Had it not been for Cooper and his Greenback party ... Anyway ... First off, having found an old(er) Harper ed. of V., I now realize that the pagination for the most recent ed., the "Perennial Classics" on, is different than, say, the "Perennial Library" ed. Not to mention the Bantam ... but a thousand pardons for any confusion I might have caused (at least in terms of pagination--otherwise ...). Will go back to the "Perennial Library" pagination ... Second, Terrence, do feel free to elaborate what you might think the relevance of Heidegger to Pynchon might be. I obviously think there's a connection, but it's an intuition at best. That "lifedeath" thing, first off, and the critique of Nietzsche (at least as elaborated by Krell), but, I must admit, my Heidegger is tenuous. Have, however, been thinking about Mondaugen ("moon-eyes"?) and Heidegger's "The Age of the World Picture." That point of view thing, the world as pictured from, say, the moon ... By the way, did finally get to see Paragraph 175, as well as a screening of Triumph of the Will. Next up: The Kindertransport ... But the reason I'm writing is, having spent no small amount of time with yr Pop Art paintings of late (even got to meet James Rosenquist, who would serve well as an illustrator for Gravity's Rainbow, cf. his F-111, signed a book for me an' ev'rything), sorry if I'm skipping ahead, but, Slab, his cheese danishes (p. 282, i.e., V.X.i), can't help but think of Wayne Thiebaud and his various lusciously painted pastries ... For Thiebaud, see, e.g.: http://sheldon.unl.edu/HTML/ARTIST/Thiebaud_W/SaladsSD_SSI.html For Rosenquist, F-111, see: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanvisions/gallery/g_7.11.f111.html http://imv.aau.dk/~jfogde/Coupland/f111.html Rosenquist, by the way, has a nifty painting of the impending decimation of that fabled lily pond at Giverny (ibid.) by an incoming meteorite ... From o.sell at telda.net Sun Nov 12 11:49:46 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 18:49:46 +0100 Subject: poetry website Message-ID: <003a01c04cd0$f3056720$579b06d5@selltelda.net> The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist. - Ananda Coomraswamy (1877-1947), Indian writer. Transformation of Nature in Art. http://sadtomato.net/ From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Sun Nov 12 12:13:23 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 12:13:23 -0600 Subject: V.V.(4): Summary of Prologue and Impersonations I, II, and III Message-ID: <3A0EDDC3.1461A07C@mediaone.net> V.V.(4): Summary ------------------------ The following summary and all subsequent "Notes, Comments, and Queries" posts pertain to _V._ Chapter Three (pp. 57-74 in the Harper Perennial edition). This week's reading, as you know, includes a brief "Prologue" or sorts, followed by Impersonations I, II, and III. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Prologue" (pp. 57-59): Young Herbert Stencil's preoccupation with the letter V manifests itself in dreams, weekly dreams in which he would liken the pursuit of V. to a "scholar's quest" . . . yet, upon awakening, discover that his pursuit is "simple-minded, literal," and solely for his own amusement. Stencil, we learn, refers to himself in the third person . Drowsing in Bongo-Shaftsbury's apartment, he examines his sole souvenir of his father's Maltese adventure, a postcard depicting a battle photo of a mustachioed German enlisted man on a stretcher, and Stencil reads the brief message written by his father, Sidney. Young Stencil hadn't responded to the message from his father, and he realizes now that "neither of them had communicated since the picture-postcard." Stencil concludes by contemplating one Porpentine, a one-time colleague of his father's who was murdered in Egypt, and to what extent Porpentine, referred to by "veiled references" in the journals, could foresee his own death --- perhaps to what extent his own father could have foreseen his own death --- but Stencil would "have no real way of telling" without the use of "impersonation and dream." * cf. V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries I ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Impersonation I" (pp.59-62): The section opens on a partly cloudy afternoon at the Place Mohammed Ali, a cafe in Alexandria. The waiter and "amateur libertine" is P. Aieul, who watches his lone customer, an Englishman in tweeds named Porpentine, sip coffee. While Aieul contemplates the nature of tourists in his city, a second Englishman calls Porpentine from across the square and joins him at the table (we later discover that this is Goodfellow). It begins raining. Aieul serves them, and eavesdrops on their conversation, in which he notes the name of "Victoria Wren" and an anarchist plot to assassinate Sir Alastair Wren at a "grand party" at the Austrian Consulate tonight. An envelope is passed between the two Englishmen, who break into verses of an Italian opera before leaving the cafe in separate directions. Aieul falls asleep against the wall, amid dreams of Maryam. About 8 p.m. the rain abates. * cf. V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries II ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Impersonation II" (pp. 62-66): That evening, we meet Yusef, an anarchist kitchen worker and waiter who comes to work at the Austrian Consulate, "temporarily on loan from Hotel Khedival." He engages in friendly cultural "trash talk" with Meknes, leader of the kitchen help, and quickly mans the punch table to ladle out Chablis punch, admire the elegant women, and contemplate the current political situation (involving the English and French presence in the Nile Valley). A balloon-girl holds an empty cup out to him, prompting Yusef to silently question how he'd cope with having to sacrifice the lives of children for "the Cause." Finally, he sees Victoria Wren, and throughout the evening periodically returns to serve her. He watches as she converses with Porpentine, Goodfellow, her sister Mildred, a gray-haired gentleman resembling a street-fighter (Sir Alastair Wren), and eventually Lepsius (in blue-tinted spectacles and a false nose). While carrying five cups of punch, Porpentine trips and falls down the stairs, where he then shares a cigarette and some light laughter with Sir Alastair Wren. >From a distance, Yusef carefully observes these various characters and questions their possible connection to the current political situation. Meknes returns, and exchanges barbs with Yusef once more. * cf. V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries III ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Impersonation III" (pp. 66-74): This section opens at midday in the Fink restaurant, a cafe in Place Mohammed Ali. The reader is introduced to Maxwell Rowley-Bugge (aka Ralph MacBurgess), a penniless English vagrant whose past exploits included performing in England's vaudeville circuits and capturing the hearts of young girls (specifically, one "Alice" --- a ten-year-old who revealed her liaison with the man to a girlfriend, only to have word get to her parents, clergyman, and the local police). Now Old Max wanders in exile about Alexandria in search of tourists, food, money, a place to sleep for the night. As Fink's becomes more crowded, Old Max spies four people who enter: Porpentine, Goodfellow, and the Wren sisters. He engages in winsome conversation at their table, speculating on a variety of things as he does so (the possibility of the restaurant filling with the entire vagrant population of Alexandria, the similarities between his "Alice" and young Mildred, his own exile from the English vaudevillian world), but soon recognizes a disquieting aura about the foursome. Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury suddenly joins them at the table, followed by a German in blue eyeglasses named Lepsius. Old Max carefully observes the others at the table, noting to himself the dialogue, the reactions, the unspoken allegiances among the group. At closing time, Old Max accompanies the others out the door and casually solicits Porpentine for some money, yet turns and walks away as Porpentine holds the money out to him. * cf. V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries IV ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * Notes for these posts were researched in part thru: Thomas Pynchon's V. (1963) http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/v-novel-f.html From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Sun Nov 12 12:15:52 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 12:15:52 -0600 Subject: V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries IV Message-ID: <3A0EDE58.8245DF31@mediaone.net> V.V.(4): Impersonation III --- Notes, Comments, and Queries IV (pp. 66-74) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ~~ Notes: 66.16 --- "The Fink restaurant": restaurant in Place Mohammed Ali, where all of this section takes place. 66.22 --- "feeling the first shooting pains of panic begin to dance about his abdomen": a typical Pynchonesque stylistic device, equating panic (and often paranoia) with defecation, the anus, etc. My personal favorite is Zoyd's "gotta shit throbs of fear" in _Vineland_ (10). What's yours? 66.25 --- "peregrine": one who comes from foreign regions; foreign. 66.27 --- "L'Univers": another cafe in Alexandria. 66.30 --- "Ralph MacBurgess": aka Maxwell Rowley-Bugge; vaudvillian who's "daft for young girls"; his code: "take whatever they give you" (cf. 74.08). 66.30 --- "a young Lochinvar": the hero of a ballad in Scott's _Mfarmion_, who boldly rides off with his sweetheart just as she is about to be married to another. 67.12 --- "Athenaeum Theatre": in Lardwick-in-the-Fen, Yorkshire. http://staff.ndl.co.uk/martin/york/default.asp 67.34 --- "baksheesh": a gratuity or tip in India, Turkey, and/or Egypt. 71.29 --- "since Mr. Flinders Petrie's painstaking inspection of sixteen or seventeen years ago": Petrie, Flinders (1853-1942) was an English archaeologist and, after 1881, exclusively an Egyptologist. He surveyed the pyramids and temples of Giza and was the author of more than 100 books. http://users.net2000.com.au/~fmetrol/petrie/titlepage.html http://www.britannica.com/seo/s/sir-william-matthew-flinders-petrie/ 72.13 --- "Lepsius": a German in a cape and blue eyeglasses, possibly named after Karl Richard Lepsius (1810-84), German Egyptologist and the author of numerous books including _Chronologie der Aegypter_ (which laid the foundation for a scientific treatment of early Egyptian history) and _Todtenbuch_ (the Egyptian Book of the Dead) (1867). http://www.britannica.com/seo/k/karl-richard-lepsius/ http://www.iversonsoftware.com/business/archaeology/Lepsius.htm 72.14 --- "Brindisi": Italian port city where Lepsius has been before turning up in Cairo. ~~ Comments: Pynchon's works often contain scenes that seem to function as mini-parodies of various film and literary genre (e.g. Ninja films, B-movie horror flicks, detective fiction, etc.), and this section is no exception. Indeed, the whole section seems to resonate with sandstone walls and fez caps a'la _Casablanca_ as Old Max sizes up the newcomers as they fill the Fink. The table conversation, with its mysteriously knowing glances, vaguely elliptical discourse, "timed" gestures, and subtle allegiences (all noted as "odd" by Max, who realizes that this "was none of your amateur night"), contributes to the overall search motif found in the previous sections, but enables the author to have some fun with his readers by employing the 1940's Hollywood noir as his narrative method. Another typically Pynonesque device that is found in this section is the man/girl relationship, perhaps best rendered in the Slothrop/Bianca relationship in _GR_. The beginning of this section analeptically reveals Old Max's "unpleasantness in Yorkshire" with ten-year-old Alice in the dressing room of the Athenaeum Theatre (a subtle nod to Nabokov? Lewis Carroll?). The "Alice" motif reinforces the "appearances and deceptions" found in the earlier sections, as Max studies Victoria Wren and her possible similarities to his Alice. It is this "ghost of Alice" that finally contributes in part to his leaving the group at section's end without having accepted Porpentine's money. Finally, one important question remains: what is the significance of the chapter's title, in which Stencil is described as "a quick-change artist [who] does eight impersonations"? Are P. Aieul, Yusef the anarchist, and Old Max mere "impersonations" performed by Stencil in his search for V? Certainly there are suggestions that this might be the case. Mustaches (as disguise) are a staple of old-time Hollywood features, and here they figure prominently in both II and III, recalling Slothrop's own use of a mustache kit as a child (Penguin, 210). Remember as well that in the Prologue, Stencil ponders how "disguise [was employed] not out of any professional necessity but only as a trick, simply to involve him less in the chase" (58.05). Any thoughts on this? Additionally, Aieul, Yusef, and Max all remark on the presence of tourists (most notably, English tourists) in their respective sections, reinforcing the notion that these characters are keenly aware of identities, appearances, and those who "belong." Finally, the presence of a woman (or lack thereof) is a recurring component of all three sections: Aieul questions whether the Englishman in his cafe is "waiting for a lady" (60.05), and distinguishes the name of Victoria Wren in the conversation between Porpentine and Goodfellow; Yusef contemplates his balloon-girl and ladles Chablis punch at the Austrian Consulate, hovering about Victoria Wren and "stray[ing] to her now and again throughout the evening"; Old Max recalls his "Alice" as he joins Porpentine, Goodfellow, and the sisters Wren at their table. Each of these men is perhaps a Stencilian impersonation, for each man assumes a background role in his respective section (waiter, kitchen help, and vagrant), yet each is obviously and keenly preoccupied with "Victoria Wren" and all that regards her (interestingly, note as well that in each successive "impersonation," the Stencilian figure gets physically closer to Victoria). And since the Prologue (which, as you recall, opens with Stencil waking from his weekly dream) portrays him in the final scene "drowsing on the sofa" while examining Sidney's picture postcard, and concludes with Stencil again drifting to dreamstate, the three Impersonations are best viewed as sections of a dream sequence in which Stencil himself enters the "action" of Porpentine's adventures in Egypt. Is Victoria the elusive "V"? I doubt it. That would be too easy, and we all know Pynchon wouldn't make it that easy. Besides, Pynchon's texts always revolve around ambiguities (recall the controversial Holocaust issue in GR some time ago), and for as much as he might lead the reader to think one thing, he soon leads the reader into thinking another (an influence of having read _The Confidence Man_, perhaps?). Is "V" Stencil's mother? Is "V" Victoria? Each is supportable . . . and debateable. ~~ Queries: 1. "[Alice] was C of E, sturdy-English, future mother, apple cheeks, all that" (70.13). I don't get "C of E." Church of England? What significance? 2. Again, note the presence of "eight," this time in the number of "years [Max has spent] in this supranational domain" (68.14). I return to my original question: is there a significance to this number? 3. What do you make of all the references to "tourists" in Chapter Three so far? From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Sun Nov 12 12:17:10 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 12:17:10 -0600 Subject: V.V.(4): Wayward Thoughts, Questions, Observations Message-ID: <3A0EDEA6.F8114095@mediaone.net> It's Saturday night, and I'm spending it with V. As I look over my notations for V.V.(4) one last time (over one more glass of wine, whilst listening to Thelonius Monk), here are some final thoughts, questions, observations, etc., in no particular order: 1. I am still slightly confused about the time of this section: there are references in the Prologue to "young Stencil," so is this an analepsis to shortly after Sidney's death, with Herbert being around 18 years old? Or is the "dream within a dream" situation making this a present-day Stencil dreaming of a young Stencil, who is dreaming? Or am I totally off-base with these speculations? Someone, please clarify! 2. How do characters like Yusef, Goodfellow, and Porpentine fit into the Pynchonesque notion of "anarchists"? Since Pynchon seems to have an affinity for anarchists --- i.e. those who escape or undermine beauracracies, institutions, "the Man" --- how do these guys rank among TRP's other friendly anarchists in his other works? 3. While reading in Impersonation II the references to "spawn of a homosexual camel" and "Menkes, who had returned to describe Yusef's great-great-great grandfather and grandmother as a one-legged mongrel dog who fed on donkey excrement and a syphilitic elephant, respectively," I was reminded vaguely of a reference once to a similar insult/joke formula in African-American culture used in trash-talking (i.e. "your Mama is so ugly . . . blah blah blah"). Any sociologists on the p-list care to comment on this phenomemon, which is probably common to ALL ethnic and racial cultures (I assume, at least)? 4. In each Impersonation, there is liquid and/or food consumption (coffee, Chablis punch, and dinner w/ drinks, respectively). Significance? . . . or do I just need a refill? To paraphrase Thomas E. back in V.V.(1), feel free to take any and all portions of my postings and debate, analyze, justify, refute, qualify, discard, whatever. That's what makes literary discourse worthwhile . . . and fun! : ) All the best, Dedalus From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Sun Nov 12 13:55:26 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 13:55:26 -0600 Subject: V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries I Message-ID: <3A0EF5AE.415FEE02@mediaone.net> V.V.(4): Chapter Three's "Prologue" (pp. 57 - 59) ------------------------------------------------------------- ~~ Notes: 57.01 --- "As spread thighs are to the libertine, flights of migratory birds to the ornithologist, the working part of his tool bit to the production machinist, so was the letter V to young Stencil": visually, each of the objects in this simile looks like a "V." 57.07 --- "in the tradition of _The Golden Bough_ or _The White Goddess_": The former is a book on early cultures and their mythologies written by Sir James George Frazer, published in 1922, described as "essentially a transhistoric, comparative anthropology of folklore, magic, and religion" (St. Martin's); the latter, written by Robert Graves, explores the connection between the human poetic sensibility and the ancient cult-ritual of the White Goddess. Also see posts from the week of 10/20/00 in the archives. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684826305/o/qid=971926053/sr=2-2/102-4694849-3060107 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374504938/o/qid=971926456/sr=2-1/102-4694849-3060107 57.11 --- "venery": sexual indulgence (cf. 59.08 as well). 57.16 --- Margravine di Chiave Lowenstein: friend of Stencil's who lives in a villa on the west coast of Majorca (island in the Mediterranean) in 1946 [The title "Margravine" means "the wife of a margrave," a margrave being a member of the German nobility corresponding in rank to a British marquess]. http://www.arrakis.es/~chanches/talaweb.htm 57.19 --- "alcázar": a Spanish fortress or palace http://www.castles.org/castles/Europe/Western_Europe/Spain/spain.htm 58.10 --- "Henry Adams in the _Education_": A third-person account by Henry Adams in which he recounts his development in thought, considered by many an American classic. Likewise, see posts from the week of 10/20/00 in the archives. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067964010X/o/qid=971926950/sr=2-2/102-4694849-3060107 c.f. Henry Adams: from "Entropy": Henry Adams, three generations before his own, had stared aghast at Power; Callisto found himself now in much the same state over Thermodynamics, the inner life of that power, realizing like his predecessor that the Virgin and the dynamo stand as much for love as for power; that the two are indeed identical; and that love therefore not only makes the world go round but also makes the boccie ball spin, the nebula process. (pp.84-85) http://www.bartleby.com/people/Adams-He.html 58.29 --- Malta: Island republic in the Mediterranean south of Sicily comprised of five small islands. Malta's strategic position on the sea lanes, providing a gateway from the Mediterranean to the Levant, Arabia and Gulf, has made it so desired by major powers over the ages. Under British control from 1800-1964; suffered constant aerial attacks from Italian and German bombers in W.W.II; according to Baedeker's: "composed of tertiary rock formation [the Maltese Islands] lie halfway between the Straits of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal." 59.02 --- "kilted Gordons": According to _Cambridge Biographical Dictionary_: "a Scottish family which takes its origin and name from the lands of Gordon in Berwickshire and whose members became Lords of Strathbogie from 1357, Earls of Huntly from 1445, Marquesses of Huntly from 1599 and Dukes of Gordon from 1684 until 1836, when the title became extinct. Its 157 branches include the Lochinvar line [...]" 59.17 --- "Schleswig-Holstein, Trieste, Sofia": Schleswig-Holstein is a northernmost province of western Germany . . . Trieste is a province in northeastern Italy. After World War II it was a debatable territory with Yugoslavia; the UN constituted a Free Territory which included an Italian zone in the north and a less populous Yugoslav zone in the south; in 1954 it was partitioned by agreement . . . Sofia is the capital of Bulgaria, located between the Rila Mountains and the Balkan Mountains. In the course of its history it has been often plundered and bombarded; during World War II it was occupied by Germany until 1944when it fell to Soviet forces and a communist state was established. ~~ Comments: Much of what drives this opening section of Chapter Three revolves around appearances, around objects and situations not being what they seem. From the opening simile, to the traditional tools that are "somehow in [Stencil's] hands . . . always employed toward mean ends" (58.02), to the "veiled references to Porpentine in the journals" (59.20), Stencil's world is a phantasmal collection of images and situations, populated by characters as slippery and elusive as his own "repertoire of identities." Consequently, Herbert Stencil functions as the antithesis to Benny Profane: whereas Benny's yo-yoing places him in a context of the immediate and concrete, a world filled with inanimate objects that exist "as is," Stencil is a character more in a context of the ambiguous and abstract, a world of illusion and metaphor. Also note that this Prologue begins with Stencil awakening from dreams of his pursuit of V., and concludes with his dozing on a couch and returning to dreams. This section of Chapter Three has subtle parallels to _Hamlet_ regarding the father-son relationship: although the Danish prince respects the memory of his father and proclaims the King "a man, take him for all in all" (I,ii,187), Hamlet still permits the Ghost to influence his actions and state-of-mind. Similarly, Stencil retains the picture-postcard, his "one souvenir of whatever old Sidney's Maltese adventure had been" (58.34) and "realiz[es] that neither of them had communicated since the picture-postcard" (59.10), yet he is drawn to the quest for the identity of V. through "apostolic succession." Of course, unlike Hamlet, who at least has a Ghost as guide, Stencil has "only the veiled references to Porpentine in the journals," and this is what he must use as a basis for his quest for knowledge. Structurally, the "Prologue" to Chapter Three bears similarities to Act II of _Hamlet_ as well. Recall, for instance, that much of Act II centers around people trying to obtain information (i.e. seek forbidden knowledge) through duplicitous means: Polonius sends his man Reynaldo to France to "spy" on his son Laertes; Claudius directs the ill-fated Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to hang with Hamlet and discover the cause of what troubles his "much changed son"; and Hamlet determines to set-up Claudius by arranging the performance of "The Murder of Gonzago." Pynchon, in turn, gives us Stencil, who arrives in Mallorca seeking V., "asking questions, gathering useless memorabilia," and assuring people that "it isn't espionage"; he employs the instruments of spying, yet they are always used "toward mean ends"; his "forcible dislocation of personality" enables him to exercise his "repertoire of identities" ("impersonations"); and his only true lead --- Sidney's journal --- leaves him with only "impersonation and dream" to pursue the knowledge he seeks. In both _Hamlet_ Act II and this section of the Pynchon text, there are lots of appearances and deceptions, all in the name of obtaining information and forbidden knowledge. Stencil's search for V. likewise aligns him firmly with the typical Pynchon "quest" hero, just as Slothrop and Oedipa and Prairie seek some sort of knowledge that proves elusive. Slothrop breaks apart, Oedipa will remain forever in doubt, and Prairie may potentially suffer the same fate as Frenesi. As we continue our group reading of this novel, I invite all of us to watch closely how / if Stencil will obtain the knowledge he seeks, or suffer a frustrated resolution similar to other Pynchon heroes. ~~ Queries: 1. Comment on Pynchon's use of "sleep" as a recurring motif throughout the novel thus far, as well as in this chapter in particular. Do sleep / dreaming seem to serve a particular narrative purpose here? Do they serve a purpose throughout the Pynchon canon? 2. Stencil's tendency to refer to himself in the third person is what he calls a "[f]orcible dislocation of personality" --- i.e. a manipulation of identity. Is Stencil the only character who does this? How is this significant to the "identity" theme of the whole novel? 3. For those of you familiar with GR: how do the eight impersonations of Stencil parallel or reflect the eight identity changes / impersonations of Slothrop throughout GR? Is there a significance to the number "eight" (other than its being TRP's birthday)? 4. How is Stencil similar to other literary figures who seek information in a world of illusions, abstractions, metaphors (e.g. Hamlet, Odysseus, Alice, Ahab, etc.)? Do we see parallels between Stencil and any other such characters? 5. Reread the first two paragraphs of this section. Why is it important that this preoccupation with V. is a dream within a dream? Does this factor add irony to the pursuit of V? Does it enhance the _Hamlet_ parallels by recalling the "play within a play" situation? From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Sun Nov 12 14:03:06 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 14:03:06 -0600 Subject: V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries II Message-ID: <3A0EF77A.880E04C1@mediaone.net> V.V.(4): Impersonation I --- Notes, Comments, and Queries II (pp. 59-62) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~ Notes: 60.01 --- Mohammed Ali: (aka Mehemet) was an officer in the Albanian army who was sent to Egypt on the French invasion of 1798. He became very powerful in Egypt, became viceroy in 1805 and greatly improved the prosperity and military power of Egypt; he improved the harbor and constructed canals, his greatest being the Mahmudiyeh Canal which fertilized anew the environs of Alexandria. http://www.eosinc.com/al-yawmiyaat/MuHammadAliyscroll1.htm 60.06 --- "Alexandria": A port city of northern Egypt, where the Nile River flows into the Mediterranean Sea, on a strip of land between Lake Mareotis and the sea. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, it was the capital of ancient Egypt. http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/alexandria/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sunken/ 60.07 --- "Midi": the south of France 60.09 --- "Baedekers": Baedeker, Karl (1801-1859); the first Baedeker guidebook was published in 1839. http://www.britannica.com/seo/k/karl-baedeker/ cf. _Slow Learner_ : "If [...] you believe that nothing is original, and that all writers 'borrow' from 'sources,' there still remains the question of credit lines or acknowledgments. It wasn't till 'Under the Rose' (1959) that I could bring myself, even indirectly, to credit guidebook eponym Karl Baedeker, whose guide to Egypt for 1899 was the major 'source' for the story. [...] "Loot the Baedeker I did, all the details of a time and place I had never been to, right down to the names of the diplomatic corps" (p.17). "[...] The old Baedeker trick again." (p.21) 60.10 --- "Pharos": 450-foot high lighthouse built by Ptolemy II. Philadephus in 280-279 BC on the island of the same name off Alexandria. One of the seven wonders of the world, it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1375. http://www.greece.org/alexandria/pharos/ http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/ 61.04 --- "macquereau": a pimp; a procurer 61.21 --- "Pazzo son . . . chiedo pieta!" : Italian translates into: "Crazy son! / Look how I am crying and begging . . . How I ask pity!" I'm not an aficionado of Italian opera, but I'm guessing this could be from _La Traviata_, by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). Of course, given Pynchon's penchant for Rossini, therein may lie the key. However, I defer to the more operatic p-listers for confirmation of any of this. http://lascala.milano.it/eng/1994_95/opera/traviata/soggetto.html http://php.indiana.edu/~lneff/libretti/traviata.html 62.15 --- "Hotel Khedival": in Alexandria, across the street from the Austrian Consulate 62.16 --- "rue de Ras-et-Tin": in the Turkish quarter ~~ Comments: This section continues the notion of "appearances" and deception through the introduction of cafe waiter P. Aieul, who is "outwardly inert but teeming inside with sad and philosophical reflections" (60.03). He prefers that the city's tourists allow themselves to "be deceived into thinking the city something more that what their Baedekers said it was" (60.08), and after Goodfellow ("Fat") and Porpentine ("Tweed") leave the cafe, Aieul dozes against the wall, giving himself up --- like young Stencil --- to dreams. This section concludes with references to geometrical shapes and alignments: the equestrian statue stands "horizontal and vertical" (62.03), both figures similar in color "though one hanging back diagonal in deference to his partner" (62.07). The horse and man are further described as "displaceable, like minor chess pieces, anywhere across Europe's board" (62.06). After Fat and Tweed leave Place Mohammed Ali, "[l]ow places in the square filled, the usual random sets of criss-crossing concentric circles mov[ing] across them" (62.22). The entire section has a certain "artistic" aura about it. The characters, the wind and rain, and the overall landscape are described in visual terms like a painting. Sound, language, and music are important to the events Aieul describes. And the activity between Fat and Tweed has a choreographed feel to it, like stage directions or even ballet. Is this intentional? If so, what is the significance? Interestingly, of the three different characters around whom the Impersonations center, P. Aieul seems the least interested in the circumstances he witnesses as he "loung[es] near the entrance to the cafe" (60.03); he possesses a jaded, world weariness quality, and only seems to notice the Victoria Wren et al references out of sheer boredom. Even though he is "teeming inside with sad and philosophical reflections" (60.04), he shows evidence of being annoyed, and even pained, by the two Englishmen (and English tourists in general). ~~ Queries: 1. As Fat and Tweed are preparing to leave the cafe, in the parenthetical paragraph on p. 62, Pynchon (or is it Aieul?) ponders: "might they be trying not to remember that each square in Europe, however you cut it, remains inanimate after all?" Are "they" Fat and Tweed, or the horse and statue? How does that distinction alter the meaning of the question? How does the question reflect previous notions of the "inanimate" that we've explored? How does the point-of-view of the paragraph affect the meaning of the question? 2. There are numerous references to colors (both specific and general) sprinkled throughout this section, as well as the next two sections. Is there a significance in terms of light/dark imagery? How does color imagery function in this work, as well as other works by Pynchon? 3. What evidence do you see that P. Aieul is an "Impersonation" of Stencil's? ~~ Related Links: Egypt: Destination -- Alexandria http://touregypt.net/alex.htm Libya: Our Home http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dr_ibrahim_ighneiwa/ From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Sun Nov 12 14:06:59 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 14:06:59 -0600 Subject: V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries III Message-ID: <3A0EF863.E285B453@mediaone.net> V.V.(4): Impersonation II --- Notes, Comments, and Queries III (pp. 62-66) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~ Notes: 62.25 --- "factotum": a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities 62.25 --- "Hotel Khedival": in Alexandria, across the street from the Austrian Consulate 63.11 --- Kitchener, Sirdar (1850-1916): "England's newest colonial hero"; General Horatio Kitchener, sirdar of the Egyptian army from 1890, led the British army in the Sudan which, in 1898, defeated the army of the Mahdi's successor, the Khalifa, at the Battle of Omdurman. http://www.uq.net.au/~zzrwotto/britmil-bio2.html http://www.britannica.com/seo/h/horatio-herbert-kitchener-kitchener-of-khartoum-and-of-broome-1st-earl/ 63.12 --- "Khartoum": the capital of Sudan, located near the junction of the White Nile and Blue Nile rivers in central Sudan. In 1885 the Mahdists, led by Muhammed Ahmed ibn Abdallah (who had declared himself Mahdi--"the expected one"--in 1881), revolted against Egyptian rule and laid siege to Khartoum, defeating the British forces, led by General Charles Gordon (the Egyptian-appointed governor general of the Sudan). The British were assisting the Egyptians (who controled northern Sudan). A combined British-Egyptian offensive, led by Lord Kitchener, defeated the Mahdists in 1898. The following year Sudan was claimed as a condominium under joint administration of Britain and Egypt. http://i-cias.com/m.s/sudan/khartoum.htm http://www.sudan.net/ 63.14 --- "General Marchand": Frenchman on the White Nile; in July 1898, French General Marchand, coming from the West Coast of Africa, occupied Fashoda, a town (now Kodok) in southeast Sudan, 400 miles south of Khartoum on the White Nile river, in an attempt to control the Upper Nile. Britain, which controlled the area, threatened war and the French withdrew. The next year, the Sudan became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium. 63.16 --- "M. Delcasse": Delcassé, Théophile (1852-1923), Foreign Minister of French Cabinet, 1898-1905, 1914-15. http://www.britannica.com/seo/t/theophile-delcasse/ 63.34 --- "muezzin": Muslim crier who calls the hour of daily prayers 64.10 --- "Victoria. Named after her queen": Queen Victoria (1819-1901), queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and, in 1876, empress of India. She was a staunch conservative who was shrewd and politically savvy. http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~nonsuch/dict/glossary/victoria.htm http://www.victorianstation.com/queen.html 64.21 --- "Levantine": the Levant is the region of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, the lands from Greece to Egypt. http://almashriq.hiof.no/ 64.25 --- "Count Khevenhüller-Metsch": Austrian consul in Alexandria. Recall from my previous post that Pynchon, in his introduction to _Slow Learner_, writes, "Loot the Baedeker I did, all the details of a time and place I had never been to, right down to the names of the diplomatic corps. Who'd make up a name like Khevenhüller-Metsch?" (p.17). 65.10 --- "Mr. Goodfellow": fat Englishman with Porpentine; In David Cowart's _Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Illusion_, the author states, "according to Eric Partridge's _Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English_, 'goodfellow' is Covent Garden slang for 'a vigorous fornicator'" (p.68). 65.23 --- "Tewfik the assassin": the historical Tewfik was a Turkish pasha in Cairo from 1879-92. ~~ Comments: Pynchon resumes his use of body-part imagery in this section --- resumes it with a vengeance: -- "combed his mustaches" -- "Italian breasts were the finest --- ah!" (again with the Italian references!!) -- "the first sneer . . . to ripple across a knowledgeable mouth" -- "gaily-dyed pig's intestine" -- "from the corner of his eye now: miracle" -- "any other cavities you wish filled, my English lady" -- "As thy belly . . . enough" -- "Yusef, whose hands were sticky with Chablis punch, mustache a sad tangle --- he had a habit of unconsciously trimming the ends with his teeth" -- "happened to be in earshot" -- "another man whose face looked sunburned" -- "the blond head" -- "the red face" -- "he held up five fingers" -- "touched the Englishman lightly on one shoulder" -- "eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch" -- "The Englishman's hands had relaxed" -- "He wore blue-tinted spectacles and a false nose" -- "removed the nose, pocketed it and vanished" -- "a one-legged mongrel dog who fed on donkey excrement" I find Pynchon's use of body-part imagery interesting, if only for the simple fact that it is used sporadically throughout the work, in waves. It's been a whole chapter and a half since we saw it used with such deliberation, and now its use fills the entire section. Unlike other writers of literary merit, who employ imagery evenly throughout a work, Pynchon seems to use it heavily for a section or two, drop it completely for another, then resume. Is this the mark of unevenness and literary "flaw" in a typical first novel, or is there a significance to it? ~ Related Links: MELA Notes 64 (Spring, 1997) http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Area.Programs/Near.East/rev64.htm From keith at pfmentum.com Sun Nov 12 14:28:39 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 12:28:39 -0800 Subject: V.V.(4): Wayward Thoughts, Questions, Observations Message-ID: <000e01c04ce7$27e74c40$8b3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> This V.V. has elicited excellent hosting. Thanks Ded. From monroe at mpm.edu Sun Nov 12 15:02:54 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 15:02:54 -0600 Subject: O'Donnell, Latent Destinies Message-ID: <3A0F057E.D81C76DC@mpm.edu> Just got my copy of Patrick O'Donnell, Latent Destinies: Cultural Paranoia and Contemporary U.S. Narrative (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000), which Doug kindly brought to our attention here recently. Handy hyperlink: http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi O'Donnell is the guy what edited that very nice anthology, New Essays on the Crying of Lot 49, for Cambridge UP a while back, and, of course, there's a little something on TCOL49 (not to mention Libra, Empire of the Senseless, JFK, Reservoir Dogs, Underworld, and so forth) in LD as well. Won't excerpt it here, seeing as we're ostensibly on V., but a nifty little discussion of that "mattress/matrix" (which O'D rounds out with "mat(t)ter") apres Jean-Joseph Goux (Symbolic Economies). The only problem is, my copy abruptly jumps back to p. 133 after p. 164 (i.e., to the penultimate chapter in the midst of the endnotes to the first chapter). Wouldn't be so bad, except that it ONLY gets so far as p. 164 again. Have contacted Duke UP ... From millison at online-journalist.com Sun Nov 12 14:11:19 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 13:11:19 -0700 Subject: CIA Shrinks and LSD Message-ID: http://www.counterpunch.org/ciashrinks.html ...echoes of Slothrop's drugged interrogation, perhaps? -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From trailerman44 at hotmail.com Sun Nov 12 16:25:23 2000 From: trailerman44 at hotmail.com (J L) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 22:25:23 GMT Subject: V.V.(4) MacBurgess Message-ID: the name, if not the character, has got to be a conglomeration of MacLean & Burgess; big names in the long & shady history of English spookdom. MacLean, indeed, did much of his spying while at the British Embassy in Cairo, between 1948 and his speedy departure to Moscow along with Burgess who had warned him that his cover was blown. Incidentally - you americans who seem in such a fuss about the state of your democracy should note that your FBI/FOIA documents on the subject are still the best source of information available to a British citizen. Thanks very much for : http://www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel/philby.html JL _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From trailerman44 at hotmail.com Sun Nov 12 16:39:18 2000 From: trailerman44 at hotmail.com (J L) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 22:39:18 GMT Subject: V.V.(4) playlist addition Message-ID: ( - scrabbling to be first to suggest: ) Listening Wind [Talking Heads] -------------------------------- Mojique sees his village from a nearby hill Mojique thinks of days before Americans came He sees the foreigners in growing numbers He sees the foreigners in fancy houses He thinks of days that he can still remember...now. Mojique holds a package in his quivering hands Mojique sends the package to the American man Softly he glides along the streets and alleys Up comes the wind that makes them run for cover He feels the time is surely now or never...more. The wind in my heart The wind in my heart The dust in my head The dust in my head The wind in my heart The wind in my heart (Come to) Drive them away Drive them away. Mojique buys equipment in the market place Mojique plants devices in the free trade zone He feels the wind is lifting up his people He calls the wind to guide him on his mission He knows his friend the wind is always standing...by. Mojique smells the wind that comes from far away Mojique waits for news in a quiet place He feels the presence of the wind around him He feels the power of the past behind him He has the knowledge of the wind to guide him...on. The wind in my heart The wind in my heart The dust in my head The dust in my head The wind in my heart The wind in my heart (Come to) Drive them away Drive them away. JL _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From trailerman44 at hotmail.com Sun Nov 12 16:59:24 2000 From: trailerman44 at hotmail.com (J L) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 22:59:24 GMT Subject: V.V.(4) Hamlet Message-ID: dedalus (snipped): >This section of Chapter Three has subtle parallels to _Hamlet_ good call. from Act I Scene V. (natch) : Ghost: I am thy father's spirit, Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confin'd to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand an end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love JL _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From trailerman44 at hotmail.com Sun Nov 12 17:43:06 2000 From: trailerman44 at hotmail.com (J L) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 23:43:06 GMT Subject: V.V.(4) siege of Mallorca Message-ID: see : http://libro.uca.edu/socwar/sw2.htm ; http://mallorca.balearics.com/lester.html ; and : http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/majorca.html JL ps// an aside brought on by some Grail Quest talk (again) here lately -- to me the most familiar usage of the other meaning of 'siege' (ME f.OF *sege*) is the Siege Perilous: the seat at the Round Table reserved for the Chosen quester. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Sun Nov 12 17:50:53 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 23:50:53 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Some recommendations and a couple of queries In-Reply-To: Message-ID: jUst read 'Maldoror' by Lautreamont. Interesting (Stephen Daedelus gets mildly infatuated with the Marquis de Sade and writes Thus Spake Zathustra), but I'm not sure whether its good or just rubbish. You also might like to check out "Kid A", the new Radiohead album. NOt just an excellent record it even comes complete with its own Pynchon reference. I'll leave you guys to see if you can spot it... And now the queries: - what's with the playlist? - can anyone give me any information on the writer William Gaddis? Oh, and my favourite shit-as-fear moment is probably the toilet scene from Gravity's Rainbow (the bit with the shoe-shine boy). goodnight all, Mark From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 12 18:19:01 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 19:19:01 -0500 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 References: <3A0DE855.B3D3D643@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A0F3375.D39C1E22@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: > > Second, Terrence, do feel free to elaborate what you might think the > relevance of Heidegger to Pynchon might be. I obviously think there's a > connection, but it's an intuition at best. That "lifedeath" thing, > first off, and the critique of Nietzsche (at least as elaborated by > Krell), but, I must admit, my Heidegger is tenuous. Have, however, been > thinking about Mondaugen ("moon-eyes"?) and Heidegger's "The Age of the > World Picture." That point of view thing, the world as pictured from, > say, the moon ... First, I have not read David Farrell Krell, Contagion: Sexuality, Disease and Death in German Idealism and Romanticism. Second, I can't commit to hosting it but I plan to post lots on Mondaugen when we get to Mondaugen's Story. You posted From David Farrell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992), Chapter Seven, "Lifedeath: Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud" (pp. 217-51). Sounds very interesting, no time Third, I'm not sure what to elaborate on, to ? How about the Clock & the Street Lamp? If my memory is working better than the rest of me, I think I remember that in his early thinking Heidegger admitted to a difference between a world that is merely present and a world that announces its usefulness. I'll skip Heidegger's classic example of the hammer, being a carpenter I like that example, but for V., the clock and the lamp will do fine. In Being And Time the Clocks and the Street Lamps reveal a purpose in nature: the moving circle of time, the cycle of light and darkness, and the human need to keep track of the former so that humans may manipulate the latter. But it is the change or refinement in Heidegger's ideas that your quotes seem to be addressing, I think, that life-death and question of telos theme. First though, a little fun: From Eliot's poem Rhapsody On A Windy Night and Mumford's Techincs and Civilization. Not feeling like fun, you may skip over to Heidegger. Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium. Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, "Regard that woman Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. --T.S. Eliot "The application of quantitative methods of thought to the study of nature had its first manifestation in the regular measurement of time; and the new mechanical conception of time arose in part out of the routine of the monastery. Alfred Whitehead has emphasized the importance of the scholastic belief in the universe ordered by God as one of the foundations of modern physics: but behind that belief was the presence of order in the institutions of the Church itself." --Mumford, Technics and Civilization The Benedictines, the working order, were, according to Coulton, Sombart, others, the original founders of modern Capitalism. Mumfords says, they "gave human enterprise the regular collective beat and rhythm of the machine Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions." Stencil's WORK, his quest is NOT Puritan (Weber, Brown, Marcuse, Puritan Capitalism, Calvanism vs. Catholicism and how about Anabaptism-Chapter Two of V. and Limbo?). Damned this pagination problem, V.HP(the 99 Classics). 50 or Chapter Two part II, about 12 paragraphs in. Back to Heidegger now and his changes, where later in his life Heidegger admitted that the concept of technology is much, much bigger than the way in which instruments announce their functions. How big is much, much bigger? Well, technology, Heidegger concluded, was so big that it circumscribed the ways in which we live, all contemporary ways of living and Knowing. Technology is said by Heidegger to enframe (Ge-stell) all of modern life. What Heidegger sees is that technology is so pervasive, so big and powerful (how many clocks have you got in your house? and have you one on your person now? and ubiquitous, powerful, important, Big), that is relates to nature in a fundamentally different way, even to the point where it becomes impossible to consider nature outside of the bounds of this big, enframing, technology. What are the implications of this? There are many, and here it will difficult not to oversimplify and piss some people off or introduce a bunch of Heidegger's terms and their translations ..but Heidegger considered this enveloping of the world by technology as a stage in preparation of human fulfillment that has always been with us and a revealing of the earth, to "set free unto its own prescensing." The release of the Earth unto itself ( this is one area of interest, we can get into the role of language and revealing, and what Pynchon says about this), is accomplished with language, it is through language that nature is revealed to Man and it also through language that nature is transformed into material. For Heidegger, technology is neither an instrument of freedom nor an object alien to being human. Instrumentality unveils aspects of nature. The clock, the lamp reveal, the human makes, even Katje's windmills reveals that the wind may turn wheels of stone to grind grain. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 12 18:19:15 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 19:19:15 -0500 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 References: <3A0DE855.B3D3D643@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A0F3383.5BC9C92E@earthlink.net> I am reminded here of Seamus Heaney's poem "Digging", where the spade cutting the earth reveals the poetic in the earth and the movement of the spade and the man are what to Heidegger would be a primordial activity that becomes more intuitive, an extension of the human, with time and proficiency, but for Heidegger the spade also discloses the rich black soil below the surface of the earth's crust, reveals what is inherently earth and may be of use to humans, but the tool, the spade here is involved in a direct interaction between Man (in this example, Heaneys's Father digging) and a specific natural feature of the earth. "Digging" Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests: snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. ... The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it. 1966 from "Death of a Naturalist" --Seamus Heaney However, when it comes to Modern Technology, the interaction is quite different. In the Modern world we extract energy (oil, although thinking of Heaney's father again, Potatoes are fuel for the rocket, or booze for an Irish wake) from the earth. We put it in a big tanks, store it for use at another time, war perhaps. Nature was once thought of as the energy we needed to live, the womb that brings life, the goddess that we can suck from, but with the modern technological perspective, the earth is not the women buried in the earth in GR, the energy flowing with lifedeath fecundity, but a source of this energy, this new energy, needed for war and survival. An energy source, a material trasnformed, and thus now having a meaning apart from nature. We remove it, we move it, store it, and plan with it how we will transform it and use it to transform. The rivers, most of the rivers in the world, are no longer considered as the course of water, the life system, the dynamic landscape and so on, but are now considered for what or how much they can generate, how that energy, with the language of gigawatts say, may be stored, moved. The impact, one of them any way, is progression of human concerns as viewed from (perhaps the only perspective allowed or available to humans?) the human perspective enframed. Perspective: "Construct an elevator from the elevator's point of view." Wouldn't that be the perfect elevator? Wouldn't that be that black box?" --Colson Whitehead's Intuitionist Heidegger is careful not to condemn human making itself. It is the enframing essence of technology that he rails against, the way in which we have constructed; a way that endangers other ways of constructing because it works so well unto itself. The comprehensive enframing forecloses the possibility of conceiving of or discovering its own limitations within the huge confines circumscribing modern life and knowing. We don't learn from Heidegger how it is that technology took the steps from directly revealing the forces of nature to transforming what those forces mean by placing them in a new framework of the resources extracted, stored, retrieved. What brought about enframing? Was it a sudden blaze, a standing erect? What? He doesn't say, GR says, Nature is locked up (JAMF) behind a doors and the only key we can use to open the doors to nature are those keys that open nature to use, we cannot discover nature, it's "shining forth", "its truth", and besides, in Pynchon we have locks without keys because we toss anything of value, the keys overboard or forget them, like Bianca. Its as if the technology of Modern life, the microscope or the particle accelerator and the telescope or the Hubble deny, because of their powerful, pervasive, success, their Bigness, the uncertainty, the faith we might say, the magic, the Intuitionist's perspective, required for other less verifiable modes of apprehending the world. "The sense of historic importance is the intuition of the universe as everlasting process, unfading in its deistic unity of ideals." --Alfred Whitehead From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 12 18:39:56 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 19:39:56 -0500 Subject: Dickens and novel that never ends Message-ID: <3A0F385C.571CC592@earthlink.net> Agree or disagree with James Wood, I can't imagine too many here agreeing with his asseessment of Pynchon, he says a lot in support of his critical and political arguments that make good sense. He is correct to name Dickens as the Master influence on the so called big postmodern novel. A genre is hardening. It is becoming easy to describe the contemporary idea of the "big, ambitious novel." Familial resemblances are asserting themselves, and a parent can be named: he is Dickens. Such recent novels as The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Mason & Dixon, Underworld, Infinite Jest, and now White Teeth overlap rather as the pages of an atlas expire into each other at their edges... Dickens, of course, is the great master of the leitmotif. Many of Dickens's characters are, as Forster rightly put it, flat but vibrating very fast. They are vivid blots of essence. They are souls seen only through thick, gnarled casings. Their vitality is a histrionic one. Dickens has been the overwelming influence on postwar fiction, especially postwar British fiction. There is hardly a writer who has not been touched by him: Angus Wilson and Muriel Spark, Martin Amis's robust gargoyles, Rushdie's outsize chararacters, the intensely theatrical Angela Carter, the Naipaul of A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Pritchett' s cocky salesmen, and now Zadie Smith. In America, Bellow's genius for grotesquerie and for vivid external description owes something to Dickens. And what is Underworld but an old-fashioned Dickensian novel like Bleak House, with an ambition to describe all of society on its different levels? One obvious reason for the popularity of Dickens among contemporary novelists is that his way of creating and propelling theatrically alive characters offers an easy model for writers unable, or unwilling, to create characters who are fully human. Dickens's world seems to be populated by vital simplicities. He shows a novelist how to get a character launched, if not how to keep him afloat, and this glittering liveliness is simply easier to copy, easier to figure out... Put bluntly, Dickens makes caricature respectable for an age in which, for various reasons, it has become hard to create character. Dickens licenses the cartoonish, coats it in the surreal, or even the Kafkaesque (the Circumlocution Office). Indeed, to be fair to contemporary novelists, Dickens shows that a large part of characterization is merely the management of caricature. Yet that is not all there is in Dickens, which is why most contemporary novelists are only his morganatic heirs. There is in Dickens also an immediate access to strong feeling, which rips the puppetry of his people, breaks their casings, and lets us enter them. Mr. Micawber may be a caricature, a simple, univocal essence, but he feels, and he makes us feel. One recalls that very passionate and simple sentence, in which David Copperfield tells us: "Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his room, and cried very much." It is difficult to find a single moment like that in all the many thousands of pages of the big, ambitious, contemporary books--difficult to imagine the possibility of such a sentence ever occurring amid the coils of knowingness and the latest information. See James Wood, The smallness of the "big" novel.. , The New Republic, 07-24-2000. From jbor at bigpond.com Mon Nov 13 01:26:33 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 18:26:33 +1100 Subject: V.V.(4) "under the rose" (23.24) Message-ID: <07151790610424@domain0.bigpond.com> I think this chapter is interesting in terms of the development of Pynchon's aesthetic vision. The transformation of the story 'Under the Rose' (written '59, publ. '61) -- which is a Pynchonian transformation rather than a Stencillic one I think -- and the way that Goodfellow, Porpentine ("Fat" and "Tweed" indeed!) and the rest of the "spy/tourists" have become little more than comic buffoons (the character Moldweorp disappears entirely, removing the dignifying element of gentlemanly enemy/camaraderie), demonstrates the transition from a colonial to a post-colonial perspective in Pynchon's fiction. In the early story the straight 3rd person narrative focuses exclusively on Porpentine et. al.; in the recasting of the narrative in *V.* this drama is subsidiary to the daily lives and thoughts of the locals who observe their absurd machinations. In fact, without the early story it would be quite difficult for the reader to piece together the course of events in the espionage scenario at all: by downplaying the Eurocentricism the historical significance is also devalued. For example, in 'Under the Rose' Porpentine is merely "leery of the sun", and his ultimate demise is tragic, heroic. But in *V.* he is a ridiculous sunburnt fool (65.21 , 83.4up , 91.7 ), his death pointless and absurd. Goodfellow actually throws a bomb ("though it proved of course to be a dud") in the story; in *V.* he only thinks about it. (91.5up) The mention of Sarajevo in the early story, a seeming afterthought which serves to promote traditional historiographical presumptions about cause and effect and the preeminence of Western diplomacy, and which serves to lionize Goodfellow somewhat, is deleted in the novel. In many respects the telling in *V.* is actually a parody of the events described in 'Under the Rose'. While it may be that Stencil has chosen his "eight impersonations" in a quest for greater objectivity -- impartiality, detachment -- what he does not realise is that in taking on these guises, in giving each of these "irrelevant" character/observers a voice and a perspective, he has actually, and unintentionally, compromised both the integrity and the significance of the tale; these characters and their travails encroach on the "action" which is purportedly central to the narrative, and which would have been all that his father's journals contained, to the point of virtual extinguishment. Backdrop has become foreground. The various narrators' attitudes -- their obliviousness, indifference or outright antipathy to the events they witness -- are conveyed to the reader. The conclusions about "history" which the reader draws from Stencil's second- or even third-hand fantasies are quite different from those which Stencil is ostensibly formulating and following up; certainly they are far removed from old Sidney's original purpose in writing it all down in the first place. This transformation exemplifies a distinct shift in Pynchon's historicism as well (given voice most explicitly by Gebrail the carriage driver at 83.6-25. Here, rather than in Porpentine's plight, in the fear of Fashoda, or in Kitchener and Khartoum, does Pynchon's prose soar.) The premonition Benny has about that certain "something ... going on under the rose, maybe for longer and with more people than he would care to think about" (23.24) is exactly what Pynchon is alerting the reader to here. All the melodramas and infidelities of European diplomacy mean nought: life, for waiters, barmaids and carriage drivers in Egypt, as much as for the European spies and diplomats they serve, goes on regardless. History is much more than simply the chronology of an elite, some Baedeker-tour, and it does not exist independently of interpretation. best ps: Anyone else finding the pace of this reading incredibly slow? From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Mon Nov 13 06:35:19 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 13:35:19 +0100 Subject: vv (4): adepts only Message-ID: <13vIpT-12FfWPC@fwd03.sul.t-online.com> " ... in which stencil, a quick-change artist, does eight impersonations" (61) kabbalistically, the number 8 refers to the sephirah hod (- mercury, "splendor", elohim tsevaoth). a seeker under the influence?! the formulation "quick-change artist" does fit quite well to the sphere's qualities, which are associated with communication, travelling, cheating (- "impersonations"!) and the arts of hermes ... the v-ness stencil is searching for, refers obviously to venus & thus to the sephirah netzach (- venus, "v[!]ictory", 7, jehova tsevaoth). the path connecting these two sephiroth is embodied through the tarot atu xvi: the tower, a card we talked about a little in the context of weissmann's tarot. in his overrated book waite reports that someone named dr. papus thinks the tower is signifyin(g) the fall of wo/man ... kfl From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Mon Nov 13 06:35:14 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 13:35:14 +0100 Subject: V.V.(4): Wayward Thoughts, Questions, Observations References: <3A0EDEA6.F8114095@mediaone.net> Message-ID: <13vIpO-12FfWKC@fwd03.sul.t-online.com> Dedalus schrieb: > 3. While reading in Impersonation II the references to "spawn of a > homosexual camel" and "Menkes, who had returned to describe Yusef's > great-great-great grandfather and grandmother as a one-legged mongrel > dog who fed on donkey excrement and a syphilitic elephant, > respectively," I was reminded vaguely of a reference once to a similar > insult/joke formula in African-American culture used in trash-talking > (i.e. "your Mama is so ugly . . . blah blah blah"). > Any sociologists on > the p-list care to comment on this phenomemon, which is probably common > to ALL ethnic and racial cultures (I assume, at least)? homo ludens ... From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Mon Nov 13 06:35:17 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 13:35:17 +0100 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 References: <3A0DE855.B3D3D643@mpm.edu> <3A0F3375.D39C1E22@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <13vIpR-12FfWNC@fwd03.sul.t-online.com> flaherty, playing ping-pong with dave "the world is a classroom" monroe: > Back to Heidegger now and his changes, where later in his > life Heidegger admitted that the concept of technology is > much, much bigger than the way in which instruments announce > their functions. How big is much, much bigger? Well, > technology, Heidegger concluded, was so big that it > circumscribed the ways in which we live, all contemporary > ways of living and Knowing. Technology is said by Heidegger > to enframe (Ge-stell) all of modern life. What Heidegger > sees is that technology is so pervasive, so big and powerful > (how many clocks have you got in your house? and have you > one on your person now? and ubiquitous, powerful, important, > Big), that is relates to nature in a fundamentally different > way, even to the point where it becomes impossible to > consider nature outside of the bounds of this big, > enframing, technology. > > What are the implications of this? There are many, and here > it will difficult not to oversimplify and piss some people > off or introduce a bunch of Heidegger's terms and their > translations .. here, here! right on, folks, i'm watching you ... kfl From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Mon Nov 13 06:35:15 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 13:35:15 +0100 Subject: V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries I References: <3A0EF5AE.415FEE02@mediaone.net> Message-ID: <13vIpP-12FfWLC@fwd03.sul.t-online.com> Dedalus schrieb: > 1. Comment on Pynchon's use of "sleep" as a recurring motif throughout > the novel thus far, as well as in this chapter in particular. Do sleep > / dreaming seem to serve a particular narrative purpose here? Do they > serve a purpose throughout the Pynchon canon? well, sleeping seems to be a mindless pleasure of the every day kind. kfl From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Mon Nov 13 06:35:16 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 13:35:16 +0100 Subject: V.V.(4) playlist addition References: Message-ID: <13vIpQ-12FfWMC@fwd03.sul.t-online.com> "... & wild is the wind" ... david bowie J L schrieb: > ( - scrabbling to be first to suggest: ) > > Listening Wind [Talking Heads] > -------------------------------- > > Mojique sees his village from a nearby hill > Mojique thinks of days before Americans came > He sees the foreigners in growing numbers > He sees the foreigners in fancy houses > He thinks of days that he can still remember...now. > > Mojique holds a package in his quivering hands > Mojique sends the package to the American man > Softly he glides along the streets and alleys > Up comes the wind that makes them run for cover > He feels the time is surely now or never...more. > > The wind in my heart > The wind in my heart > The dust in my head > The dust in my head > The wind in my heart > The wind in my heart > (Come to) Drive them away > Drive them away. > > Mojique buys equipment in the market place > Mojique plants devices in the free trade zone > He feels the wind is lifting up his people > He calls the wind to guide him on his mission > He knows his friend the wind is always standing...by. > > Mojique smells the wind that comes from far away > Mojique waits for news in a quiet place > He feels the presence of the wind around him > He feels the power of the past behind him > He has the knowledge of the wind to guide him...on. > > The wind in my heart > The wind in my heart > The dust in my head > The dust in my head > The wind in my heart > The wind in my heart > (Come to) Drive them away > Drive them away. > > > > JL > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Mon Nov 13 06:35:18 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 13:35:18 +0100 Subject: vv (4): oath of the counterforce (--- a holy swine song sample) Message-ID: <13vIpS-12FfWOC@fwd03.sul.t-online.com> "anarchist and no one's fool." (66) anarchist and no one's fool/ caring but still keeping cool/ mindless pleasures (- ain't no rule)/ this kazoo is my magickal tool! this is to be sung after the refrain of - hey man, the best song! - "ain't no mountain high enough". of course there have to be some real weird kazoo samples, growing louder with the last line; i imagine them somehow to be like that peculiar synthe-flute sound in the very end of eminem's "the real slim shady" (- starting at 03:50). now everybody --- kfl From fqmorris at hotmail.com Mon Nov 13 08:35:46 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 08:35:46 CST Subject: V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries IV Message-ID: >From: Dedalus > >66.25 --- "peregrine": one who comes from foreign regions; foreign. > http://www.yourdictionary.com/cgi-bin/mw.cgi Main Entry: 1per.e.grine Pronunciation: 'per-&-gr&n, -"grEn Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin peregrinus, from Latin, foreign -- more at PILGRIM Date: 14th century : having a tendency to wander Main Entry: 2peregrine Function: noun Date: 1555 : a swift nearly cosmopolitan falcon (Falco peregrinus) that is much used in falconry -- called also peregrine falcon _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Mon Nov 13 09:09:31 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 09:09:31 CST Subject: V.V.(4) "under the rose" (23.24) Message-ID: >From: "jbor" > >ps: Anyone else finding the pace of this reading incredibly slow? Yes, but that's OK. "Liesurely" might be the right term. But it does get mightly quiet near the end of each VV section. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From ghoshlaw at hotmail.com Mon Nov 13 09:25:20 2000 From: ghoshlaw at hotmail.com (Shubha Ghosh) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 10:25:20 EST Subject: Pynchon and Law Symposium Message-ID: I was curious about responses to the Pynchon and Law symposium published in the Oklahoma City Law Review earlier this year. I worked as the editor fo the volume and wrote the introductory essay. I was curious in getting people's honest reactions and also to further the discussion about Pynchon's relationship to legal theory. Shubha Ghosh _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sat Nov 11 11:04:28 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 12:04:28 -0500 Subject: Dickens and novel that never ends Message-ID: <3A0D7C1C.54014BBE@earthlink.net> A genre is hardening. It is becoming easy to describe the contemporary idea of the "big, ambitious novel." Familial resemblances are asserting themselves, and a parent can be named: he is Dickens. Such recent novels as The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Mason & Dixon, Underworld, Infinite Jest, and now White Teeth overlap rather as the pages of an atlas expire into each other at their edges. A landscape is disclosed- -lively and varied and brightly marked, but riven by dead gullies. The big contemporary novel is a perpetual-motion machine that appears to have been embarrassed into velocity. It seems to want to abolish stillness, as if ashamed of silence--as it were, a criminal running endless charity marathons. Stories and sub-stories sprout on every page, as these novels continually flourish their glamorous congestion. Inseparable from this culture of permanent storytelling is the pursuit of vitality at all costs. Indeed, vitality is storytelling, as far as these books are concerned. If, say, a character is introduced in London, call him Toby Awknotuby (that is, "To be or not to be"--ha! ) then we will be swiftly told that he has a twin in Delhi (called Boyt, which is an anagram of Toby, of course), who, like Toby, has the same very curious genital deformation, and that their mother belongs to a religious cult based, oddly enough, in the Orkney Islands, and that their father (who was born at the exact second that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima) has been a Hell's Angel for the last thirteen years (but a very curious Hell's Angels group it is, devoted only to the fanatical study of late Wordsworth), and that Toby's mad left- wing aunt was curiously struck dumb when Mrs. Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979 and has not spoken a word since. And all this, over many pages, before poor Toby Awknotuby has done a thing, or thought a thought! Is this a caricature, really? Recent novels--veritable relics of St. Vitus--by Rushdie, Pynchon, DeLillo, Foster Wallace, and others, have featured a great rock musician who, when born, began immediately to play air guitar in his crib (Rushdie); a talking dog, a mechanical duck, a giant octagonal cheese, and two clocks having a conversation (Pynchon); a nun called Sister Edgar who is obsessed with germs and who may be a reincarnation of J. Edgar Hoover, and a conceptual artist painting retired B-52 bombers in the New Mexico desert (DeLillo); a terrorist group devoted to the liberation of Quebec called the Wheelchair Assassins, and a film so compelling that anyone who sees it dies (Foster Wallace). Zadie Smith's novel features, among other things: a terrorist Islamic group based in North London with a silly acronym (kevin), an animal-rights group called fate, a Jewish scientist who is genetically engineering a mouse, a woman born during an earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1907; a group of Jehovah's Witnesses who think that the world is ending on December 31, 1992; and twins, one in Bangladesh and one in London, who both break their noses at about the same time. This is not magical realism. It is hysterical realism. Storytelling has become a kind of grammar in these novels; it is how they structure and drive themselves on. The conventions of realism are not being abolished but, on the contrary, exhausted, and overworked. Appropriately, then, objections are not made at the level of verisimilitude, but at the level of morality: this style of writing is not to be faulted because it lacks reality--the usual charge against botched realism- -but because it seems evasive of reality while borrowing from realism itself. It is not a cock-up, but a cover-up. One is reminded of Kierkegaard's remark that travel is the way to avoid despair. For all these books share a bonhomous, punning, lively serenity of spirit. Their mode of narration seems to be almost incompatible with tragedy or anguish. Indeed, Underworld, the darkest of these books, carries within itself, in its calm profusion of characters and plots, its flawless carpet of fine prose on page after page, a soothing sense that it might never have to end, that another thousand or two thousand pages might easily be added. There are many enemies, seen and unseen, in Underworld, but silence is not one of them. The optimism of all this "vitality" is shared by many readers, apparently. Again and again, one sees books such as these praised for being cabinets of wonders. Bright lights are taken as evidence of habitation. The mere existence of a giant cheese or a cloned mouse or several different earthquakes in a novel is seen as meaningful or wonderful, evidence of great imaginative powers. And this is because too often these features are mistaken for scenes, as if they constituted the movement or the toil or the pressure of the novel, rather than taken for what they are--props of the imagination, meaning's toys. The existence of vitality is mistaken for the drama of vitality. What are these stories evading? One of the awkwardnesses evaded is precisely an awkwardness about the possibility of novelistic storytelling. This in turn has to do with an awkwardness about character and the representation of character. Stories, after all, are generated by human beings, and it might be said that these recent novels are full of inhuman stories, whereby that phrase is precisely an oxymoron, an impossibility, a wanting it both ways. By and large, these are not stories that could never happen (as, say, a thriller is often something that could never happen); rather, they clothe real people who could never actually endure the stories that happen to them. They are not stories in which people defy the laws of physics (obviously, one could be born in an earthquake); they are stories which defy the laws of persuasion. This is what Aristotle means when he says that in storytelling "a convincing impossibility" (say, a man levitating) is always preferable to "an unconvincing possibility" (say, the possibility that a fundamentalist group in London would continue to call itself kevin). And what above all makes these stories unconvincing is precisely their very profusion, their relatedness. One cult is convincing; three cults are not. Novels, after all, turn out to be delicate structures, in which one story judges the viability, the actuality, of another. Yet it is the relatedness of these stories that their writers seem most to cherish, and to propose as an absolute value. An endless web is all they need for meaning. Each of these novels is excessively centripetal. The different stories all intertwine, and double and triple on themselves. Characters are forever seeing connections and links and plots, and paranoid parallels. (There is something essentially paranoid about the belief that everything is connected to everything else.) These novelists proceed like street-planners of old in South London: they can never name a street Ruskin Street without linking a whole block, and filling it with Carlyle Street, and Turner Street, and Morris Street, and so on. Near the end of White Teeth, one of the characters, Irie Jones, has sex with one of the twins, called Millat; but then rushes round to see the other twin, called Magid, to have sex with him only moments after. She becomes pregnant; and she will never know which twin impregnated her. But it is really Smith's hot plot which has had its way with her. In Underworld, everything and everyone is connected in some way to paranoia and to the nuclear threat. The Ground Beneath Her Feet suggests that a deep structure of myth, both Greek and Indian, binds all the characters together. And White Teeth ends with a clashing finale, in which all the novel's characters- -most of whom are now dispersed between various cults and fanatical religious groups--head toward the press conference which the scientist, Marcus Chalfen, is delivering in London, to announce the successful cloning of his mouse. Alas, since the characters in these novels are not really alive, not fully human, their connectedness can only be insisted on. Indeed, the reader begins to think that it is being insisted on precisely because they do not really exist. Life is never experienced with such a fervid intensity of connectedness. After all, hell is other people, actually: real humans disaggregate more often than they congregate. So these novels find themselves in the paradoxical position of enforcing connections that are finally conceptual rather than human. The forms of these novels tell us that we are all connected--by the Bomb (DeLillo), or by myth (Rushdie), or by our natural multiracial multiplicity (Smith); but it is a formal lesson rather an actual enactment. An excess of storytelling has become the contemporary way of shrouding, in majesty, a lack; it is the Sun King principle. That lack is the human. All these contemporary deformations flow from a crisis that is not only the fault of the writers concerned, but is now of some lineage: the crisis of character, and how to represent it in fiction. Since modernism, many of the finest writers have been offering critique and parody of the idea of character, in the absence of convincing ways to return to an innocent mimesis. Certainly, the characters who inhabit the big, ambitious contemporary novels have a showy liveliness, a theatricality, that almost succeeds in hiding the fact that they are without life: liveliness hangs off them like jewelry. This is less true of Zadie Smith than of Rushdie; her principal characters move in and out of human depth. Sometimes they seem to provoke her sympathy, at other times they are only externally comic. But watch what she does with one of the many bit-parts in this large and inventive book. Smith is describing the founder of kevin, the fundamentalist Islamic group based in North London. She tells us that he was born Monty Clyde Benjamin in Barbados in 1960, "the son of two poverty- stricken barefoot Presbyterian dypsomaniacs," and converted to Islam at the age of fourteen. At eighteen, he fled Barbados for Riyadh, where he studied the Koran at Al-Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University. He was five years there, but he became disillusioned with the teaching, and returned to England in 1984. In Birmingham, he locked himself in his aunt's garage and spent five more years in there, with only the Qur'an and the fascicles of Endless Bliss for company. He took his food in through the cat-flap, deposited his shit and piss in a Coronation biscuit tin and passed it back out the same way, and did a thorough routine of press-ups and sit-ups to prevent muscular atrophy. The Selly Oak Reporter wrote regular bylines on him during this period, nicknaming him `The Guru in the Garage' (in view of the large Birmingham Muslim population, this was thought preferable to the press-desk favoured suggestion, `The Loony in the Lock-Up') and had their fun interviewing his bemused aunt, one Carlene Benjamin, a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Clearly, Smith does not lack for powers of invention. The problem is that there is too much of it. The passage might stand, microcosmically, for the novel's larger dilemma of storytelling: on its own, almost any of these details (except perhaps the detail about passing the shit and piss through the cat-flap) might be persuasive. Together, they vandalize each other: the Presbyterian dypsomaniacs and the Mormon aunt make impossible the reality of the fanatical Muslim. As realism, it is incredible; as satire, it is cartoonish; as cartoon, it is too realistic; and anyway, we are not led toward the consciousness of a truly devoted religionist. It is all shiny externality, all caricature. II. It might be argued that literature has only very rarely represented character. Even the greatest novelists, such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, resort to stock caricature, didactic speaking over characters, repetitive leitmotifs, and so on. The truly unhostaged writer, such as Chekhov, is rare. Buddenbrooks, a beautiful novel written by a writer only a year older than Zadie Smith, makes plentiful use of the leitmotif, as a way of affixing signatures to different characters. (Yet how those tagged characters live!) Less great but very distinguished writers indulge in the kind of unreal, symbolic vitality now found in the contemporary novel--consider the autodidact in Sartre's Nausea, who is somewhat unbelievably working his way alphabetically through an entire library, or Grand, the writer in The Plague, who somewhat unbelievably writes the first line of his novel over and over again. Dickens, of course, is the great master of the leitmotif. Many of Dickens's characters are, as Forster rightly put it, flat but vibrating very fast. They are vivid blots of essence. They are souls seen only through thick, gnarled casings. Their vitality is a histrionic one. Dickens has been the overwelming influence on postwar fiction, especially postwar British fiction. There is hardly a writer who has not been touched by him: Angus Wilson and Muriel Spark, Martin Amis's robust gargoyles, Rushdie's outsize chararacters, the intensely theatrical Angela Carter, the Naipaul of A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Pritchett' s cocky salesmen, and now Zadie Smith. In America, Bellow's genius for grotesquerie and for vivid external description owes something to Dickens. And what is Underworld but an old-fashioned Dickensian novel like Bleak House, with an ambition to describe all of society on its different levels? One obvious reason for the popularity of Dickens among contemporary novelists is that his way of creating and propelling theatrically alive characters offers an easy model for writers unable, or unwilling, to create characters who are fully human. Dickens's world seems to be populated by vital simplicities. He shows a novelist how to get a character launched, if not how to keep him afloat, and this glittering liveliness is simply easier to copy, easier to figure out, than the recessed and deferred complexities of, say, Henry James's character- making. Put bluntly, Dickens makes caricature respectable for an age in which, for various reasons, it has become hard to create character. Dickens licenses the cartoonish, coats it in the surreal, or even the Kafkaesque (the Circumlocution Office). Indeed, to be fair to contemporary novelists, Dickens shows that a large part of characterization is merely the management of caricature. Yet that is not all there is in Dickens, which is why most contemporary novelists are only his morganatic heirs. There is in Dickens also an immediate access to strong feeling, which rips the puppetry of his people, breaks their casings, and lets us enter them. Mr. Micawber may be a caricature, a simple, univocal essence, but he feels, and he makes us feel. One recalls that very passionate and simple sentence, in which David Copperfield tells us: "Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his room, and cried very much." It is difficult to find a single moment like that in all the many thousands of pages of the big, ambitious, contemporary books--difficult to imagine the possibility of such a sentence ever occurring amid the coils of knowingness and the latest information. It is now customary to read 700-page novels, to spend hours and hours within a fictional world, without experiencing anything really affecting, sublime, or beautiful. Which is why one never wants to re-read a book such as The Ground Beneath Her Feet, while Madame Bovary is faded by our repressings. This is partly because some of the more impressive novelistic minds of our age do not think that language and the representation of consciousness are the novelist's quarries any more. Information has become the new character. It is this, and the use made of Dickens, that connects DeLillo and the reportorial Tom Wolfe, despite the literary distinction of the former and the cinematic vulgarity of the latter. So it suffices to make do with vivacious caricatures, whose deeper justification arises--if it ever arises--from their immersion in a web of connections. Zadie Smith has said, in an interview, that her concern is with "ideas and themes that I can tie together--problem- solving from other places and worlds." It is not the writer's job, she says, "to tell us how somebody felt about something, it's to tell us how the world works." Citing David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers, she comments: "these are guys who know a great deal about the world. They understand macro-microeconomics, the way the Internet works, math, philosophy, but . . . they're still people who know something about the street, about family, love, sex, whatever. That is an incredibly fruitful combination. If you can get the balance right. And I don' t think any of us have quite yet, but hopefully one of us will." III. That is gently, modestly put. And to give Smith her considerable due, she may be more likely to "get the balance right" than any of her contemporaries--in part just because she sees that a balance is needed, and in part because she is very talented and still very young. At her best, she approaches her characters and makes them human; she is much more interested in this, and more naturally gifted at it, than is Rushdie. For a start, her minor Dickensian caricatures and grotesques, the petty filaments of this big book, often glow. Here, for instance, is a school headmaster, a small character who flares and dies within a few pages--but Smith captures his physical essence surely: "The headmaster of Glenard Oak was in a continual state of implosion. His hairline had gone out and stayed out like a determined tide, his eye sockets were deep, his lips had been sucked backwards into his mouth, he had no body to speak of, or rather he folded what he had into a small, twisted package, sealing it with a pair of crossed arms and crossed legs." This conjures a recognizable type, and indeed a recognizable English type, always in the process of withdrawing or disappearing--as Smith's highly Dickensian image suggests, always mailing himself out of the room. Smith, as Rushdie has said, is "astonishingly assured". About her, one is tempted to apply Orwell's remark that Dickens had rotten architecture but great gargoyles. The architecture is the essential silliness of her lunge for multiplicities--her cults and cloned mice and Jamaican earthquakes. Formally, her book lacks moral seriousness. But her details are often instantly convincing, both funny and moving. They justify themselves. She tells the story, essentially, of two families, the Joneses and the Iqbals. Archie Jones is married to a Jamaican woman, Clara Bowden, and is the father of Irie. He fought in the Second World War, as a teenager, alongside Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim from Bangladesh. The two men have been friends for thirty years, and now live near each other in North London. This is a bustling, desolate area, full of velvetlined Indian restaurants and yeasty pubs and unclean laundromats. Smith bouncily captures its atmosphere. Any street in this region will include, "without exception": one defunct sandwich bar still advertising breakfast one locksmith uninterested in marketing frills (KEYS CUT HERE) and one permanently shut unisex hair salon, the proud bearer of some unspeakable pun (Upper Cuts or Fringe Benefits or Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow). Samad's wife Alsana is an engaging creation. She earns a living sewing leather garments, at home, that are bound "for a shop called Domination in Soho." Samad is a waiter at a restaurant in central London, an intelligent man, frustrated by his foolish occupation; and a moral man, frustrated by the lax country he lives in. He spends much of the novel in a fury--he is, precisely, a caricature more than a character- -about England and English secularism. He is determined that his twin sons, Millat and Magid, will grow up in the ways of the Koran. But Millat, at least initially, has joined a tough street gang, who speak "a strange mix of Jamaican patois, Bengali, Gujurati and English," and hangs out on streets populated by "Becks, B-boys, Indie kids, wide-boys, ravers, rude-boys, Acidheads, Sharons, Tracies, Kevs, Nation Brothers, Raggas and Pakis." (Such an inventory is what Smith means by bringing us the information. But this crocodile of youths has a use-by date inside it: Colin MacInnes brought us the information about the London of the 1950s in Absolute Beginners, and where is that novel? At an absolute end.) Millat's brother, Magid, is a scientific rationalist, and apparently no more interested in Islam than his brother. But his father decides to send Magid, the better student, back to Bangladesh, for a safely religious education. The plan backfires, of course. When smith is writing well, she seems capable of a great deal. At several moments, for example, she proves herself skilled at interior monologue, and brilliant, in other passages, at free indirect style: `Oh Archie, you are funny,' said Maureen sadly, for she had always fancied Archie a bit but never more than a bit because of this strange way he had about him, always talking to Pakistanis and Caribbeans like he didn't even notice and now he'd gone and married one and hadn' t even thought it worth mentioning what colour she was until the office dinner when she turned up black as anything and Maureen almost choked on her prawn cocktail. One of the novel's best chapters is a gently satirical portrait of the Chalfen family, middle-class North London Jewish intellectuals of impeccable smugness, with whom Millat, Magid, and Irie become involved. (One of the Chalfen sons, Joshua, attends Glenard Oak school with the Jones and Iqbal children.) There is Marcus Chalfen, busy with his genetic experiments, and his wife, Joyce, who writes about gardening. She lives the politically unexamined life of the liberal who is sure that she is right about everything. Even her gardening books encode her bien-pensees about the importance of hybridity. Smith funnily invents a long passage from one of them: "In the garden, as in the social and political arena, change should be the only constant.... It is said cross-pollinating plants also tend to produce more and better-quality seeds." Yet this same Joyce cannot help exclaiming, when Millat and Iris first appear in her house, about the delightful novelty of having "brown strangers" in the house. By mocking the Chalfens, even gently, Smith works against the form of her own novel, and guards against a Rushdie- like orthodoxy about the worship of hybridity. Here Smith evinces an important negative capability which she promptly deforms by inserting a needless little lecture into the same chapter: "This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment." Still, these are rare lapses. Far more powerful than such announcements on the authorial Tannoy is a lovely moment when Marcus Chalfen puts his arms around his adored wife (the two are devoted, if a little complacently, to each other), "like a gambler collecting his chips in circled arms," whereupon the fifteen-year-old Irie, whose parents are much less communicative, thinks "of her own parents, whose touches were now virtual, existing only in the absences where both sets of fingers had previously been: the remote control, the biscuit tin, the light switches." Smith is a frustrating writer, for she has a natural comic gift, and yet is willing to let passages of her book descend into cartoonishness and a kind of itchy, restless extremism. Here, for instance, is her description of O' Connell's, a bar and cafe where Archie and Samad have been regulars for many years. Comically, it is run by a family of Iraqis, "the many members of which share a bad skin condition," but it has kept its Irish name, and various Irish accoutrements. It is where, we are told, Archie and Samad have talked about everything, including women: Hypothetical women. If a woman walked past the yolk-stained window of O'Connell's (a woman had never been known to venture inside) they would smile and speculate--depending on Samad's religious sensibilities that evening--on matters as far reaching as whether one would kick her out of bed in a hurry, to the relative merits of stockings or tights, and then on, inevitably, to the great debate: small breasts (that stand up) vs big breasts (that flop to the sides). But there was never any question of real women, real flesh and blood and wet and sticky women. Not until now. And so the unprecedented events of the past few months called for an earlier O'Connell's summit than usual. Samad had finally phoned Archie and confessed the whole terrible mess: he had cheated, he was cheating.... Archie had been silent for a bit, and then said, `Bloody hell. Four o'clock it is, then. Bloody hell.' He was like that, Archie. Calm in a crisis. But come 4.15 and still no sign of him, a desperate Samad had chewed every fingernail he possessed to the cuticle and collapsed on the counter, nose squished up against the hot glass where the battered burgers were kept, eye to eye with a postcard showing the eight different local charms of County Antrim. Mickey, chef, waiter and proprietor, who prided himself on knowing each customer's name and knowing when each customer was out of sorts, prised Samad's face off the hot glass with an egg slice. This kind of writing is closer to a low and unliterary "comic" style than it ought to be. It has a pertness, but it squanders itself in a mixture of banality and crudity. And unlike many passages in the book, it cannot shelter behind the excuse that it is being written from within the mind of a particular character. This is Smith as narrator, as writer. Yet nothing we know about Samad (and nothing we later learn, incidentally) convinces us that Smith is telling the truth when she tells us that this hot-headed Muslim sat talking about women' s breasts; the topic seems, instead, to have been chosen by Smith from a catalogue of cliches called "Things Men Talk About in Bars." And then there is the extremism of the language: Samad is not just anxious, but has bitten his fingers down to the cuticles, and has to be "prised" off the counter "with an egg slice." It seems only a step from here to exploding condoms and the like. The language is oddly thick-fingered, and stubs itself into the vernacular: that juvenile verb "squished," for instance. It comports bewilderingly with sentences and passages elsewhere that are precise and sculpted. The first half of Smith's novel is strikingly better-written than the second half, which seems hasty, the prose and wild plots bucking along in messy harnesses. Just as the quality of the writing undulates, sometimes from page to page, so Smith seems unable to decide exactly the depth of her commitment to the revelation of character. Samad offers a good example. Overall, he must be accounted a caricature, complete with Indian malapropisms and Indian (or Bengali) "temperament, " for he has, really, only the one dimension, his angry defence of Islam. Still, every so often Smith's prose opens out into little holidays from caricature, apertures through which we see Samad tenderly, and see his frustrations, such as the restaurant he works in: "From six in the evening until three in the morning; and then every day was spent asleep, until daylight was as rare as a decent tip. For what' s the point, Samad would think, pushing aside two mints and a receipt to find fifteen pence, what is the point of tipping a man the same amount you would throw in a fountain to chase a wish." This is breathtaking, and peers into a depth of yearning: it is very fine to link the tip to money thrown into a well, and to link both to Samad's large desires. One wonders if Smith knows how good it is. For it is bewildering when, thirty pages later, she seems to leave Samad's interior, and watch him from the outside, satirically (and rather crudely). She is describing Samad's and Archie's war experiences, and the moment they first met. The tone wavers drastically around the mock-heroic. Archie has been staring at Samad, and Samad, all of nineteen, malapropistically demands: "My friend, what is it you find so darned mysterious about me that it has you in such constant revelries? . . . Is it that you are doing some research into wireless operators or are you just in a passion over my arse?" We seem to be in the world of cartoons again. Forty pages later, Smith has a funny passage about Samad trying and failing to resist the temptation of masturbation. Samad becomes, for a while, an enthusiastic masturbator, on the arrangement (with Allah) that if he masturbates, he must fast, as recompense: "this in turn . . . led to the kind of masturbation that even a fifteen-year-old boy living in the Shetlands might find excessive. His only comfort was that he, like Roosevelt, had made a New Deal: he was going to beat but he wasn't going to eat." As in the passage about O' Connell' s, the question is one of voice. Again, Smith is not writing from inside Samad's head here; the sophomoric comparison to a boy in the Shetlands is hers. So what is going on? The reference to the New Deal is hopelessly misplaced, and merely demonstrates the temptation that this kind of writing cannot resist, of binging in any kind of allusion. And what of that phrase, "he was going to beat but he wasn't going to eat"? "Beat" is not Samad's word; he would never use it. It is Smith's word, and in using it she not only speaks over her character, she reduces him, obliterates him. And so it goes on, in a curious shuffle of sympathy and distance, affiliation and divorce, brilliance and cartoonishness, astonishing maturity and ordinary puerility. White Teeth is a big book, and does not deal in fractions: when it excites, and when it frustrates, it "o'erflows the measure." Indeed, its size tests itself, for one reason it disappoints has partly to do with the fact that it becomes clear that over the length of the book Smith's stories will develop, and develop wildly, but her characters will not develop at all. Yes, Smith' s characters change; they change opinions, and change countries. Millat, once an urban rapper, becomes a fundamentalist terrorist; Joshua Chalfen, once a rationalist and loyal son of his scientist father, becomes an animal-rights freak. Yet whenever these people change their minds, there is always a kind of awkwardness in the text, a hiatus, and the change itself is always rapidly asserted, usually within a paragraph or two. It as if the novel were deciding at these moments whether to cast depths on its shallows, and deciding against. Which way will the ambitious contemporary novel go? Will it dare a picture of life, or just shout a spectacle? White Teeth contains both kinds of writing. Near the end, an instructive squabble occurs between these two literary modes. The scene is the conference room, where Marcus Chalfen is delivering the news about the mouse. All of the book's major characters are present. Irie Jones is pregnant, and for a while we inhabit her mind, and her drifting thoughts. She looks from Millat to Magid, and cannot decide which twin is the father of her child. But she stops worrying, because Smith breaks in, excitedly, to tell us that "Irie's child can never be mapped exactly nor spoken of with any certainty. Some secrets are permanent. In a vision, Irie has seen a time, a time not far from now, when roots won't matter any more because they can't because they mustn't because they're too long and they're too tortuous and they're just buried too damn deep. She looks forward to it." Yet it is Smith who made Irie, most improbably, have sex with both brothers, and it is Smith who decided that Irie, most improbably, has stopped caring who is the father. It is quite clear that a general message about the need to escape roots is more important than Irie' s reality, what she might actually think, her consciousness. A character has been sacrificed for what Smith called, in that interview, "ideas and themes that I can tie together--problem-solving from other places and worlds." This is problem-solving, all right. But at what cost? As Irie disappears under the themes and ideas, the reader perhaps thinks wistfully of Mr. Micawber and David Copperfield, so uncovered by theme and idea, so uninsured, weeping together in an upstairs room. James Wood, The smallness of the "big" novel.. , The New Republic, 07-24-2000. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 12 17:03:33 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 18:03:33 -0500 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 References: <3A0DE855.B3D3D643@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A0F21C5.E1A1057D@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: > > Second, Terrence, do feel free to elaborate what you might think the > relevance of Heidegger to Pynchon might be. I obviously think there's a > connection, but it's an intuition at best. That "lifedeath" thing, > first off, and the critique of Nietzsche (at least as elaborated by > Krell), but, I must admit, my Heidegger is tenuous. Have, however, been > thinking about Mondaugen ("moon-eyes"?) and Heidegger's "The Age of the > World Picture." That point of view thing, the world as pictured from, > say, the moon ... First, I have not read David Farrell Krell, Contagion: Sexuality, Disease and Death in German Idealism and Romanticism. Second, I can't commit to hosting it but I plan to post lots on Mondaugen when we get to Mondaugen's Story. You posted From David Farrell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992), Chapter Seven, "Lifedeath: Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud" (pp. 217-51). Sounds very interesting, no time Third, I'm not sure what to elaborate on, to ? How about the Clock & the Street Lamp? If my memory is working better than the rest of me, I think I remember that in his early thinking Heidegger admitted to a difference between a world that is merely present and a world that announces its usefulness. I'll skip Heidegger's classic example of the hammer, being a carpenter I like that example, but for V., the clock and the lamp will do fine. In Being And Time the Clocks and the Street Lamps reveal a purpose in nature: the moving circle of time, the cycle of light and darkness, and the human need to keep track of the former so that humans may manipulate the latter. But it is the change or refinement in Heidegger's ideas that your quotes seem to be addressing, I think, that life-death and question of telos theme. First though, a little fun: From Eliot's poem Rhapsody On A Windy Night and Mumford's Techincs and Civilization. Not feeling like fun, you may skip over to Heidegger. Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium. Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, "Regard that woman Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. --T.S. Eliot "The application of quantitative methods of thought to the study of nature had its first manifestation in the regular measurement of time; and the new mechanical conception of time arose in part out of the routine of the monastery. Alfred Whitehead has emphasized the importance of the scholastic belief in the universe ordered by God as one of the foundations of modern physics: but behind that belief was the presence of order in the institutions of the Church itself." --Mumford, Technics and Civilization The Benedictines, the working order, were, according to Coulton, Sombart, others, the original founders of modern Capitalism. Mumfords says, they "gave human enterprise the regular collective beat and rhythm of the machine Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions." Stencil's WORK, his quest is NOT Puritan (Weber, Brown, Marcuse, Puritan Capitalism, Calvanism vs. Catholicism and how about Anabaptism-Chapter Two of V. and Limbo?). Damned this pagination problem, V.HP(the 99 Classics). 50 or Chapter Two part II, about 12 paragraphs in. Back to Heidegger now and his changes, where later in his life Heidegger admitted that the concept of technology is much, much bigger than the way in which instruments announce their functions. How big is much, much bigger? Well, technology, Heidegger concluded, was so big that it circumscribed the ways in which we live, all contemporary ways of living and Knowing. Technology is said by Heidegger to enframe (Ge-stell) all of modern life. What Heidegger sees is that technology is so pervasive, so big and powerful (how many clocks have you got in your house? and have you one on your person now? and ubiquitous, powerful, important, Big), that is relates to nature in a fundamentally different way, even to the point where it becomes impossible to consider nature outside of the bounds of this big, enframing, technology. What are the implications of this? There are many, and here it will difficult not to oversimplify and piss some people off or introduce a bunch of Heidegger's terms and their translations ..but Heidegger considered this enveloping of the world by technology as a stage in preparation of human fulfillment that has always been with us and a revealing of the earth, to "set free unto its own prescensing." The release of the Earth unto itself ( this is one area of interest, we can get into the role of language and revealing, and what Pynchon says about this), is accomplished with language, it is through language that nature is revealed to Man and it also through language that nature is transformed into material. For Heidegger, technology is neither an instrument of freedom nor an object alien to being human. Instrumentality unveils aspects of nature. The clock, the lamp reveal, the human makes, even Katje's windmills reveals that the wind may turn wheels of stone to grind grain. I am reminded here of Seamus Heaney's poem "Digging", where the spade cutting the earth reveals the poetic in the earth and the movement of the spade and the man are what to Heidegger would be a primordial activity that becomes more intuitive, an extension of the human, with time and proficiency, but for Heidegger the spade also discloses the rich black soil below the surface of the earth's crust, reveals what is inherently earth and may be of use to humans, but the tool, the spade here is involved in a direct interaction between Man (in this example, Heaneys's Father digging) and a specific natural feature of the earth. "Digging" Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests: snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. ... The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it. 1966 from "Death of a Naturalist" --Seamus Heaney However, when it comes to Modern Technology, the interaction is quite different. In the Modern world we extract energy (oil, although thinking of Heaney's father again, Potatoes are fuel for the rocket, or booze for an Irish wake) from the earth. We put it in a big tanks, store it for use at another time, war perhaps. Nature was once thought of as the energy we needed to live, the womb that brings life, the goddess that we can suck from, but with the modern technological perspective, the earth is not the women buried in the earth in GR, the energy flowing with lifedeath fecundity, but a source of this energy, this new energy, needed for war and survival. An energy source, a material trasnformed, and thus now having a meaning apart from nature. We remove it, we move it, store it, and plan with it how we will transform it and use it to transform. The rivers, most of the rivers in the world, are no longer considered as the course of water, the life system, the dynamic landscape and so on, but are now considered for what or how much they can generate, how that energy, with the language of gigawatts say, may be stored, moved. The impact, one of them any way, is progression of human concerns as viewed from (perhaps the only perspective allowed or available to humans?) the human perspective enframed. Perspective: "Construct an elevator from the elevator's point of view." Wouldn't that be the perfect elevator? Wouldn't that be that black box?" --Colson Whitehead's Intuitionist Heidegger is careful not to condemn human making itself. It is the enframing essence of technology that he rails against, the way in which we have constructed; a way that endangers other ways of constructing because it works so well unto itself. The comprehensive enframing forecloses the possibility of conceiving of or discovering its own limitations within the huge confines circumscribing modern life and knowing. We don't learn from Heidegger how it is that technology took the steps from directly revealing the forces of nature to transforming what those forces mean by placing them in a new framework of the resources extracted, stored, retrieved. What brought about enframing? Was it a sudden blaze, a standing erect? What? He doesn't say, GR says, Nature is locked up (JAMF) behind a doors and the only key we can use to open the doors to nature are those keys that open nature to use, we cannot discover nature, it's "shining forth", "its truth", and besides, in Pynchon we have locks without keys because we toss anything of value, the keys overboard or forget them, like Bianca. Its as if the technology of Modern life, the microscope or the particle accelerator and the telescope or the Hubble deny, because of their powerful, pervasive, success, their Bigness, the uncertainty, the faith we might say, the magic, the Intuitionist's perspective, required for other less verifiable modes of apprehending the world. "The sense of historic importance is the intuition of the universe as everlasting process, unfading in its deistic unity of ideals." --Alfred Whitehead From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 13 10:31:42 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 11:31:42 -0500 Subject: Stencil's toy oxgaod Message-ID: <3A10176E.D2810B09@earthlink.net> Kai, when I was in the 5th grade, a nasty old nun gave me several punishment writing assignments, one of which was to write a ten page paper on life inside a ping pong ball. Another one I remember was to write a five page paper on being a tennis players sneaker during a match. The stick, the wand, the oxgoad, the penis, the most phallic, says Dave Monroe, although I think the horn, the pipe of pan, that sax is a phallic axe. In Chapter One Part I of V. the women pursued is not V or any of her persona, but Paola. All the Pigs want her. Paola is important. I think if we focus on the men and the Vs we will miss this. When Pig Bodine, with a "diseased baboon fur", "a miasma of evil", sees the girl, the young Maltese, "the broad" he eventually "grabs", in the Grave of Sailors, we get this comment, "What was it about the prairie hare in the snow, the tiger in the tall grass and sunlight?" Chapter Three opens with a proliferation of Vs. " and that now he's awakened to discover the pursuit of V. was merely a scholarly quest after all, an adventure of the mind, in the tradition of The Golden Bough or The White Goddess." These two books are used as parodic material, as is De Rougemont's Love In The Western World-- the Myth of Love secularized, decedent, debased. Henry Adams is a different case. "the same simple minded literal pursuit " That's Mr. Graves, whose pursuit of the White Goddess is literal, a search for words, word meanings, although Mr. Graves certainly is not literal in the sense of avoiding exaggeration, metaphor, embellishment, and perhaps most importantly, ambiguity. "V. ambiguously a beast of venery" Now here we get an interesting paragraph, the H---Hare, Hind, Hart, seems opposed to the V---Venery, Venus, Vener, with compressed and succinct allusions to both Golden Bough and White Goddess. Note how Love, sex, the hunt, see for but one example, Frazer's GB II, page 10 for the Hare, and what Frazer describes in many traditions as the Corn Spirit or mother/baby/maiden/ and Proserpine. That Love / Death (telos?) again, here sex, hunt, kill, sacrifice, rape (Paola and Pig), and again all the whore, virgin, mother, stereotypes are played on. The word venery means the Indulgence in or pursuit of sexual activity. 2. The act of sexual intercourse. [Middle English venerie, from Old French, from Medieval Latin veneria, from Latin venus, vener-, desire, love. It is also the act or sport of hunting; the chase. [Middle English venerie, from Old French, from vener, to hunt, See Wen. Also see Chapter Twenty of The White Goddess, Who'll hunt the Wren? And the Hare and so forth, the sexual hunt, also the battle of the male/female magicians. "Chased like the Hart" Hart: A male deer, especially a male red deer over five years old, but reading this novel or maybe it's my own fears of plastic valves, I am inclined to think of the homophone-heart. Also, Red deer are sacred to both Germany and Ireland and North America, see Frazer on the American connection. Hind: A female red deer. So now we have the male and the female red deer. Hind can also mean a part, a part Located at or forming the back or rear; posterior: the behind, the ass. There are several scenes in the novel where revelation is awaited or expected or called for and so on, but what appears is but the posterior, the ass, the horses ass, the ass of Stencil and so on, David Morris commented on this other side of God and Moses and someone noted how Pynchon connects the ass-the digestive system to fear and paranoia and so on. Hind: is also, British, farm laborer,. a country bumpkin; a rustic. Reading Frazer, especially on the corn spirit and the hunt, we discover that the Hind becomes the clown, the fool in the harvesting ceremony. Hare: Any of various mammals of the family Leporidae, especially of the genus Lepus, similar to rabbits but having longer ears and legs and giving birth to active, furred young. And to move hurriedly, as if hunting a swift quarry. And of course the homophone hair is a human part, also plays to the fetish theme. "chased like obsolete, or bizarre, or forbidden form of sexual delight. And clownish stencil along behind her, bells ajingle, waving a wooden, toy oxgoad. For no one's amusement but his own." And of ours of course, since we do know, or we will, what Stencil refuses here, that V's natural habitat is not the woods, the corn field, the spring, the autumn, the winter, the summer, but the "state of siege," for our amusement as well. From scuffling at hotmail.com Mon Nov 13 11:03:45 2000 From: scuffling at hotmail.com (Henry Musikar) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 17:03:45 GMT Subject: A Gore Is A Bush Is A Gore Message-ID: >From: "Richard Romeo" > >a vote for gore is truly a vote for the "inanimate" Mr. RR, don't be such an animatist, i.e. inanimate isn't so bad; it's better than animated evil. AsB4, Henry Mus _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From millison at online-journalist.com Mon Nov 13 10:38:01 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 09:38:01 -0700 Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1515 In-Reply-To: <200011130801.CAA20163@waste.org> References: <200011130801.CAA20163@waste.org> Message-ID: "I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia." -Woody Allen >Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 18:26:33 +1100 >From: "jbor" >[snip] >ps: Anyone else finding the pace of this reading incredibly slow? -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From millison at online-journalist.com Mon Nov 13 10:44:11 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 09:44:11 -0700 Subject: NP obscure '65 LSD reference Message-ID: This appeared on the maps.org list. It reminded me of the way Pynchon slips in the L.S.D. reference in GR. >From: PACAYACITY at aol.com >Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 00:11:58 EST >Subject: MAPS: Wonderwall: film review > > >WONDERWALL: Film Review > >This recently-released 1965 art film is being billed as a "lost classic of >psychedelic surrealism". It is an entertaining light-hearted love story set >in London. Beatles fans will enjoy the unusual soundtrack by George >Harrison. The opening shot resembles a light show from a Jimi Hendrix >concert. This pulsating abstract imagery turns out to be microorganisms >which are being scrutinized under a microscope by a stodgy biologist known as >"the professor". > >This absentminded professor has even fewer social skills than a 1980's >computer nerd. He has more affection for his lab rats than for other people, >and probably suffers from schizoid personality disorder. His drab cluttered >apartment, with its "pack rat" décor, is haunted by his mother's ghost. The >stability of the professor's dreary existence is unhinged by the discovery of >a small opening in the wall. This peephole permits him to spy into the home >of a gorgeous fashion model who lives next door. The professor is not really >a voyeur. However, after so many years of devotion to his microscope, he is >only capable of perceiving reality by peering at it through a tiny hole. The >Wonderwall hole reveals an amazing realm of sensory delight. Yet the >infatuated professor discovers that despite her glamorous lifestyle, the >beautiful woman may be even less happy than himself. > >Clever low-budget special effects are in the cinematic tradition of Dali & >Bunuel, and also of Jean Cocteaue's Orpheus. The animated fluttering >butterfly scene is mildly reminiscent of the short hallucinatory cartoon in >Hitchcock's Vertigo. The only drug references are the polychromatic >psychedelic murals inside the model's apartment, a scene of her smoking a >hookah, and the letters "L" and "D" positioned above and below the "S" logo >on the shirt of a Superman costume. The complete absence of profanity and >violence make this quaint period piece a refreshing alternative to the >vulgarity that permeates most multi-million dollar commercial films being >mass-marketed today. Recommended for viewers of all ages. For more info, >see wonderwallfilm.com. > >------------------ >MAPS-Forum at maps.org, a member service of the Multidisciplinary Association >for Psychedelic Studies (to become a member, see www.maps.org/memsub.html). >To [un]subscribe, email the message text, >[un]subscribe maps-forum youraddress to majordomo at maps.org >List archives: www.cerebral.org/~law/Maps.html >Guidelines for authors: www.maps.org/guidelines.txt >MAPS Forum is supported by a generous grant from the Promind Foundation. -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi Mon Nov 13 12:04:53 2000 From: hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi (Heikki Raudaskoski) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 20:04:53 +0200 (EET) Subject: A Gore Is A Bush Is A Gore In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Nov 2000, Henry Musikar wrote: > >From: "Richard Romeo" > > > >a vote for gore is truly a vote for the "inanimate" > > Mr. RR, don't be such an animatist, i.e. inanimate isn't so bad; it's better > than animated evil. > > AsB4, > > Henry Mus Maybe New York's just a bit shocked by the possibility there will be no librarian First Lady. Which brings to mind: Rich, weren't you going to do horizontal yo-yoing betw. Helsinki and St. Petersburg this fall? IS he here now? Or, are you back to NYC already? I recall as much but have been able to follow the list only sporadically so I forgot the whole thing. Heikki From hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi Mon Nov 13 12:19:05 2000 From: hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi (Heikki Raudaskoski) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 20:19:05 +0200 (EET) Subject: Some recommendations and a couple of queries In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 12 Nov 2000, Mark David Tristan Brenchley wrote: > - can anyone give me any information on the writer William Gaddis? (Clumsy Analogues Yours Truly Can't Resist, Part 79:) McElroy's _Women and Men_ -- Pure C Gaddis' novels: -- C++ Pynchon's most novels: -- Java _Vineland_ -- Visual Basic Heikki Java Programmer Technopolis Oulu From KXX4493553 at aol.com Mon Nov 13 13:28:00 2000 From: KXX4493553 at aol.com (KXX4493553 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 14:28:00 EST Subject: Upside down Message-ID: <23.372b23a.27419ac0@aol.com> German government accuses the USA of violating human rights Germany Criticizes U.S. Justice By JEROME SOCOLOVSKY .c The Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Germany criticized the fairness of the U.S. justice system and its application of capital punishment on Monday as it opened a World Court suit against the United States over the execution of two German citizens in Arizona. Gerhard Westdickenberg, chief representative of the German government in the World Court case, said the lawsuit over the case of Walter and Karl LaGrand was meant to ensure that jailed foreign nationals receive consular representation, and that it was not a challenge to U.S. sovereignty. ``This form of punishment cannot be justified, neither ethically nor legally,'' Westdickenberg told the 15 international judges at the supreme U.N. judicial body. Karl LaGrand and his brother Walter were sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a 63-year-old bank manager during a botched robbery near Tucson, Arizona, in 1982. Germany filed its suit the day before Walter LaGrand, 37, was scheduled to die in Arizona's gas chamber on March 3, 1999. Karl LaGrand, 35, had received a lethal injection on Feb. 24. The lawsuit comes at a time of increasing protests worldwide against U.S. executions of foreign nationals. Last Friday, protests from Sweden, France, Mexico and the European Union failed to prevent the execution in Texas of Miguel Flores, a Mexican-born man who fatally stabbed a college student 11 years ago. ``There are compelling reasons to believe that the LaGrands' sentences would have been reduced had the evidence about their traumatic childhood, hospitalizations and racial isolation in Germany been presented,'' Germany said in a case summary. In going ahead with Walter LaGrand's execution, Westdickenberg said, Arizona authorities ignored an emergency ruling by the Hague court, which ordered a stay until justices could consider the merits of the case. Although born in Augsburg, Germany, the LaGrands were taken as children to America after their German mother married a U.S. serviceman. Arizona state officials claim they were initially unaware of the LaGrands' German nationality when they were arrested on Jan. 7, 1982. But Westdickenberg maintained that Arizona officials were aware of it as early as April 1982. Nevertheless, he said, the German consulate was notified of their detention only in 1992, after the convicts learned of their rights from fellow prisoners. Germany said proper consular aid could have saved the convicts' lives. Arizona has acknowledged it violated international law in the detentions and sent a formal apology to the German government. But Germany, which abolished capital punishment after World War II, wants the court headed by Judge Gilbert Guillaume of France to declare that the United States ``violated its international legal obligations.'' Westdickenberg said his delegation of international lawyers will show that the United States breached its commitments under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to notify the LaGrands of their right to contact consular officials upon detention. The German delegation also is demanding that America pay reparations and ``provide Germany a guarantee of the non-repetition of the illegal acts,'' according to the application. Although its judgments are binding under international law, the World Court - formally known as the International Court of Justice - has no independent means to enforce compliance. The U.S. chief representative to the court, James H. Thessin, will begin presenting the American case on Tuesday. AP-NY-11-13-00 1018EST Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL. The times they are a-changin'... Kurt-Werner Pörtner From millison at online-journalist.com Mon Nov 13 15:56:34 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 14:56:34 -0700 Subject: NP WWII, financing the Nazis, Bush Message-ID: This appeared on the PSYARTS list today: >This is liable to knock your hearts into your socks -- the Bush family >helped finance the Nazi war effort: > >http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm from that site: George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin Chapter - II - The Hitler Project Bush Property Seized--Trading with the Enemy In October 1942, ten months after entering World War II, America was preparing its first assault against Nazi military forces. Prescott Bush was managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman. His 18-year-old son George, the future U.S. President, had just begun training to become a naval pilot. On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland `` Bunny '' Harriman, three Nazi executives, and two other associates of Bush. at s1 The order seizing the bank `` vests '' (seizes) `` all of the capital stock of Union Banking Corporation, a New York corporation, '' and names the holders of its shares as: `` E. Roland Harriman--3991 shares '' [chairman and director of Union Banking Corp. (UBC); this is `` Bunny '' Harriman, described by Prescott Bush as a place holder who didn't get much into banking affairs; Prescott managed his personal investments] `` Cornelis Lievense--4 shares '' [president and director of UBC; New York resident banking functionary for the Nazis] `` Harold D. Pennington--1 share '' [treasurer and director of UBC; an office manager employed by Bush at Brown Brothers Harriman] `` Ray Morris--1 share '' [director of UBC; partner of Bush and the Harrimans] `` Prescott S. Bush--1 share '' [director of UBC, which was co-founded and sponsored by his father-in-law George Walker; senior managing partner for E. Roland Harriman and Averell Harriman] `` H.J. Kouwenhoven--1 share '' [director of UBC; organized UBC as the emissary of Fritz Thyssen in negotiations with George Walker and Averell Harriman; managing director of UBC's Netherlands affiliate under Nazi occupation; industrial executive in Nazi Germany; director and chief foreign financial executive of the German Steel Trust] `` Johann G. Groeninger--1 share '' [director of UBC and of its Netherlands affiliate; industrial executive in Nazi Germany] `` all of which shares are held for the benefit of ... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals ... of a designated enemy country.... '' By Oct. 26, 1942, U.S. troops were under way for North Africa. On Oct. 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. at s2 U.S. forces landed under fire near Algiers on Nov. 8, 1942; heavy combat raged throughout November. Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942. In this action, the government announced that it was seizing only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis' U.S. partners to carry on the business. These and other actions taken by the U.S. government in wartime were, tragically, too little and too late. President Bush's family had already played a central role in financing and arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of Germany; in financing and managing the buildup of Nazi war industries for the conquest of Europe and war against the U.S.A.; and in the development of Nazi genocide theories and racial propaganda, with their well-known results. [snip ... no time now to read the rest but it looks interest. Your mileage may vary.] -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From millison at online-journalist.com Mon Nov 13 16:08:19 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 15:08:19 -0700 Subject: a bit more, including a link to GR, re: WWII, financing the Nazis, Bush Message-ID: > >http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm Reading a bit further into this web site, some names familiar from GR emerge: lIG Farben, Baku oil, etc. Interesting stuff: "There were probably few people at the time who could appreciate the irony, that when the Soviets also attacked and invaded Poland from the East, their vehicles were fueled by oil pumped from Baku wells revived by the Harriman/Walker/Bush enterprise." -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Mon Nov 13 21:38:15 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 21:38:15 -0600 Subject: V.V.(4) "under the rose" (23.24) References: <07151790610424@domain0.bigpond.com> Message-ID: <3A10B3A7.1A91D30B@mediaone.net> jbor wrote: > ps: Anyone else finding the pace of this reading incredibly slow? Yes, but since I'm usually reading several other works concurrently, I don't mind the pace. Pynchon's my hobby, not my career. : ) From o.sell at telda.net Tue Nov 14 03:04:38 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 10:04:38 +0100 Subject: Upside down References: <23.372b23a.27419ac0@aol.com> Message-ID: <001a01c04e19$eb69c3e0$024806d5@selltelda.net> just some heretic thoughts Does this mean that the Governor of Arizona may be called Mr. Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi or Osama Bin Laden? Will he judged at the Hague court? Will he imprisoned for murder if he visits Germany? No, he will be friendly greeted by our politicians, write his name in the Golden Books of our cities, receive awards and honor-doctor hats. Is this the hypocrisy we are all guilty of allowing our politicians to go on war (real or economically) against the little evil-doers of the world I've mentioned while the USA is constantly violating human rights of Blacks and other minorities, while at the same time over here neo-nazis can hunt down black refugees and may leave the courtroom free. I admit that German society is sick, but I get the increasing feeling that we and the US (and GB, France, Russia and so on) are much sicker then I ever thought and because of political correctness nobody dares to say . . . Otto (Son of Mr. Green Genes) ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Pynchon-L Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 8:28 PM Subject: Upside down German government accuses the USA of violating human rights Germany Criticizes U.S. Justice By JEROME SOCOLOVSKY .c The Associated Press THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Germany criticized the fairness of the U.S. justice system and its application of capital punishment on Monday as it opened a World Court suit against the United States over the execution of two German citizens in Arizona. Gerhard Westdickenberg, chief representative of the German government in the World Court case, said the lawsuit over the case of Walter and Karl LaGrand was meant to ensure that jailed foreign nationals receive consular representation, and that it was not a challenge to U.S. sovereignty. ``This form of punishment cannot be justified, neither ethically nor legally,'' Westdickenberg told the 15 international judges at the supreme U.N. judicial body. Karl LaGrand and his brother Walter were sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a 63-year-old bank manager during a botched robbery near Tucson, Arizona, in 1982. Germany filed its suit the day before Walter LaGrand, 37, was scheduled to die in Arizona's gas chamber on March 3, 1999. Karl LaGrand, 35, had received a lethal injection on Feb. 24. The lawsuit comes at a time of increasing protests worldwide against U.S. executions of foreign nationals. Last Friday, protests from Sweden, France, Mexico and the European Union failed to prevent the execution in Texas of Miguel Flores, a Mexican-born man who fatally stabbed a college student 11 years ago. ``There are compelling reasons to believe that the LaGrands' sentences would have been reduced had the evidence about their traumatic childhood, hospitalizations and racial isolation in Germany been presented,'' Germany said in a case summary. In going ahead with Walter LaGrand's execution, Westdickenberg said, Arizona authorities ignored an emergency ruling by the Hague court, which ordered a stay until justices could consider the merits of the case. Although born in Augsburg, Germany, the LaGrands were taken as children to America after their German mother married a U.S. serviceman. Arizona state officials claim they were initially unaware of the LaGrands' German nationality when they were arrested on Jan. 7, 1982. But Westdickenberg maintained that Arizona officials were aware of it as early as April 1982. Nevertheless, he said, the German consulate was notified of their detention only in 1992, after the convicts learned of their rights from fellow prisoners. Germany said proper consular aid could have saved the convicts' lives. Arizona has acknowledged it violated international law in the detentions and sent a formal apology to the German government. But Germany, which abolished capital punishment after World War II, wants the court headed by Judge Gilbert Guillaume of France to declare that the United States ``violated its international legal obligations.'' Westdickenberg said his delegation of international lawyers will show that the United States breached its commitments under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to notify the LaGrands of their right to contact consular officials upon detention. The German delegation also is demanding that America pay reparations and ``provide Germany a guarantee of the non-repetition of the illegal acts,'' according to the application. Although its judgments are binding under international law, the World Court - formally known as the International Court of Justice - has no independent means to enforce compliance. The U.S. chief representative to the court, James H. Thessin, will begin presenting the American case on Tuesday. AP-NY-11-13-00 1018EST Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL. The times they are a-changin'... Kurt-Werner Pörtner From o.sell at telda.net Tue Nov 14 03:05:09 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 10:05:09 +0100 Subject: V.V.(4) reading and programming References: <07151790610424@domain0.bigpond.com> <3A10B3A7.1A91D30B@mediaone.net> Message-ID: <002f01c04e19$fe0281e0$024806d5@selltelda.net> Exactly, Dedalus, and looking at Heikki's yesterdays analogies I'm sitting deep into Java and C, plus some real html (my website), but unlike Heikki I'm no programmer, pure autodidakt. I think of forwarding his analogies to computerfreaks I know who refuse to read Pynchon. Heikki, where do you see Pelevin in this line? The somewhat slow speed of the V.-reading helps me to catch up after my working weekend, gives time to think over the posted messages, re-reading passages and so on. So please don't speed up. Otto (Slow Reader) ----- Original Message ----- From: Dedalus To: Pynchon-L Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2000 4:38 AM Subject: Re: V.V.(4) "under the rose" (23.24) > jbor wrote: > > > ps: Anyone else finding the pace of this reading incredibly slow? > > Yes, but since I'm usually reading several other works concurrently, I don't > mind the pace. Pynchon's my hobby, not my career. : ) > From KXX4493553 at aol.com Tue Nov 14 03:54:46 2000 From: KXX4493553 at aol.com (KXX4493553 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 04:54:46 EST Subject: Hans Ertl, "Hitler's best cameraman" Message-ID: I just heard in the radio an interview with Hans Ertl, Hitler's "best cameraman" and "Sonderberichterstatter" - a kind of "pendant" to Leni Riefenstahl. Ertl died at October, the 23rd, 2000 at the age of 92 on his farm in Bolivia. He was very proud of the fact that Hitler was very amused about his "tricky" films and that he used new "avantgarde" techniques in the way cutting films. The casualties of the war were only "objects" for his aesthetic view of the world. No, he was never a member of the party. He wasn't political. After the war he said he "was thrown with dirt". Because of a documentary film about Bolivia in the early fifties he received a prize ("Verdienstorden") by the Bolivian Government and became a "citizen of honor". In 1959 his wife died with cancer. In 1960 he had a car accident where the most material of his new films was destroyed. In 1973 his favorite daughter was shot by the Bolivian police; she became a member of the Communist guerilla and admired Che Guevara. Hans Ertl, who lived alone on his hacienda in the last 25 years of his life never understood why his life work wasn't acknowledged after the war. Kurt-Werner Poertner P: S.: BTW, Otto, I totally agree with your arguments concerning the "case Germany vs. USA". From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Tue Nov 14 05:33:17 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:33:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: a suggestion... In-Reply-To: <3A0EF863.E285B453@mediaone.net> Message-ID: AS an amusing side-line, how about we come up with obvious titles for lazy academic lectures? Here's a couple for starters: "Robert Louis Stevenson - Jekyll or Hyde?" "Thomas Pynchon - V2 or not V2?" Mark From trailerman44 at hotmail.com Tue Nov 14 08:07:47 2000 From: trailerman44 at hotmail.com (J L) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 14:07:47 GMT Subject: V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries IV Message-ID: dedalus: >Stencil ponders how "disguise [was employed] not out of any professional >necessity but only as a trick, simply to involve him less in the chase" >(58.05). ... [ s n i p ] ... >the three Impersonations are best viewed as sections of a dream sequence in >which Stencil himself enters the "action" of Porpentine's adventures in >Egypt. So does he adopt these points-of-view by choice, I wonder? You might detect some patronising guilt in his empathy with the natives' plight. But how does MacBurgess fit? I don't disagree with jbor's comparison with _Under The Rose_ but I'd be a bit more cautious in inferring a new 'post-colonial perspective'. As far as I can see P is just using the same tale for a different purpose: it's a character portrait, something he is often accused of avoiding. Sure, the narrative is clouded, but ambiguity is the norm here and hey, it can look after itself. I reckon Pynchon believes that you can learn a lot about someone by the characters they create. The Impersonations' observer-status (in the "action", of course they have their own agendas) says most about Herbert's opinion of himself. The quick-change artist finds it easier to adopt a peripheral role. t.s.e. : - No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; - Am an attendant Lord, one that will do - To swell a progress, start a scene or two JL _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 14 08:26:48 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 09:26:48 -0500 Subject: Stencil's submarine scungille farm Message-ID: <3A114BA8.361C9424@earthlink.net> A submarine scungille farm? Strange! Mr. Pynchon may not be a black humorist, that term may be of no use here, but he is certainly trying very hard, here as a young man up to his hips in books, to stumble about in Joyce's giant overshoes. HHH, VVV, MMM, what fun Mr. Pynchon is having with Mr. Graves. scungille shell: Stencil's scungille farm, 62; 178; what Botticelli's Venus seems to be standing in; "There's nothing inside. Only the scungille shell." 370; 384; [Education of Henry Adams] http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/adams.html#virgin Graves tells us that scungille, periwinkle, scallop, were aphrodisiacs, sacred to Aphrodite, identified by the shell, the mirror ("know thyself") and vanity, the comb (originally a plectrum for plucking lyre strings) and heartlessness, associated with the Moon Goddess Eurynome, Botticelli's Birth Of Venus is an exact icon of her cult, in English ballad poetry she is the bitter sweetness of love and danger for travelers, mariners in foreign ports, like the ports of Malta. See The White Goddess Chapter 22, Ophielia's song in Shakespeare's Hamlet, the introduction of the idea of Romantic Love in Western Europe, Love In The Western World, Denis De Rougemont. Merry, May, Marah (Hebrew for brine), myrrh the gift of one of those wise guys, MARY, Merry old England and Merry Robin (can't get more phallic than Robin) Hood, "Who'll hunt the Wren?" cries Robin the Bobbin, who is the Devil, the dark deep in the middle of Stencil's shells, the black mass and kiss his ass, down where only GOD knew what lived. What is living down in that Rock? White Ivory? This is the "nacreous mass of inference, poetic license [...] imaginative anxiety or historical care, which is recognized by no one." From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 14 08:26:55 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 09:26:55 -0500 Subject: Pynchon and Law Symposium References: Message-ID: <3A114BAF.988F16C0@earthlink.net> Shubha Ghosh wrote: > > I was curious about responses to the Pynchon and Law symposium published in > the Oklahoma City Law Review earlier this year. I worked as the editor fo > the volume and wrote the introductory essay. I was curious in getting > people's honest reactions and also to further the discussion about Pynchon's > relationship to legal theory. > > Shubha Ghosh Well thank you for putting it together, some excellent work. I have recommended the Volume to the list on several occasions. I think the current V.V. discussions could include any and all of the essays in the Review. I would prefer to be reading M&D or even VL with the group just now, what with the Nation legalese(ing) its representative democracy in the Media, and of course your Review would be a big plus to such discussions. However, but to take one example, your own essay, the quest and originalism can be discussed here within this V.V.. I mentioned Joe Boulter's essay here recently, and Bentons and Reilly's. My favorite essay is Spencer's "The 'Law' of Simulated War in Gravity's Rainbow." Thanks again, Terrance From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 14 09:53:38 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 09:53:38 CST Subject: V.V.(4) "under the rose" (23.24) Message-ID: UNDER THE ROSE >From Noah S Baer: "How did a rose come to mean confidentiality, as in sub rosa?" The allusion goes back to classical times. The Romans adopted the Egyptian sun-god Horus as part of a cult of Isis and Serapis that reached them through Greece. The Greeks had taken him over as Horus the child (whose name in Egyptian was her-pa-khrad), Greeking his name to Harpocrates. The Egyptian hieroglyph for a child was a seated boy sucking his finger; the Greeks thought this showed him with his finger to his lips and so made him the god of silence and secrecy. He became popular among Romans once the cult had been officially sanctioned during the reign of Caligula in the first century AD. There's a famous story from those times in which Cupid - the Roman god of love - was said to have given a rose to Harpocrates as a little thank-you bribe for not letting on what his mother Venus, the goddess of sensual love, was up to (very filial, that). So the rose became the symbol of confidentiality in the classical Roman world. The ceilings of Roman dining rooms were decorated with roses to remind guests that what was said there under the influence of wine (sub vino) was also sub rosa, under the rose, privileged and not to be made public. The symbol of the rose was well-known throughout the post-classical period and is recorded in particular in old German writings, which is how it may have got into English. The first use of the English translation of the phrase occurs in the State Papers of Henry VIII in 1546 (though the writer had to explain what it meant). The rose was used in medieval times and later much as the Romans did, and at one time appeared as a symbol in the confessional. The tag in Latin or English is still to be heard, especially among people who prize confidentiality. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 14 10:21:16 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 10:21:16 CST Subject: V.V.(4) "under the rose" (23.24) Message-ID: http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/rose.html >From "Under The Rose" in Slow Learner: "An alignment like this, he felt, could only have taken place in a Western World where spying was becoming less an individual than a group enterprise, where the events of 1848 and the activities of anarchists and radicals all over the Continent seemed to proclaim that history was being made no longer through the Virt� of single princes but rather by man in the mass; by trends and tendencies and impersonal curves on a lattice of pale blue lines. [...] For he and Moldweorp [who works nominally for the Germans], Porpentine knew, were cut from the same pattern: comrade Machiavellians, still playing the games of Renaissance Italian politics in a world that had outgrown them." (p.107) "It was no longer single combat. Had it ever been? Lepsius, Bongo-Shaftsbury, all the others, had been more than merely tools or physical extensions of Moldweorp. They were all in it; all had a stake, acted as a unit. Under orders. Whose orders? Anything human? He doubted: like a bright hallucination against Cairo's night-sky he saw (it may have been only a line of clouds) a bell-shaped curve, remembered perhaps from some younger F.O. operative's mathematics text. Unlike Constantine on the verge of battle, he could not afford, this late, to be converted at any sign. Only curse himself, silent, for wanting so to believe in a fight according to the duello, even in this period of history. But they--no, it--had not been playing those rules. Only statistical odds. When had he stopped facing an adversary and taken on a Force, a Quantity?" (pp.134-35) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 14 10:31:52 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 10:31:52 CST Subject: V.V.(4) "under the rose" (23.24) Message-ID: I have a really simple question: Why is Stencil pursuing V through this group of characters at this time and place? Seeing that his father was associated with this group, why would Stencil focus his attention on an interlude in which his father was absent? I take it that this is just prior to Porpetine's death. I guess that's the answer to my question, but this seems a very arbitrary way to track V. Are there other connections I'm missing? DM _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From richardromeo at hotmail.com Tue Nov 14 10:34:19 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 16:34:19 GMT Subject: W. and Ike Message-ID: Hey-- The description of Eisenhower in Coover's The Public Burning sounds alot like George W. Bush. And in this strange time of political twilight (or a new dawn), go out and read 'A Political Fable'--you'll know who's got my vote. Rich _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 14 10:36:55 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 10:36:55 CST Subject: VV(4) - Stencil's Farm & Adam's Virgin Message-ID: ---------- (62) Around each seed of a dossier, therefore, had eveloped a nacreous mass [...] He tended each seashell on his submarine scungille farm ---------- http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary Main Entry: na�cre Pronunciation: 'nA-k&r Function: noun Etymology: Middle French, from Old Italian naccara drum, nacre, from Arabic naqqArah drum Date: 1718 : MOTHER-OF-PEARL - na�cre�ous /-krE-&s, -k(&-)r&s/ adjective http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/s.html Scungille shell: H. Stencil's scungille farm, 62; 178; what Botticelli's Venus seems to be standing in; "There's nothing inside. Only the scungille shell." 370; 384; [Education of Henry Adams] http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/adams.html#virgin Historians undertake to arrange sequences,--called stories, or histories,--assuming in silence a relation of cause and effect. These assumptions [...] have been astounding, but commonly unconscious and childlike; so much so, that if any captious critic were to drag them to light, historians would probably reply, with one voice, that they had never supposed themselves required to know what they were talking about. [...] Adams, for one, had toiled in vain to find out what he meant. [...] [H]e insisted on a relation of sequence, and if he could not reach it by one method, he would try as many methods as science knew. Satisfied that the sequence of men led to nothing and that the sequence of their society could lead no further, while the mere sequence of time was artificial, and the sequence of thought was chaos, he turned at last to the sequence of force. (pp.1068-69) [T]he historian's business was to follow the track of the energy; to find where it came from and where it went to; its complex source and shifting channels; its values, equivalents, conversions. It could scarcely be more complex than radium; it could hardly be deflected, diverted, polarised, absorbed more perplexingly than other radiant matter. Adams knew nothing about any of them, but as a mathematical problem of influence on human progress, though all were occult, all reacted on his mind, and he rather inclined to think the Virgin easiest to handle. (p.1074-75) Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power-houses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men, and the men tend to succumb to their own motive forces. (pp. 1104-05) As history unveiled itself in the new order, man's mind had behaved like a young pearl oyster, secreting its universe to suit its conditions until it had built up a shell of nacre that embodied all its notions of the perfect. Man knew it was true because he made it, and he loved it for the same reason. [...] The woman especially did great things, creating her deities on a higher level than the male, and, in the end, compelling the man to accept the Virgin as guardian of the man's God. The man's part in his Universe was secondary, but the woman was at home there, and sacrificed herself without limit to make it habitable, when man permitted it, as sometimes happened for protection against forces of nature. She did not think of her universe as a raft to which the limpets stuck for life in the surge of a supersensual chaos; she conceived herself and her family as the center and flower of an ordered universe which she knew to be unity because she had made it after the image of her own fecundity; and this creation of hers was surrounded by beauties and perfections which she knew to be real because she herself had imagined them. (pp. 1138-39) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From wbm1 at columbia.edu Tue Nov 14 12:00:39 2000 From: wbm1 at columbia.edu (Bill Millard) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 13:00:39 -0500 Subject: Tarpley/Chaitkin material about Bush ties to Nazis In-Reply-To: <200011140801.CAA21874@waste.org> Message-ID: <200011141755.MAA07586@kachifo.cc.columbia.edu> Ahoy, Pynchers: Doug Millison forwarded some alarming material from > George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & > Anton Chaitkin Hmmm. This is one of several books & kabillions of articles, online postings, etc. with documentation of Bush-Nazi ties. As that creepy family is in the process of stealing the presidency, installing a known halfwit with a criminal record as figurehead-in-chief, and probably placing all of us in severe peril, it's suddenly a lot more important for the truth about the Bushes' history to be better known. Can anybody here offer informed views on the credibility of Tarpley & Chaitkin's info? As a web search with terms like "prescott bush nazi germany thyssen" quickly makes clear, an obvious problem here is that some of these documents come from the paranoid-conspiratorialist fringe -- people who believe all sorts of dark stuff about Rockefellers, Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, Skull & Bones, and so forth. Maybe everything *is* connected after all, but maybe only some things are connected in meaningful ways, and other things are truly random; surely discerning Pynchonologists, aware of the concepts of paranoia and antiparanoia, can appreciate that. Distinguishing between true scary things and scary things that are fun to believe but not verifiably true is critical here. I'm fully prepared to believe the worst about the Bushes (including their possible effort to manipulate contemporary geopolitical events in the name of their own wacko belief systems), provided it's logically coherent and supported by evidence. This shit's serious, in other words. Thinking in an adolescent manner about it makes it easy for Them to continue marginalizing & discrediting anyone who tries to expose Their history, but thinking in an adult manner about it could lead to the dissemination of information that actually makes a difference in the world (Woodward & Bernstein being the obvious precedent). Adult thinking: discovering, with the rigor and seriousness of the professional historian or journalist whose independent judgment hasn't been bought by corporate power or clouded by conspiratorialist hoo-hah, whether Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker were in fact Nazi sympathizers and collaborators, leaving a legacy that calls their descendants' actions into serious question. Adolescent thinking: picking up some odd details, e.g. Skull & Bones lore involving the allegedly mystical number 322 (see one of Ron Rosenbaum's articles on these idiots, http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=2943), and then watching the election returns to see whether GWB might squeak into office by a 322-vote margin, and then trying to link it up to some mystical X- file-ish horseshit out of Nostradamus. I'm not an investigative journalist or historian myself, and I claim no qualifications to evaluate this stuff, other than a basic skepticism toward both extremes of official sanitized versions of history and grassy-knoll conspiratorialism. I suspect that some people on this list are in a position to offer useful commentary on this material, so can anyone comment on a few of the more credible- looking sources that repeat the Tarpley/Chaitkin claims? Just to put two examples into play, what does anyone know about Russell S. Bowen, _The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed_ (America West, 1992); and John Loftus & Mark Aarons, _The Secret War against the Jews_ (St. Martin's, 1994)? Does anyone here have info that deserves wider circulation? Cheers, folks... and pray, if you have anything to pray to, for this big strange troubled republic. --Bill Millard Bill Millard, Ph.D., Senior Editor, Strategic Communications Group Office of Strategic Initiatives, Columbia University wbm1 at columbia.edu * www.columbia.edu/cu/osi * 212/854-9474 * fax 854-9476 From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Tue Nov 14 12:34:30 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 18:34:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: V.V.(4) "under the rose" (23.24) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, David Morris wrote: "He doubted: > like a bright hallucination against Cairo's night-sky he saw (it may have > been only a line of clouds) a bell-shaped curve, remembered perhaps from > some younger F.O. operative's mathematics text. Unlike Constantine on the > verge of battle, he could not afford, this late, to be converted at any > sign. > Also of interest (and I'm sorry to keep being a bit vague on the information but my university library is awful and I don't have the relevant books with me) with regard to "sub rosa" are the writings of Umberto Eco. Two novels in particular: "In the Name of the Rose" and Foucault's Pendulum. The first is about the problem of interpreting signs, and ends with the librarian desparately trying to make sense of the burnt remains of the library. The final sentence of the book is: STAT ROSA PRISTINA NUDA TENEMUS The second is the mother of all conspiracy novels. One of the groups mentioned are the Rosa Crustians, related to the Knights Templar and the Crusades, dedicated to carrying out "the plan" (related of course to Kabbalistic ideas). I mention this because of the Constantine reference (when the cross appeared to the emperor on the eve of battle saying to conquer in its name). The importance of this is that not only does the sign affect Constantine, it is also has a dramatic effect on the nature of the Cross, which formerly was seen as a failure (Christ's crucifixion not being your obvious sort of victory) I'll check out the references in more detail when I can. Probably all dead ends, but you never know. Mark _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > > From brucea at bestweb.net Tue Nov 14 12:39:16 2000 From: brucea at bestweb.net (Bruce Appelbaum) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 13:39:16 -0500 Subject: W. and Ike References: Message-ID: <007d01c04e6a$31cd1e40$ea11b3d8@bestweb.net> Ike, whatta guy. When asked if he could mention one major contribution made by Nixon as Veep, Ike said he would have to think for about a week to come up with one. This was when Dick was running against JFK for Prez. Loyal to a fault. And of course, everybody knows that his "heart attacks" were really fabrications. He was really communing with aliens from outer space at Area 51 (source: Weekly World News, while checking out at the A&P). end Regards Bruce Appelbaum Yorktown Heights, New York ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Romeo" To: Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2000 11:34 AM Subject: W. and Ike > Hey-- > > The description of Eisenhower in Coover's The Public Burning sounds alot > like George W. Bush. > > And in this strange time of political twilight (or a new dawn), go out and > read 'A Political Fable'--you'll know who's got my vote. > > Rich > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > > From jeremy at xyris.com Tue Nov 14 12:50:15 2000 From: jeremy at xyris.com (Jeremy Osner) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 13:50:15 -0500 Subject: P-list road trip destination? Message-ID: <3A118967.813535DD@xyris.com> http://www.chowhound.com/newengland/boards/newengland/messages/2790.html (watch URL wrap) From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 14 13:07:40 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 14:07:40 -0500 Subject: Venery under the rose References: Message-ID: <3A118D7C.4F8016EE@earthlink.net> Is there any evidence, artifacts to support any claims to the origin of "sub-rosa"? The entry, David Morris, you posted, is almost identical with that in Brewer's, I think if I remember right, some painted jars and such were linked by some scholars to Harpocrates, but, and I think Pynchon was aware of this, the origin of the meaning of sub-rosa is not known, what does the OED say?, not much I think, etymologists, philologists, linguists, Classicists, scholars of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman culture acknowledge, I believe, that the origin simply cannot be confirmed. I think, is it R&J? , or is it Two Gentlemen?, Two Gentlemen, where Shakespeare was onto this too, but in any event, I think Pynchon milks it for all its worth, including of course, the roses above the confessionals in the Church and in those stain glass windows, the symbol of the Virgin, that Henry Adams, as tourist, recorded. In any event, Sir Thomas Browne covers the meaning of "sub rosa" in 'Pseudoxia Epidemica', Book V, Chapter 22, subtitled "Compendiously of many questionable customes, opinions, pictures, practises, and popular observations", section 7. 7. When we desire to confine our words we commonly say they are spoken under the Rose;13 which expression is commendable, if the Rose from any naturall propertie may be the symbole of silence, as Nazianzene seems to imply in these translated verses. Utque latet Rosa Verna suo putamine clausa, Sic os vincla ferat, validisque arctetur habenis, Indicatque suis prolixa silentia labris: And is also tolerable, if by desiring a secrecy to words spoke under the Rose, we onely meane in society and compotation, from the ancient custome in Symposiacke meetings, to weare chaplets of Roses about their heads; and so we condemne not the Germane custome, which over the Table describeth a Rose in the seeling; but more considerable it is, if the originall were such as Lemnius and others have recorded; that the Rose was the flower of Venus, which Cupid consecrated unto Harpocrates the God of silence, and was therefore an Emblem thereof to conceale the prancks of Venery, as is declared in this Tetrasticke: Est Rosa flos veneris, cujus quo facta laterent Harpocrati matris, dona dicavit Amor; Inde Rosam mensis hospes suspendit Amicis, Convivæ ut sub ea dicta tacenda sciant.14 From richardromeo at hotmail.com Tue Nov 14 13:16:07 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 19:16:07 GMT Subject: W. and Ike Message-ID: Bruce (and others)-- In the June 2000 issue of Stand Magazine, Coover provides some context to The Public Burning controversy by publishing some of his logs and notes, from 1966-77 (bless you nypl). Rich >From: "Bruce Appelbaum" >To: "Richard Romeo" , >Subject: Re: W. and Ike >Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 13:39:16 -0500 > >Ike, whatta guy. When asked if he could mention one major contribution >made >by Nixon as Veep, Ike said he would have to think for about a week to come >up with one. This was when Dick was running against JFK for Prez. Loyal >to >a fault. > >And of course, everybody knows that his "heart attacks" were really >fabrications. He was really communing with aliens from outer space at Area >51 (source: Weekly World News, while checking out at the A&P). > > >end > >Regards > >Bruce Appelbaum >Yorktown Heights, New York > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Richard Romeo" >To: >Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2000 11:34 AM >Subject: W. and Ike > > > > Hey-- > > > > The description of Eisenhower in Coover's The Public Burning sounds alot > > like George W. Bush. > > > > And in this strange time of political twilight (or a new dawn), go out >and > > read 'A Political Fable'--you'll know who's got my vote. > > > > Rich > > >_________________________________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at >http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > http://profiles.msn.com. > > > > > _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 14 13:43:47 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 14:43:47 -0500 Subject: Upside down References: <23.372b23a.27419ac0@aol.com> <001a01c04e19$eb69c3e0$024806d5@selltelda.net> Message-ID: <3A1195F3.782BA659@earthlink.net> Otto Sell wrote: > > I admit that German society is sick, but I get the increasing feeling that > we and the US (and GB, France, Russia and so on) are much sicker then I ever > thought and because of political correctness nobody dares to say . . . In America we dare to say (although free speech is now a legalism that permits not only the correct and incorrect to say what they please, but to do as they wish with impunity) too much. Like Hamlet's guilty Mother we protest too much and we consent too much. Take education, we spend billions of tax dollars on education, education for all, the foundation of democracy, justice, freedom, Bush says no child shall be left behind, Gore calls for excellence. And yet, most of our children are being left behind or promoted when they shouldn't be and when excellence shows up we charge it with elitism. We deplore, we condemn, we weep over the sexual promiscuity of our children because children born to children in a cycle of poverty and violence is a bad batch of smack on the streets of our democracy, oh how our children shoot each other up, with AIDS, with bullets, with all sorts of garbage, but the television, the movies, the media promotes the violent, pornographic, pop you, pop her, pop him, pop lyrics from the Tube rocked cradle to the rapper's grave, and this is all in the name of freedom, the free, the free market of ideas. The Bush family is as filthy as the Gore family and as dirty as the Clintons hope to be in three generations. The Nation is not sick, is not mad, such Freudian Marxism, Norman O. Brownism, Marcuse and Learyism is wearyism on the soul of America after 1969. Welcome to the middle, where nothing is excluded, and the absurd is only one step down on the way to decadense. From jbor at bigpond.com Tue Nov 14 15:40:46 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 08:40:46 +1100 Subject: V.V. (4): Stencil's impersonations Message-ID: <21295598610186@domain5.bigpond.com> Yes, Stencil chooses these ... characters -- in fact, I'd even go so far to say that he invents them, utilising "poetic license ... imaginative anxiety" 62.28-30 just as an author would (thus that reflexive aspect of the postmodern novel) -- precisely because they are on the sidelines of the drama which Sidney's journals focus on. But I think there is a difference between Stencil's reasons for doing it this way (the aspiration to "historical objectivity"; a disinclination to align with his father's pov, perhaps a legacy of the suppressed resentment he feels towards his father for the lack of filial nourishment he received as a child; a sense of his own ineffectuality or non-participant status) and Pynchon's. In other words, I agree with you that Stencil fils is being characterised by the "impersonations" he adopts, but I also think that part of this characterisation is that he is missing the main point about historical significance and perspective that the *literary* contrivance he has manufactured from the material portends. The quotes that David cited from the earlier story and from H. Adams are very persuasive imo. It's the old Pynchonian nested narrative or Russian doll trick again -- mise en abyme, infinite regress -- and I don't think that Stencil's conclusions (or failure to reach a conclusion) are necessarily Pynchon's, nor should they be ours. It's also interesting to note that Melville's "confidence man" appears in eight guises aboard the Fidèle too. best ---------- >From: "J L" >To: pynchon-l at waste.org >Subject: Re: V.V.(4): Notes, Comments, and Queries IV >Date: Wed, Nov 15, 2000, 1:07 AM > snip > The Impersonations' observer-status (in the "action", of course > they have their own agendas) says most about Herbert's opinion > of himself. The quick-change artist finds it easier to adopt > a peripheral role. From keith at pfmentum.com Tue Nov 14 16:51:53 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 14:51:53 -0800 Subject: London Pynchon Gathering Venue Message-ID: <001301c04e8d$7d097160$e73d71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> http://www.aian.com.au/puppetry/ Buckle up for safety. From monroe at mpm.edu Tue Nov 14 19:09:38 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 19:09:38 -0600 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 Message-ID: <3A11E252.BDF788A9@mpm.edu> Thanks, Terrance, you did indeed elaborate to some extent at least a prolegomena to that possible, probabble, even, Pynchon/Heidegger connection, not to mention a whole lotta other interesting stuff. Might I point out that David Farrell Krell also has a book called Lunar Voices: Of Tragedy, Poetry, Fiction and Thought (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995)? Well, I just did, so there, but ... Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, Holderlin, Garcia Marquez, Derrida, Blanchot ... but I've barely read that chapter of Daimon Life, barely started Contagion, so ... But was esp. glad to see that James Berger paper ("Cutural Trauma and the 'Timeless Burst,'" @ http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/papers_berger.html), which manages actually to DO a little something in re: Pynchon with all those little intutions I've had since rereading Gravity's Rainbow, in re: Heidegger, Benjamin, Deleuze and Guattari, Marcuse, et al. Again, a Fake Book can be a Very Useful Item to Have, Italian Wedding or no. But that's also why I stressed Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization, esp. that latter "1966 Political Preface," think that, a la HM, TRP might well be tempering an initial celebration of very 60s indeed notions of liberation via the libido, the possible dangers of unihibiting inhibition, et al. (and cf. that Sontag review of Brown's Life Against Death) ... But, Kai, "the world is/as a classroom"? For any one of us here, elsewhere, I would (and I will) think, though I hardly claim to be much on the blackboard side of the podium. Certainly, you're not taking issue with someone posting lengthy excerpts from obscure, obscurantist texts, now, are you? Pot to Kettle: "Black"? But I'm always interested in any, well, interesting, and, hey, relevant, even, information I can get, so ... but, hey, enough about ME. A friend commented on my comments in re: V., its title, in re: the sephiroth. Those points, that branching, any ideas? From monroe at mpm.edu Tue Nov 14 19:25:52 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 19:25:52 -0600 Subject: Pynchon and Law Symposium Message-ID: <3A11E620.2B36F2A8@mpm.edu> You know, I never would have known about that "Pynchon and the Law" issue were it not for this list (thanks, Doug!). As I recall, I esp. appreciated Robert Hansen's "Law, History, and the Subversion of Postwar America in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49," felt should have esp. appreciated Kathleen Iudicello's "Intruding Worlds and the Epileptic Word: Pynchon’s Dialogue with the Laws of Surrealism and New Physics" (all my little fascinations), but ... but I still think I have a few essays (the Mason and Dixon ones, largely) to go, so ... But what was most appreciated, on this end, was the historicized, politicized bent of the volume (David Thoreen's "The President’s Emergency War Powers and the Erosion of Civil Liberties in Pynchon’s Vineland" came esp. recommended), which is not only where and how it excelled, but where and how it differed most from yr average Pynchoniana. And not like anyone's gonna take my word for it, but ... "Focus on Thomas Pynchon and the Law." Oklahoma City University Law Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Summer 1999). Contents @ http://www.okcu.edu/law/lrev24-2.htm Order @ http://www.okcu.edu/law/lrissue.htm They've also had (Wm.) Shakespeare and a Ralph Ellsion issues. So who's next? Kafka seems obvious, but ... From monroe at mpm.edu Tue Nov 14 20:49:17 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 20:49:17 -0600 Subject: Tiffany, "The Lyric Automaton" (Kleist, de Man) Message-ID: <3A11F9AD.B4FFCECA@mpm.edu> ... from Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric (Berekely: U of California P, 2000), Chapter 3, "The Lyric Automaton," pp. 63-94. Had hoped to post exceprpts from a few of the texts referred to first, but ... The prominence of the pleasure principle in La Mettrie's man-machine signals a decisive shift in the discourse of automata from natural philosophy to the domain of aesthetics, combined with a revival of the technological disposition of the Heronic tradition in antiquity (though its emphasis on hedonism is far more explicit). Moreover, teh effort to coordinate the automaton with a philosophy of pleasure signals the demise of mechanical philosophy as a viable matrix for theoretical physics ... (64) The new aesthetic disposition of the automaton did not come at the expense of philosophical atomism, however, but rather through a relaignment of its principal components, the discourses of fatlity and wonder (Demovritean physics and Epicurean hedonism). At teh same time, in the context of late eighteenth-century philosophy, the concept of aesthetic pleasure was undergoing a formalization or, more aptly speaking, mechanization. Thus, as the figure of teh automaton, no longer at home in the discourse of teh exact sciences, exercised anew its lyric affinity, the philosophy of pleasure, culminating in Kant's Critique of Judgment, sought to assimilate aesthetic experience to teh purest expression of mechanical philosophy--to mathematics. (64) The chiasmic exchange bewteen the automaton and teh discourse of aesthetic pleasure memerges in distilled form in Kleist's classic text, "On the Marionette Theater" (1810), published four years before E.T.A. Hoffmann's tales about automata. (64) Kleist's "On the Marinette Theater" is conveniently online @ http://www.cc.emory.edu/ENGLISH/DRAMA/HistDrama2/KleistMarion.html Hoffmann's "The Sandman" is @ http://www.vcu.edu/hasweb/for/hoffmann/sand_e.html The first crucial observation to make about Kleist's philosophical tale is that a marionette is not, strictly speaking, an automaton. Yet this displacemnet from automaton to puppet or doll is, as we shall discover, an essential feature of teh evolving modernity of teh automaton figure. Indeed, as Roman Paska observes, Kleist's narrative advances "the Romantic view of the puppet as a representational figure intent on acquiring mecahnical automaton." (65) [Here, see Roman Paska, "The Inanimate Incarnate," in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part I, ed. Michel Feher et al. (New York: Zone, 1989]. A translation of Kleist's essay is included in the volume as well--Tiffany's parenthetical page numbers, which I'll include, refer to that trans.] The limbs of the marionettes are said to move "in a mechanical way," yet "the whole figure, shaken at random, often assumed a kind of rhythmical movement that was similar to dance" ([Kleist] 415). Indeed, their [Kleist's interlocutors'] comments focus generally on "the line taht the center of gravity had to describe," characterized as "teh path of the dancer's soul" ([Kleist] 416), and on the mechanicity of the figures "described" by the puppet's dance. (65) Ultimately, however, it is analytical geometry that ... subsumes the "line" issuing from the mechanic's [i.e., teh puppeteer's] deliverance of the puppet to the force of gravity: "The movements of his fingers are realted to the movements of teh puppets attached to them somewhat like numbers to their logarithms or the asymptote to the parabola" ([Kleist] 416). Although Kleist's deployment of mathematical terms may not be altogether reliable ... the correlation of rhetoric and mathematics remains fundamental to his undestanding of the automaton. (65-6) In a critique of Kleist's essay, paul de Man focuses precisely on "Kleist's notion of the 'mathematical' as a model for aesthetic formalization," on "the articulation between trope and epistemology," carried to its limit in "mathematical language." He draws attention to fact that the line of the "dancer's soul" (described by the puppet's movement) is at once a trope and a geometrical curve (or formula). Hence, teh line of a puppet's soul is, as Kleist puts it, a "logarithm"--a word combining "word" and "number." (66) [Here, Tiffany is referring to Paul de Man, "Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist's Uber das Marionettentheater," The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia UP, 1984)] Further, Kleist's anatomy of the marionette turns on "th anamorphosis of teh line as it twists and turns into the tropes of ellipses, parabola, and hyperbola. Tropes are quantified systems of motion" ([de Man] 285-86). Here de Man makes his point about the convergence of aesthetic and mechanical "laws" in Kleist's marionette by exploiting certain figures (ellipses, parabola, hyperbola) that function both in geometry and rhetoric. The reference to anamorphosis (a distortion of representational reality) is essential to de Man's reading of teh automaton, since mimesis can never be more than a contingent figure in the tautology of the geometrical formula and teh figure of speech (embodied by the puppet's movement). hence, in de Man's view, the formal (that is to say, figurative or mathematical) character of teh marionette involves not so much a flight from realism as a provisional realism that refers, on closer inspection, to a state of "grace" unattainable by any human being. (66) In addition, we discover, teh anamorphic character of the marionette comprises not only the geometric formality of tropes but also the utter weightlessness of its frame: "these puppets have teh advantage of being antigravitational [antigrav (square backets in text)]. They know nothing of the inertia of matter." the marionette thus appears to defy the first principle of its physical being: mass. Although the puppet's movement follows mechanically from "the line that its center of gravity had to describe" ([Kleist] 416), the puppet's body is somehow, paradoxically, immune to the effects of gravitation. (67) ... "There could be more grace in a mechanical puppet than in teh structure of the huamn body"; ... "It was absolutely impossible for man to equal a puppet in this. Only a god could compete with matter in this field" ([Kleist] 418). The idea that teh paradoxical materiality of teh puppet is commensurable only with the incorporeality of a god spurs de Man to invoke the figure of the angel ... (67) Given, however, the materialist orientation of Kleist's equation of puppet and god (which implies a theological materialism), we should perhaps emphasize a correspondance bewteen the dialectical materiality of atomism and the anomalous corporeality of the gods in antiquity.... (67) Implicit in Kleist's anatomy of the marionette is, as de Man reminds us, an equation between mechanical gestures and figurative language. The line described by teh automaton is a geometrical figure but also a trope, that is, an image, a device essential to poetry and poetics. The specifically lyric connotation of Kleist's marionette emerges more explicity, as we shall discover, in essays by Baudelaire, Rilke, and the surrealists .... Yeats's elaboration of the mecahnical singing bird ... (68) Allegory, in de Man's view, is characterized not by an absence of representational realism but by a provisional realism that defers, on closer inspection, to a world based on teh constitutive power of tropes. Thus teh allegorical object, like teh substance of teh corpuscular "machine," is founded on the curious matter of tropes. Thsi does not imply tyhat lyric substance, or the world it comprises, is essntially unreal, but rather that things under teh spell of lyric oscillate between the literal and the immaterial, real and unreal. If we recall de Man's reference in teh Kleist essay to teh marionette's simultaneous compliance with "mechanical" laws and its infidelity to mimetic structures, we must reagrd the automaton, in its uncanny effecst, as an emlblem of allegory. For the automaton, like the allegorical object, appears at first to be "real," only to recede irrevocably into metaphysical uncertainty. (71) ... but it's amazing sometimes just what you just happen to have at hand, is all. Gravity, grace, automata, tropes, allegory, hyperbole, the mechanical, the parabolic, modernity, romanticism, you name it. To be continued ... From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 14 20:41:59 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 21:41:59 -0500 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 References: <3A11E252.BDF788A9@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A11F7F7.E52788C0@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: But > that's also why I stressed Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization, esp. > that latter "1966 Political Preface," think that, a la HM, TRP might > well be tempering an initial celebration of very 60s indeed notions of > liberation via the libido, the possible dangers of unihibiting > inhibition, et al. (and cf. that Sontag review of Brown's Life Against > Death) ... Yes, that Political Preface. It's the reasons he gives for tempering, what has transpired that goes right into GR. An excellent syllabus Dave. From keith at pfmentum.com Tue Nov 14 21:43:19 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 19:43:19 -0800 Subject: Tiffany, "The Lyric Automaton" (Kleist, de Man) Message-ID: <000a01c04eb6$33a77200$db3e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> I snooped around trying to find a list of the French poems Henri Maillarder's (or Jacquet-Droz~s [no dyslexic relation]) automaton draughtsman writes to see if the French poem sung hillbilly style was one of them, but I couldn't find a playlist anywhere. From monroe at mpm.edu Tue Nov 14 21:55:26 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 21:55:26 -0600 Subject: Tiffany, "The Lyric Automaton" (Rilke) Message-ID: <3A12092D.130CC3E6@mpm.edu> ... more from Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric (Berekely: U of California P, 2000), Chapter 3, "The Lyric Automaton," pp. 63-94: ... Rilke's great essay on dolls seeks (but fails) to wrench the doll more forcibly from the world of childhood, thereby placing the poet in a more ambiguous and more traumatic realtionship to teh starnge muse of the doll. Indeed, he infers that the doll, as an idea or figure, is not a possession of childhood but rather its subjecty. For, in his estimation, it is not children but tehir dolls that grow up and become independent ... (75) [Here, Tiffany is referring to Rainer Maria Rilke, Puppen, trans. by G. Craig Houston as "Some Reflections on Dolls," in Where Silence Begins: Selected Prose by Rainer Maria Rilke (New York: New Directions, 1978)] ... there can be little doubt that the doll, as an emblem of modern lyric, is essentially an automaton. the doll's fundamental alienation from childhood signals a return to its place in the history of technology and its mechanical philosophy. In the context of Rilke's essay, however, teh revolution of the doll constitutes a return to a place it has never been, to a crypt prepared for it long ago, in the trope of a mechanical bird. (75) Although Rilke never explicitly associates the doll with lyric, the doll appears in Rilke's oeuvre as a belated, though not entirely unexpected, permutation of the angel, the most persistent and fully developed figure of the poet in all of Rilke's work. (75) Here [in the Book of Images] angels appear as "souls" and are associated both with lyric (as "intervals" of "melody") and with a model of seriality ("each and each alike") that evokes the soullessness, the pure exteriority, of the automaton. As an "inetrval," moreover, the angel is clearly a medium. ["Intervals" "each and each alike" a la those "delta-t's"? Hm ...] Severla years later, an angel makes a celebrated visit in the New poems (107) as "L'Ange du Meridien" .... In this passage, teh angel addressed is a figure carved in stone (though "sympathetic"), thereby emphasizing, as in teh earlier poem, teh angel's eidetic nature ("mouth as from a hundred mouths distilled"). More reamrkable, from the prseent standpoint, is teh sundial that the angel is holding; for the iconography of "L'Ange du Meridien" (a sculpture on Chartres [as in Henry Adams, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres] cathedral) almost certainly invokes the themes (if not teh actual devices) of teh Heronic tradition. More specifically, the angel in this powm calls forsth in poetic terms the correlation of the clock and the angel of method in mechanical philosophy. We can therefore regard the "impartial sundial, upon which/ the day's whole sum is balanced equally" as mirroring the figure of the angel, as a materialization of the angel's mechanical--and clairvoyant--mind. (76) The angel that appears in the second Duino elegy retains a place in the discourse of souls, yet its character (as a bird) has become inscrutable, a sign of danger eliciting the poet's song .... (77) In one of Rilke's most haunting reflections on the enigmatic character of teh doll, he writes "One was so busy keeping you alive that one had no time to determine what you were" ([Rilke, "Dolls"] 49). The irony of the doll's precarious vitality turns on its immortality (its kinship to the angel) and the imamteriality of its provisions; for teh doll is "fed like the 'Ka' on imaginary food ..." ([Rilke, "Dolls"] 43). Even more disturbing is the impression that the doll is at once sentient and inert, awake and asleep ... (77) The doll is a "stranger to us" ([Rilek, "Dolls"] 47); yet, more than merely inscrutable, it is genuinely malevolent, like "something that made a noise and could hardly wait to submerge us and the whole room by exerting its full powers" ([Rilke, "Dolls"] 46). The doll's menace appears to reside in teh ambiguity of its material prseence ... (77) Hence in contrast to "the inanimate, the touching, teh deserted, the thoughtful aspect of amny things," the doll is "the horrible foreign body on which we had wasted our purest ardor ... the superficially painted watery corpse" ([Rilek, "Dolls"] 45). Indeed, the riddle of the doll';s materiality can be resolved only by elaborating the trope of the cadaver. (78) ... Rilke asserts that we destroy the immaterial doll-soul by seeking to care for it, mistakenly, in the material doll. Thus the authentic doll-soul, which is invisible, succumbs to our delusions about the actual doll, thereby recapitulating teh dialectic of the visible and the invisible that goversns the figure of the angel. In Rilke's eyes, the invisible doll is the authentic one. Furthermore, in an extraordinary inversion of the assumptions about immateriality of the soul, teh actual dolls become the maggots (Larven) that consume the cadaverous (and somehow vital) substance of the doll-soul. It is precisely at this moment that the ambiguity of the German word Puppe (and teh English word "puupet") comes most powerfully into play. For Puppe menas both "doll" and "pupa"; hence the doll, in Rilke's essay, must be understood as a chrysalis that undergoes material transformation. Yet it is not the physical doll, but the doll-soul, that Rilke describes as suffering the transformation undergone by a cadaver, a paradox that recalls Epicurean notions of a flame-like material soul. (78) In Rilkean terms, since the doll is the very emblem of the lyric object and its ambiguous substance, every object can be said to undergo a transformation in which the object's soul--its invisible foundation--is rendered in terms of physical corruption. (79) Within a year of teh composition of the "Dolls" essay, Rilke had composed the fourth Duino elegy, in which the doll finally encounters its double, the angel. Echoing Kleist's distinction, the poet refuses the dancer's "disguise," preferring instead the puppet's primitive grace ... (79) ... Rilke, elaborating Kleist's aesthetic ideology, suggests that the simplicity of the doll's barbaric form is commensurable only with the incorporeality of the angel. The anguished dialectic of doll and doll-soul is resolved in the figure of the angel, as Rilke explains in a letter of 1925: (79) [And here Tiffany cites The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Jane Bannard and M.D. Herter Norton (New York: Norton, 1969), vol.2, pp. 375-6:] The angel of teh Elegies is that creature in whom the transformations of the visible into the invisible, which we are accomplishing, appears already consummated. For the angel of the Elegies, all past towers and palaces are existent, becxause long invisible, and teh still-standing towers and bridges of our existence already invisible, although (for us) still persisting physically. The angel of teh Elegies is that being who vouches for the recognition of the invisible of a higher order of reality. [Tiffany, p. 80. And back to ...] >From this last statement in particular, it becomes apparent that the intuitions of Rilke's angel, especially its recognition of an invisible reality within the physical realm, are strongly reminiscent of teh angelic mind conjured by Leibniz as an emblem of mechanical philosophy (which grassps the invisible causes of sensible bodies). Thuis, if the angel is "that creature in whom the transformation of teh visible into the invisible ... appears already consummated," then the doll is that figure in whom metamorphosis appears as a problem, in whom the dematerialization of objects is incomplete, ambiguous, or even inscrutable. (80) ... the Rilkean figures of doll and angel tend to submerge questions of grace or beauty in a milieu of uncertain trauma--the effect of suffering visited on them, or to be visited on their human counterparts.... With its dreadful manifestation as a corpse, the doll becomes a physical experiment, and its traumatic air idnetifies it as a provocative and even transgressive object. The violence implicit in La Mettrie's [in his L'Homme-Machine] yoking of hedonism and mechanical philosphy anticipates the modern conversion of teh ostensible object of pleasure, teh automaton, into an experimental figure of boundless suffering, ill-will, and provocation. (80) The transformation of teh double--the doll--into a relic of inscrutable loss informs Walter Benjamin's iunderstanding of toys as well ... (80) ... and so forth. But I figured, seeing as you, not to mention Pynchon, are all interested in Rilke ... gotta go, but, in the meantime, on that confluence of angelic and the mecahnical, do see the following: Miller Frank, Felicia. The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice, and the Artificial in Nineteenth Cnetury French Narrative. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995. Poizat, Michel. The Angel's Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera. Trans. Arthur Denner. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992. Whilst the former, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to be put out in paperback, it's been important enough to me to shell out yet ANOTHER thirty-five samoleans when my first copy went missing. The latter is often cheaply available remaindered. I've seen it frequently at the Powell's Books near the University of Chicago, for example, or see Hamilton Books @ http://www.hamiltonbook.com/ ... From monroe at mpm.edu Tue Nov 14 23:36:32 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 23:36:32 -0600 Subject: Nabokov, Pnin Message-ID: <3A1220E0.56064E30@mpm.edu> ... and, just because it was what I had at hand today (really, this stuff pretty much just throws itself in my path), from Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (New York: Avon, 1969 [1957]), Chapter 1, 1 ... How should we diagnose his sad case? Pnin, it should be particularly stressed, was anything but the type of that good-natured German platitude of last century, der zerstreute Professor. On the contrary, he was perhaps too wary, too persistently on the lookout for diabolical pitfalls, too painfully on the alert lest his erratic surroundings (unpredictable America) inveigle him into some bit of preposterous oversight. It was the world that was absent-minded and it was Pnin whose business it was to set it straight. His life was a constnat war with insensate objects that fell apart, or attacked him, or refused to function, or viciously got themselves lost as soon as they entered the sphere of his existence. He was inept with his hands to a rare degree; but because he could mnufacture in a twinkle a one-note mouth organ out of a pea pod, make a flat pebble skip ten times on the surface of a pond, shadowgraph with his knuckles a rabbit (compete with blinking eye), and perform a number of other tame tricks that Russians have up their sleeves, he believed himself endowed with considerable mnual and mechanical skill. On gadgets he doted with a kind of dazed, superstitious delight. Electric devices enchnted him. Plastics swept him off his feet. He had a deep admiration for the zipper. But the devoutly plugged-in clock would make nonsense of his mornings after a storm in the middle of the night had paralyzed the local power station. The frame of his spectacles would snap in mid-bridge, leaving him with two identical pieces, hich he would vaguely attempt to unite, in the hope, perhaps, of some organic marvel of restoration coming to the rescue. The zipper a gentleman depends on most would come loose in his puzzled hand at some nightmare moment of hast an despair. (13-4) ... "too wary, too persistently on the lookout for diabolical pitfalls, too painfully on the alert," "erratic surroundings (unpredictable America)," "constant war with insensate objects," "a one-note mouth organ," er, "the zipper," well, you get the picture ... From jbor at bigpond.com Wed Nov 15 01:31:13 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 18:31:13 +1100 Subject: That "election" Message-ID: <07195083204182@domain2.bigpond.com> Though I don't personally care whether Mayor Quimby or Sideshow Bob finally gets the nod as "leader of the free world" (!), and sincerely doubt what difference it will make to anyone else on the planet which bozo does get in, just for the sake of poetic justice I'd like to think that the margin that George W. eventually wins by is *precisely* the number of votes Gore has lost due to the transparent hate-mongering and mud-slinging against Bush carried on by so-called "professional" commentators -- particularly "on-line" -- as they impersonate "rigour and seriousness". What a farce. ---------- >From: "Bill Millard" >To: pynchon-l at waste.org >Subject: Tarpley/Chaitkin material about Bush ties to Nazis >Date: Wed, Nov 15, 2000, 5:00 AM > snip > Adult thinking: discovering, with the rigor and seriousness of the > professional historian or journalist whose independent judgment > hasn't been bought by corporate power or clouded by conspiratorialist > hoo-hah, whether Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker were in fact > Nazi sympathizers and collaborators, leaving a legacy that calls > their descendants' actions into serious question. > > Adolescent thinking: picking up some odd details, e.g. Skull & Bones > lore involving the allegedly mystical number 322 (see one of Ron > Rosenbaum's articles on these idiots, > http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=2943), and then watching > the election returns to see whether GWB might squeak into office by a > 322-vote margin, and then trying to link it up to some mystical X- > file-ish horseshit out of Nostradamus. From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Wed Nov 15 03:33:01 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:33:01 +0100 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 References: <3A11E252.BDF788A9@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <13vyw9-1fYpzEC@fwd01.sul.t-online.com> Dave Monroe schrieb: > But, Kai, "the world is/as a classroom"? For any one of us here, > elsewhere, I would (and I will) think, though I hardly claim to be much > on the blackboard side of the podium. sic! unlike "can't wait" (- are you still out there?! i like your voice) i don't have a problem with you acting as if you were here to be on the blackboard side of the podium. actually, i appreciate the generalism of your interests. what turns me off is your frequent use of the classroom metaphor as such (- "here's something for the class ..." etc pp). people have compared the p-list to many things. personally i consider it to be a mc battling on the beach with trp at the turntables ... well, you surely don't have to agree, but i just wanted to let you know that this ongoing classroom evocation of yours makes me narrow and tired. your thoughts would sound far better under the endless sky ... kfl (- never going back to his old school) ps: if you're really interested in the pynchon/heidegger connection, you may check out again my "technology & turning" posting from the grgr (34). From lieutenanttyroneslothrop at yahoo.com Wed Nov 15 08:47:38 2000 From: lieutenanttyroneslothrop at yahoo.com (Tyrone Slothrop) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 06:47:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: We need help in Florida Message-ID: <20001115144738.40866.qmail@web9009.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.theonion.com/onion3641/nation_plunges_into_chaos.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Get organized for the holidays! http://calendar.yahoo.com/ From calbert at tiac.net Wed Nov 15 09:15:09 2000 From: calbert at tiac.net (calbert at tiac.net) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:15:09 -0500 Subject: That "election"/ gotta be kidding! In-Reply-To: <07195083204182@domain2.bigpond.com> Message-ID: jbor: just for the sake of poetic justice I'd like to > think that the margin that George W. eventually wins by is *precisely* > the number of votes Gore has lost due to the transparent > hate-mongering and mud-slinging against Bush carried on by so-called > "professional" commentators -- particularly "on-line" -- as they > impersonate "rigour and seriousness". What a farce. Mr Millard: > whether Prescott Bush and George Herbert > > Walker were in fact Nazi sympathizers and collaborators, leaving a > > legacy that calls their descendants' actions into serious question. > > The facts: "In October 1942, ten months after entering World War II, America was preparing its first assault against Nazi military forces. Prescott Bush was managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman. His 18-year-old son George, the future U.S. President, had just begun training to become a naval pilot. On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland `` Bunny '' Harriman, three Nazi executives, and two other associates of Bush. at s1 The order seizing the bank `` vests '' (seizes) `` all of the capital stock of Union Banking Corporation, a New York corporation, '' and names the holders of its shares as: `` E. Roland Harriman--3991 shares '' [chairman and director of Union Banking Corp. (UBC); this is `` Bunny '' Harriman, described by Prescott Bush as a place holder who didn't get much into banking affairs; Prescott managed his personal investments] `` Cornelis Lievense--4 shares '' [president and director of UBC; New York resident banking functionary for the Nazis] `` Harold D. Pennington--1 share '' [treasurer and director of UBC; an office manager employed by Bush at Brown Brothers Harriman] `` Ray Morris--1 share '' [director of UBC; partner of Bush and the Harrimans] `` Prescott S. Bush--1 share '' [director of UBC, which was co-founded and sponsored by his father-in-law George Walker; senior managing partner for E. Roland Harriman and Averell Harriman] `` H.J. Kouwenhoven--1 share '' [director of UBC; organized UBC as the emissary of Fritz Thyssen in negotiations with George Walker and Averell Harriman; managing director of UBC's Netherlands affiliate under Nazi occupation; industrial executive in Nazi Germany; director and chief foreign financial executive of the German Steel Trust] `` Johann G. Groeninger--1 share '' [director of UBC and of its Netherlands affiliate; industrial executive in Nazi Germany] `` all of which shares are held for the benefit of ... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals ... of a designated enemy country.... '' By Oct. 26, 1942, U.S. troops were under way for North Africa. On Oct. 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. at s2 U.S. forces landed under fire near Algiers on Nov. 8, 1942; heavy combat raged throughout November. Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942. In this action, the government announced that it was seizing only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis' U.S. partners to carry on the business. at s3 " The record: "1. Office of Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order No. 248. The order was signed by Leo T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian, executed October 20, 1942; F.R. Doc. 42- 11568; Filed, November 6, 1942, 11:31 A.M.; 7 Fed. Reg. 9097 (Nov. 7, 1942). See also the New York City Directory of Directors (available at the Library of Congress). The volumes for the 1930s and 1940s list Prescott Bush as a director of Union Banking Corporation for the years 1934 through 1943. 2. Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 259: Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation; Vesting Order No. 261: Holland-American Trading Corp. 3. Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 370: Silesian- American Corp. Jbor- If you think Snort was unfailry maligned I would recommend you spend a few minutes with this: http://www.mediafilter.org/MFF/BushFamilyPreys.html if you find yourself wondering about the sources of these stories, I'd be pleased to direct you to the Wall Street Journal issues in which these matters were discussed..... The media and Gore have given Snort and his venal family a free ride......... sorry to be so long winded, but some crap just can't be allowed to pass... love, cfa From calbert at tiac.net Wed Nov 15 09:20:19 2000 From: calbert at tiac.net (calbert at tiac.net) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:20:19 -0500 Subject: ooooops, I did it again Message-ID: Working backwards through the thread, I just arrived at Doug's post which provided the very text I submitted today. I apologize for the redundancy - the shock of reading Jbor defending Snort's honor really chapped my rear..... But my Bush file is pretty big and includes much more on their felonious activities, so should there be any other questions, I'd be pleased to provide sources...... love, brittany From davemarc at panix.com Wed Nov 15 09:27:39 2000 From: davemarc at panix.com (davemarc) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:27:39 -0500 Subject: Bulb News Message-ID: <003001c04f18$a1522ae0$2fc654a6@gmsc20b> The New York City news station NY1 reports that a treasure trove of vintage TV comedy scripts (i.e. for Your Show of Shows) was discovered in a sealed-off "writers closet" in midtown Manhattan. The report noted that the room's lightbulb was still functioning perhaps four decades (approximately) after the space was sealed off. d. From brucea at bestweb.net Wed Nov 15 09:47:45 2000 From: brucea at bestweb.net (Bruce Appelbaum) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:47:45 -0500 Subject: We need help in Florida References: <20001115144738.40866.qmail@web9009.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001d01c04f1b$66a0cf20$ea11b3d8@bestweb.net> electile dysfunction end Regards Bruce Appelbaum Yorktown Heights, New York ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tyrone Slothrop" To: "pynchon" Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 9:47 AM Subject: We need help in Florida > http://www.theonion.com/onion3641/nation_plunges_into_chaos.html > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Calendar - Get organized for the holidays! > http://calendar.yahoo.com/ > From brucea at bestweb.net Wed Nov 15 10:02:42 2000 From: brucea at bestweb.net (Bruce Appelbaum) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 11:02:42 -0500 Subject: Bulb News References: <003001c04f18$a1522ae0$2fc654a6@gmsc20b> Message-ID: <003d01c04f1d$7c8dfd60$ea11b3d8@bestweb.net> Actually, yesterday's NYTimes (the original source of the NY1 story) said that the bulb came on when they flipped the switch for the first time in 40 years. False Byron alarm ... end Regards Bruce Appelbaum Yorktown Heights, New York ----- Original Message ----- From: "davemarc" To: "Pynchlist" Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 10:27 AM Subject: Bulb News > The New York City news station NY1 reports that a treasure trove of vintage > TV comedy scripts (i.e. for Your Show of Shows) was discovered in a > sealed-off "writers closet" in midtown Manhattan. The report noted that the > room's lightbulb was still functioning perhaps four decades (approximately) > after the space was sealed off. > > d. > > From scuffling at hotmail.com Wed Nov 15 10:13:17 2000 From: scuffling at hotmail.com (Musashi Miyamoto) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 11:13:17 -0500 Subject: Today in History: Berlin Conference Began Message-ID: 1884: Berlin Conference Began As European nations scrambled for African territory in the late 19th century, they began to come into conflict. To prevent those conflicts and to bring order to the colonization of Africa, the Berlin Conference, organized by German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck, convened on November 15, 1884. Representatives from Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium negotiated their claims to African territory and established a framework for making and negotiating future claims. The peoples of Africa were not represented and had no say in the dividing of their homelands. By 1900, nearly 90 percent of African territory was claimed by European states. AsB4, Henry Mus From Greg.Montalbano at ucop.edu Wed Nov 15 11:19:57 2000 From: Greg.Montalbano at ucop.edu (Greg Montalbano) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 09:19:57 -0800 Subject: That "election"/ gotta be kidding! Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.20001115091957.007786e0@popserv.ucop.edu> jbor: just for the sake of poetic justice I'd like to > think that the margin that George W. eventually wins by is *precisely* > the number of votes Gore has lost due to the transparent > hate-mongering and mud-slinging against Bush carried on by so-called > "professional" commentators -- particularly "on-line" -- as they > impersonate "rigour and seriousness". What a farce. Mr Millard: > whether Prescott Bush and George Herbert > > Walker were in fact Nazi sympathizers and collaborators, leaving a > > legacy that calls their descendants' actions into serious question. > > The facts: "In October 1942, ten months after entering World War II, America was preparing its first assault against Nazi military forces. Prescott Bush was managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman. His 18-year-old son George, the future U.S. President, had just begun training to become a naval pilot. On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland `` Bunny '' Harriman, three Nazi executives, and two other associates of Bush. at s1 The order seizing the bank `` vests '' (seizes) `` all of the capital stock of Union Banking Corporation, a New York corporation, '' and names the holders of its shares as: `` E. Roland Harriman--3991 shares '' [chairman and director of Union Banking Corp. (UBC); this is `` Bunny '' Harriman, described by Prescott Bush as a place holder who didn't get much into banking affairs; Prescott managed his personal investments] `` Cornelis Lievense--4 shares '' [president and director of UBC; New York resident banking functionary for the Nazis] `` Harold D. Pennington--1 share '' [treasurer and director of UBC; an office manager employed by Bush at Brown Brothers Harriman] `` Ray Morris--1 share '' [director of UBC; partner of Bush and the Harrimans] `` Prescott S. Bush--1 share '' [director of UBC, which was co-founded and sponsored by his father-in-law George Walker; senior managing partner for E. Roland Harriman and Averell Harriman] `` H.J. Kouwenhoven--1 share '' [director of UBC; organized UBC as the emissary of Fritz Thyssen in negotiations with George Walker and Averell Harriman; managing director of UBC's Netherlands affiliate under Nazi occupation; industrial executive in Nazi Germany; director and chief foreign financial executive of the German Steel Trust] `` Johann G. Groeninger--1 share '' [director of UBC and of its Netherlands affiliate; industrial executive in Nazi Germany] `` all of which shares are held for the benefit of ... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals ... of a designated enemy country.... '' By Oct. 26, 1942, U.S. troops were under way for North Africa. On Oct. 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. at s2 U.S. forces landed under fire near Algiers on Nov. 8, 1942; heavy combat raged throughout November. Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942. In this action, the government announced that it was seizing only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis' U.S. partners to carry on the business. at s3 " The record: "1. Office of Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order No. 248. The order was signed by Leo T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian, executed October 20, 1942; F.R. Doc. 42- 11568; Filed, November 6, 1942, 11:31 A.M.; 7 Fed. Reg. 9097 (Nov. 7, 1942). See also the New York City Directory of Directors (available at the Library of Congress). The volumes for the 1930s and 1940s list Prescott Bush as a director of Union Banking Corporation for the years 1934 through 1943. 2. Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 259: Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation; Vesting Order No. 261: Holland-American Trading Corp. 3. Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 370: Silesian- American Corp. Jbor- If you think Snort was unfailry maligned I would recommend you spend a few minutes with this: http://www.mediafilter.org/MFF/BushFamilyPreys.html if you find yourself wondering about the sources of these stories, I'd be pleased to direct you to the Wall Street Journal issues in which these matters were discussed..... The media and Gore have given Snort and his venal family a free ride......... sorry to be so long winded, but some crap just can't be allowed to pass... love, cfa From mitchell.coffey at baesystems.com Wed Nov 15 11:28:19 2000 From: mitchell.coffey at baesystems.com (Coffey, Mitchell R) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 12:28:19 -0500 Subject: That "election"/ gotta be kidding! Message-ID: >-----Original Message----- >From: Greg Montalbano [mailto:Greg.Montalbano at ucop.edu] >Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 12:20 PM >To: klos_mon at uclink4.berkeley.edu >Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org >Subject: Re: That "election"/ gotta be kidding! [snip] >if you find yourself wondering about the sources of these stories, I'd >be pleased to direct you to the Wall Street Journal issues in which >these matters were discussed..... [snip] I'd be interested in seeing the WSJ citations. Thank you, Mitchell Coffey From hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi Wed Nov 15 12:58:55 2000 From: hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi (Heikki Raudaskoski) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 20:58:55 +0200 (EET) Subject: loved libs Message-ID: Rich, and Chris too: I feel sorry for the gallops humor re NYC librarians. The delicacy of the current situation gets easily forgotten from here. I love and admire and respect you both. I have also been able to find the time to browse the list archives. Of course it was most adequate to vote for Nader. Of course there's a difference between Bush and Gore. (At least that's how I feel on the basis of 13 months in Texas and Ohio (the one big north-of-the-Line state to go for Bush, by the way.)) Of course nothing could even *possibly* change before you guys got direct voting, and/or what is more, proportional representation in Washington. Otto: I really am a newcomer in the IT field. Just taking the very first steps. Love hammering in the code, though. I'm sorry to say that I haven't managed to try Pelevin yet. Sort of mixture of Fortran and Dream Weaver, perhaps? Somebody asked me privately: who could embody Erm? (Entity- relation-model.) IMHO, that'd be Perec's _User's Manual_. Heikki From jbor at bigpond.com Wed Nov 15 14:47:08 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 07:47:08 +1100 Subject: ooooops, I did it again Message-ID: <20362901604266@domain7.bigpond.com> I think you might have misread my post, as I did nothing of the sort. Nonetheless, seeing as being involved with "Nazi German banking operations" isn't a genetic hand-me-down, as far as I'm aware, then I can't see the relevance of the "dirt" being dug in terms of the context which it is being dug for. Seems to me that if approximately half of the voters in the U.S. popped their chads for the man, then accusations about "stealing the presidency" and being a "creepy halfwit with a criminal record" (a drink driving charge, I believe), and the associated fear-mongering which partisan Gore-ites seem to be carrying on with, on-line here at least, is just political lobbying of the lowest kind -- mud-slinging pure and simple attempting to cloak itself as reputable "history" or "journalism". But, as I said before, I think they're both bozos. best ---------- >From: calbert at tiac.net >To: pynchon-l at waste.org >Subject: ooooops, I did it again >Date: Thu, Nov 16, 2000, 2:20 AM > > I apologize for the redundancy - the shock of reading Jbor > defending Snort's honor really chapped my rear..... From calbert at tiac.net Wed Nov 15 15:23:47 2000 From: calbert at tiac.net (calbert at tiac.net) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 16:23:47 -0500 Subject: ooooops, I did it again In-Reply-To: <20362901604266@domain7.bigpond.com> Message-ID: > Nonetheless, seeing as being involved with "Nazi German banking > operations" isn't a genetic hand-me-down, as far as I'm aware, then I > can't see the relevance of the "dirt" being dug in terms of the > context which it is being dug for. Fair enough....except it appears that whatever character flaw drove Prescott to deal with "the enemy" has been passed on......George Sr.'s sins don't begin or end with his CIA efforts, but continue through Iran/Contra/Crack (the CIA has now fessed up to "not paying enough attention" - we'll wait another decade for its confession that it was more than a case of indifference); its contribution to the S&L mess of the 80's......Poppy's brother also has the bug, having engaged in various business ventures with the Yakuza.... I don't care at all about Snort's OUI matter..... I care a lot more about the abuse of process that characterized his land grab in the Texas Stadium matter, as well as the fact that those who bailed him out of his oil field failures (and they were pretty much uninterrupted from the start) would often find plum appointments in his father's administration..... Jeb took $75,000 to facilitate a $200 mill dollar fraud, he also benefitted from some curious dealings regarding a defaulted loan (the default was forgiven, the building turned over to him and his partner for 10% of the original value, and the tax payer picked up the $4 mill dollar balance)......Neil, in spite of flagrant abuse of his fiduciary duties, walked away from a fiasco at Silverado, caused in large part by his generosity to his cronies....... the criminal behavior, if not congenital, can at least be categorized as systemic..... > Seems to me that if approximately > half of the voters in the U.S. popped their chads for the man, then > accusations about "stealing the presidency" and being a "creepy > halfwit with a criminal record" (a drink driving charge, I believe), > and the associated fear-mongering which partisan Gore-ites seem to be > carrying on with, on-line here at least, is just political lobbying of > the lowest kind -- mud-slinging pure and simple attempting to cloak > itself as reputable "history" or "journalism". hey, it is politics after all. But I would caution you not to dismiss the smoke......and I must confess to not having paid much attention to the list goings on, so I can't address the intentions of other posters. In my efforts to shine light on the criminal conspiracy known as the Bush clan, I always provide documentation, and take care to eliminate from consideration anything which I cannot corroborate with another source..... But, as I said before, > I think they're both bozos. And I wouldn't argue.... I favored McCain, myself.....It is just that the Bush family has taken the Kennedy ethos and "turned it up to 11".... take care, love, cfa From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 15 15:36:59 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 16:36:59 -0500 Subject: V.V.(4) under the conscious force References: Message-ID: <3A1301FB.3AFA8512@earthlink.net> It's so difficult to discuss any of this without the freedom to select passages from the rest of the novel. Obviously, at this point we cannot say that much about Stencil as character, as quick change artist without going deeper into the book. Certainly the dossier recalls Slothrop's role playing, the forcible dislocation, the poetic license, imaginative anxiety, Melville's Confidence Man. Certainly the Mother/Father theme, individualism, disguise, multiplicity, characterization, the fox, again Confidence Man, is a constant in Pynchon's fiction. Stencil is raised motherless, his Mother is dead or assumed to be dead, maybe ran off or took her own life, but in any event, is gone, never his mother, leaving only the emptiness, the blank, she is not in any of the correspondences, and his father died mysteriously. The confidence man is a man without a father, an April Fools world without fathers, no open rebellion against pernicious Pop, the confidence man turns to manipulation, to disguise, he attack the confidence of Brothers--trust, one of the reasons Melville goes after charity with both fists clenched, trust is sucking on a mother's breast, not a plastic or foam breast, and the fatherless, the Motherless child may develop an ego problem, a problem relationship with the self and the world, the child, unable to rebel against the father, becomes manipulative, a confidence man, a pornography of Mother. We can trace this idea through the short stories, where childlessness, bareness, the wasteland, takes a turn in TSI, where the boys make a friend of their collective imagination, a Jazz man and a childless family. Who can forget the poignant scene in M&D where Mason and his father discuss Mason's responsibilities, the living flesh of bread, the led, the mysterious words against the earth, the dreams, the ghosts, the father and sons, or Prairie's quest for a mother, for a father, for a family, for a home, yes Stencil's characters are indeed, at least in part deliberate, based on the veiled references and notes in the Journal and since dreams and impersonation involve not only conscious but under the conscious myth making I think that a both/and reading is not in conflict with the sexual/hunt theme I am hinting at. PS Did Pynchon & Co. do business with BBH? From davidmmonroe at hotmail.com Wed Nov 15 19:19:13 2000 From: davidmmonroe at hotmail.com (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 19:19:13 CST Subject: Tiffany, "The Lyric Automaton" (Kleist, de Man) Message-ID: ... did a little searching on yr behalf, Keith (my two-handed search engine that could, and did, of choice is http://www.google.com) and, while perhaps I might have found more were "my" French rather more "mine," did find the following scraps which might be of use: http://www.uelectric.com/pastimes/drawer.htm http://www.autrement-dit.com/automates/bibliotheque/articles/jaquetdroz.htm Not terribly hillbillian, but ... But also came across that Silvio Bedini paper, "The Role of Automata in the History of Technology," from Technology and Culture 5, No. 1 (Winter 1964) online @ http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/b_edini.html. Do check out that issue in print, however, esp. the Derek J. de Solla Price essay ("Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechnistic Philosophy") as well. Also stumbled across the following, which perhaps Kai esp. might groove on (as ver kids DON'T say these days, I suppose, but ...): http://vallejo.phil3.uni-freiburg.de/1999/strehovec.html. Benjamin, Burroughs, Gibson, Heidegger, Hoffmann, Sterling, the Strugatskys (Roadside Picnic, by the way, was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker ... twice, apparently ...), Virilio ... The folowing suggests, at least, an articulation betwixt the technological, the libidinal, and the historically catastrophic: http://www2.dom.de/groebel/jnech/sexmach.html. Illustrated @ http://www.phil.uni-sb.de/projekte/HBKS/TightRope/issue.1/texte/joseph_eng.html. And note, again, that notion of "bachelor machines" (Michel Carrouges), recalling evocations of "The Bride" here ... This looks promising, but, again, in my case, that language barrier: http://www.erudit.org/erudit/theologi/v07n02/gagnon/gagnon.htm. Well, as always, let me know ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From davidmmonroe at hotmail.com Wed Nov 15 19:51:05 2000 From: davidmmonroe at hotmail.com (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 19:51:05 CST Subject: Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" Message-ID: ... yet more from Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000), this time, Chapter 2, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys," pp. 34-62: The automata in [E.T.A.] Hoffmann's stories are associated either with music or divination, qualities that recall the most ancient, and the most persistent, applications and mythical themes associated with mechanized figures. The first comples, self-activating machines in antiquity were not tools but toys, and, more precisely, singing birds and other parerga (ornamental devices), including moving or talking statues employed at the sites of oracles. Indeed, the mechanical singing bird has remained a popular and enduring motif. In these correspondences bewteen song, divination, and the mechanized toy, we can discern the basic features of the automaton as a mythical figure .... (37) With no constant means of indicating time to an observer, the ancient water-clock does not so much tell time as possess it, or embody it in its mechanical "movement" and technical configurtion. Thus, the first clock, like the echnical singing birds and parerga built in conjunction with it, is essentilly a simulacrum of nature--thigh perhaps even more abstract in its topographical features than the mechanized puppet or bird. (42) ... the essential fascination must lie with the mechanism itself: absent the "signals" of the automaton, one simply observes the clockwork, wondering at its abstract yet material possesion of time. (42) The ambuguity of the parergon in these devices makes it impossible to isolate the mechanical singing bird or the puppet from the idea of a mathematical picture or a topographical "mapping" of time and nature. Further, insofar as the automaton is a kind of picture, it is a picture that is also a timepiece. The relation of the automaton to time, which derives from its identity as a clock without hands or face, pertains not only to the incorporation of time, and to an image of the body in time, but also to implacable laws that exceed the body's mortal span. (42) The key to the correlation between materialism and the automaton lies in the fact that ancient clocks, mechanical singing birds, and other automata were all regarded, as the titles of Philo's and Hero's treatises indicate, as pneumatica--instances of pneumatic technology. Pneumatics is the branch of physics that deals with the mechanical prperties of air and other elastic fluids or gases (such as water). (43) ... pneuma = spirit = air = wind? And, again, for such a "mathematical picture or topographical 'mapping' of time and nature," see http://members.nbci.com/Surendranath/Shm/Shm01.html. Somewhere in here Tiffany mentions that Rabelais seems to introduce the term "automation" to the French language in Gargantua and Pantagruel, but I can't find it ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From jp4321 at IDT.NET Wed Nov 15 19:49:45 2000 From: jp4321 at IDT.NET (jporter) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 20:49:45 -0500 Subject: Fords in Nam Message-ID: Ironic, ain't it? Shiny new Fords being assembled in the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh city, for sale....wherever. And, a U.S. President poised to visit the wonderous country of Vietnam, his anti-Vietnam War stance- as a sober young man- a feather in his cap... cf. the CIA's talons dripping with blood- clutching another bag of dope. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jimmy "great ballots 'a fire" Baker- soul shaken and brain rattled- continues to try to subvert the will of the majority of all the people... Make no mistake: This election represents another, perhaps the penultimate chapter, of the revolution begun in the fifties and sixties with the civil rights movement. The slim black man hasn't cleared his throat yet, but he will sing, oh yes, he will sing! And someday, he will run for office, and win. But watch your back, america, V. ictory might not equal winning. jody From davidmmonroe at hotmail.com Wed Nov 15 20:35:45 2000 From: davidmmonroe at hotmail.com (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 20:35:45 CST Subject: Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" (Maillardet) Message-ID: ... sorry, forgot about this, Keith. From Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000), Chapter 2, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys," pp. 34-62, plus note: ... near the end of the eighteenth century, Jacquet-Droz and Henri Maillardet built several automated writers and draftsmen, which toured Europe with great success. Among the texts composed by the Jacquet-Droz draftsman is an epigram that inverts the Cartesian dictum, "Je pense, donc je suis," thereby capturing the essential polemic of materialism: "Je ne pense pas ... ne serais-je donc point?" (I do not think ... do I therefore not exist?) Maillardet's automaton, perhaps the most complex writer-draftsman ever built, could sketch six different images, including a ship and Eros in a chariot pulled by a butterfy (an image also in the repertoire of the Jacquet-Droz draftsman). The Mailardet automaton could also compose three poems in English and French, including the following "autogram": Un jeune enfant que le zale dirige, De vos faveurs sollicit le prix, Qu'il l'obtient ne'en soyez point surpris. Le desir de vous plaire enfanta ce prodige. Not only is this "autogram" the first example, quite literally [no puns where none intended ...] of 'automatic writing," but the Maillardet automaton continues to this day to produce these artifacts (at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia). (57-8) Loose translated into English (but not by machine): A young child driven by passion Seeks the prize of your good favor. And don't be surprised if he obtains it: A desire to please you brought this prodigy to life. The one poem in English composed by the toy tends, however, toward toy doggerel: Unerring is my hand the small May I not add with truth I do my best to please you all. Encourage then my youth. These texts (in the flowery hand of the toy) can be found in Chapuis and Droz, Les Automates, 316. (n. 55, p. 304) ... hope that's of assistance. More obligatory hyperlinks: http://www.fi.edu/qa99/attic10/ http://www.uelectric.com/pastimes/automata.htm http://www.mechanicalbanks.org/Scrapbook/1940's/Pages/1947_Post.htm ... but it's Jean-Claude Beaune instead who points out that An automaton is a machine that contains its own principle of motion. This Cartesian definition was advanced by Rabelais when, in Gargantua (1.24), he introduced the word "automate" into the French language: "and contrived thousand little automatory engines, that is to say, moving of themselves." See Jean-Claude Beaune, "The Classical Age of Automata: An Impressionistic Survey from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century," in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part One, ed. Michel Feher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi (New York: Zone, 1989), p. 431 ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From keith at pfmentum.com Wed Nov 15 21:53:02 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 19:53:02 -0800 Subject: Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" (Maillardet) Message-ID: <001a01c04f80$b9f19780$f23d71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> >>>... sorry, forgot about this, Keith. From Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000), Chapter 2, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys," pp. 34-62, plus note:<<< Yes, it was reading _Toy Medium_ that sent me on my quest, as well as what was behind my posting of the two Yeats poems recently. I've visited all of those sites you posted, using http://www.dogpile.com which includes google as one of its search engines. Google is my most successful single engine, but by using Dogpile I occassionally get leads missed by google. This is a public service announcement. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Wed Nov 15 23:00:09 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 23:00:09 CST Subject: Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" (Maillardet) Message-ID: Mine too. >From: "s~Z" Google is my most successful single engine _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Wed Nov 15 23:23:39 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 23:23:39 CST Subject: VV(4) - Sub Da Ma Rosiz Message-ID: Let's try to collect some of the the themes and Images in Stencil's Impersonations. These can be woven or conjured otherly to your desires. I assign no reliability, only familiarity: 1. Baedecker/Tourist. 2. Spy/Sub-Rosa ("Confidence Man" but inverted perspective, see #3). 3. The Local Prespective/The Daisy Chain. 4. The Bad Sunburn & The Sun God. 5. The Bird of Prey. 6. The Horizon & It's Crossing. No Conclusions Required. David Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Wed Nov 15 23:26:01 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 23:26:01 CST Subject: VV(4) - Horus on the Horizon Message-ID: http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/ic/projects/bayesgroup/Atlas/Mars/features/h/harmakhis_vallis.html http://library.thinkquest.org/15215/Culture/Harmakhis.htm Horus Harmakhis This god was associated with Khepri as a symbol of eternal life or resurrection, since Khepri is the rising Sun. Haramakhis which means, Horus in the horizon, personified the rising Sun. Harmakhis is represented as a man with a falcon head wearing a variety of crowns, or a falcon, or a ram headed lion. Harmakhis's most famous depiction is however the Sphinx of Giza. (a big man-headed lion wearing a royal headdress and the uraeus) This is sculpted out of rock and is close to the tomb of fourth dynasty pharaoh Khephren. The sphinx's face is made in his image. Haramakhis is not only the Sun-God Horus, he is also believed to be a repository of the deepest wisdom. The story is told of how young prince Tuthmosis III (18th dynasty) fell asleep at noon in the shadow between the paws of the Sphinx at Giza while he was out hunting. While asleep Tuthmosis III dreamed he heard that Harmakhis -Atum-Khepri was his father and that he should assume the red crown and the white crown on the throne of Gleb. Harmakhis said he would get the throne for Tuthmosis if he would remove the sand which had half buried the Sphinx. Tuthmosis did this for Harmakhis and became pharaoh. Instead of being protected by Amon-Ra he was protected by Ra-Harmakhis. This began the movement against Amon-Ra. http://www.mythographica.demon.co.uk/Ancient%20Egyptian%20Tarot/egg/egg_horus.html The name Horus is a Latinized form of the Greek �Hores�, which in turn is derived from the Egyptian �Hor�. The origin of this name may come from the same root as the Egyptian word for high or �far away�. Horus was represented either as a falcon or a falcon-headed man. His two eyes symbolized the two heavenly bodies, the sun and the moon, with the right eye being the sun and the left the moon. However the phrase �the eye of Horus� usually refers to the moon. It was this eye that was lost to Set and later, after being recovered, presented to Osiris to aid him in his resurrection. The four sons of Horus, Imset, Qebehsenuf, Duamuttef and Hapi, acted as guides to the dead. They represented the cardinal points and were found either pictorially or by name on each of the four sides of the coffin. They protected the body from hunger and thirst and also watched over the internal organs of the deceased, which were removed from the body during mummification and held in canopic jars, each of which bore a moulded head of one of the sons. The falcon was sacred to Horus from the earliest times and the image of a falcon on its perch became the hieroglyphic symbol representing the word �god�. Many sanctuaries were dedicated to him, and in each one his priests appear to have developed their own collection of myths associated with the god. So varied did these become that at first glance it would appear that we have over a dozen gods bearing the name Horus, some of which are provided below. http://members.nbci.com/edpa/egypt/gods/eggods1.htm As Harsiesis, he was "Horus, the son of Isis." Horus was conceived magically by Isis following the murder of his father, Osiris by Set. Horus was raised by his mother on the floating island of Khemmis near Buto. He was in constant danger from his evil uncle Set but his mother was able to protect him and he survived. He grew to manhood and avenged Osiris' murder by defeating his uncle Set. At this point, the story of Horus the son of Isis merged with that of http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0,5716,42049+1,00.html Horus Egyptian HOR, OR HAR, in ancient Egyptian religion, god in the form of a falcon whose eyes were the sun and the moon. Falcon cults were widespread in Egypt. At Nekhen (Greek: Hierakonpolis), however, the conception arose that the reigning king was a manifestation of Horus and, after Egypt had been united by the kings from Nekhen, this conception became a generally accepted dogma. The first of the Egyptian king's five names was the Horus name--i.e., the name that identified him with Horus. >From the 1st dynasty (c. 2525-2775 BC), Horus and the god Seth were perpetual antagonists who were reconciled in the harmony of Upper and Lower Egypt. In the myth of Osiris, who became prominent about 2350 BC, Horus was the son of Osiris. He was also the opponent of Seth, who murdered Osiris and contested Horus' heritage, the royal throne of Egypt. Horus finally defeated Seth, thus avenging his father and assuming the rule. In the fight his left eye (i.e., the moon) was damaged--this being a mythical explanation of the moon's phases--and was healed by the god Thoth. The figure of the restored eye (the wedjat eye) became a powerful amulet. Horus appeared as a local god in many places and under different names and epithets: for instance, as Harmakhis (Har-em-akhet, "Horus in the Horizon"); Harpocrates (Har-pe-khrad, "Horus the Child"); Harsiesis (Har-si-Ese, "Horus, Son of Isis"); Harakhte ("Horus of the Horizon," closely associated with the sun god Re); and, at Kawm Umbu (Kom Ombo), as Haroeris (Harwer, "Horus the Elder"). Horus was later identified by the Greeks with Apollo, and Edfu was called Apollinopolis ("Apollo's Town") in the Greco-Roman period. In the Ptolemaic period, the vanquishing of Seth became a symbol of Egypt triumphing over its occupiers. At Edfu, where rebellions frequently interrupted work on the temple, a ritual drama depicting Horus as pharaoh spearing Seth in the guise of a hippopotamus was periodically enacted. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Thu Nov 16 00:33:38 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 00:33:38 CST Subject: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. Message-ID: NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE To the citizens of the United States of America, In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect: 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed". 2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through. 6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005. 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "shit". 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day". 9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy. Thank you for your cooperation. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From mdougla1 at midsouth.rr.com Thu Nov 16 00:32:59 2000 From: mdougla1 at midsouth.rr.com (Mark A. Douglas) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 00:32:59 -0600 Subject: NBA, 2000 Message-ID: <008101c04f97$10e9fd00$206a1818@midsouth.rr.com> http://www.bhny.com/natlbkaw.htm A bookseller friend of mine predicted it'd be Sontag for political reasons, but oh my, was I hoping it would go to Lightman's "The Diagnosis". If you've not happened upon this book, I highly recommend it. Can't gush enough about it. Humble thoughts, Mark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From o.sell at telda.net Thu Nov 16 04:33:55 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 11:33:55 +0100 Subject: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. References: Message-ID: <010a01c04fb8$b951daa0$7a5306d5@selltelda.net> THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY hereby declares is dissolution claiming the status of a Dutch colony. We are glad to deliver Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Beatrix all monarchial duties over all provinces and other territories. We are grateful that Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Beatrix has accepted our submission to HET KONINGRIJK DER NEDERLANDEN ps it was time to get under Dutch laws . . . great idea, Dave. ----- Original Message ----- From: David Morris To: Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 7:33 AM Subject: RE: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. > > NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE > > To the citizens of the United States of America, > > In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to > govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your > independence, effective today. > > Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over > all states, commonwealths and other territories. > > Except Utah, which she does not fancy. > > Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you > who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) > will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. > Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be > circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. > > To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules > are introduced with immediate effect: > > 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then > look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed > at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should > raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using > the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" > and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. > Look up "interspersed". > > 2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on > your behalf. > > 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It > really isn't that hard. > > 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the > good guys. > > 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", > but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get > confused and give up half way through. > > 6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of > football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good > game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your > borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You > will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper > football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is > a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to > play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve > stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour > like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens > side by 2005. > > 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if > they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there > is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The > Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "shit". > > > 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new > national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day". > > 9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your > own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. > > 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy. > > Thank you for your cooperation. > > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > From o.sell at telda.net Thu Nov 16 04:34:20 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 11:34:20 +0100 Subject: Upside down References: <23.372b23a.27419ac0@aol.com> <001a01c04e19$eb69c3e0$024806d5@selltelda.net> <3A1195F3.782BA659@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <011201c04fb8$c827c440$7a5306d5@selltelda.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Terrance Cc: Pynchon-L Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2000 8:43 PM Subject: Re: Upside down > > > Otto Sell wrote: > > > > I admit that German society is sick, but I get the increasing feeling that > > we and the US (and GB, France, Russia and so on) are much sicker then I ever > > thought and because of political correctness nobody dares to say . . . > > In America we dare to say (although free speech is now a > legalism that permits not only the correct and incorrect to > say what they please, but to do as they wish with impunity) > too much. Like Hamlet's guilty Mother we protest too much > and we consent too much. > You say what are we doing too much but what are we not doing enough? > > Take education, we spend billions of tax dollars on > education, education for > all, the foundation of democracy, justice, freedom, I bet it's just a small percentage of the Pentagon-money, and the second half of the sentence is a sympathetic wish. But I don't wanna sound cynically. We're doing this here partly because we believe and share the idea of the Aufklärung. Even with many intrinsic faults I see no better way. > Bush > says no child shall be left behind, Gore calls for > excellence. And yet, most of our children are being left > behind or promoted when they shouldn't be and when > excellence shows up we charge it with elitism. "They hate you if you're clever and they despite the fool. A Working Class Hero is something to be." (John Lennon) But what elite? Is Bill Clinton elite? There's a difference between an elite by education, knowledge and proven abilities and a group of electi-families who believe they deserve political power as a birthright. And most people simply have not time enough to take care for their children as they should. If you wanna be successful today you're obliged to spend most of your time for the company. It was not much different, even harder in former times. Remember what Pynchon tells about Mason's family, his father, his sons. I think what we have in mind as a good education is some kind of bourgeois ideal - which I share in a way and this "bourgeois" is thus meant in the most positive socialist non-ideological way I am able to say it. > We deplore, > we condemn, we weep over the sexual promiscuity of our > children because children born to children in a cycle of > poverty and violence is a bad batch of smack on the streets > of our democracy, oh how our children shoot each other up, > with AIDS, with bullets, with all sorts of garbage, but the > television, the movies, the media promotes the violent, > pornographic, pop you, pop her, pop him, pop lyrics from the > Tube rocked cradle to the rapper's grave, and this is all > in the name of freedom, the free, the free market of ideas. It's the cultural "industry" of America that is dominating the market, but the explanation "blame it on the media" is too simple. And besides, if you cut the freedom of ideas you get the problem of who is in charge of the control. If you got the control you get the problem of correct feedback (as we have learned from rocket technology) if your decisions were right or wrong. No one gives you a real feedback but you get only feedback from people who know that they are reporting to the boss. Having lived a sexual promiscuous youth myself I cannot condemn the young for having fun but I can see your point within that "children born to children in a cycle of poverty and violence"-thing about underprivileged families. We've got a high unemployment rate and are faced with that problem too, but the cuts in the social spendings, in education too we saw in the last 15 years have not helped the situation of kids traumatized by family poverty and all that occurs along its way. > The Bush family is as filthy as the Gore family and as dirty > as the Clintons hope to be in three generations. The Nation > is not sick, is not mad, such Freudian Marxism, Norman O. > Brownism, Marcuse and Learyism is wearyism on the soul of > America after 1969. Welcome to the middle, where nothing is > excluded, and the absurd is only one step down on the way to > decadense. What is the middle then - filth? Sounds as if we're moving towards a new kind of feudalism . . . people trust the name which has been king already. What is the Soul of America? To come back to literature (we're deep in Pynchon-territory) which has, in our romantic education ideal, the task of pointing out to things which are going or have gone wrong, make us aware again of things we have forgotten. I trust Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" (really, I admit, I do) there remains not much to be proud of. The novel shows in an ironic view how sick and absurd the birth of the nation was from the beginning, directed and conducted mainly by money interests. Let me add that if we see "The Tin-drum" as the post-war birthnovel of my country that way, written from within a nerve clinic, I can only repeat the last sentence. War-traumatized people passing on their traumata to their kids, even in times of peace. "Central to Pynchon's conception of how the past inhabits the present is the notion of trauma." (James Berger: Cultural Trauma and the "Timeless Burst": Pynchon's revision of Nostalgia in Vineland, at: http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/papers_berger.html) Otto ps ... from the same url: (A hippie, Reagan said, was someone who "dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah" (Cannon, 148), and he promised to "clean up the mess at Berkeley," in particular the "sexual orgies so vile I cannot describe them to you") From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 16 09:36:27 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 09:36:27 -0600 Subject: Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" (Maillardet) Message-ID: <3A13FEFB.B6BC42D9@mpm.edu> ... yeah, those Yeats poems, that should have been a clue. Just haven't had the time to follow all too closely. I actually met Daniel Tiffany a few years ago. He teaches at USC (the University of Southern California, that is, vs., say, The University of South Carolina), but his wife is apparently from town, an they were here visiting the in-laws. Ran into him at the local university library. One of those Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ad moments. I had the only copy in town--he'd apparently been to the nearby bookstore just after I hit it--of some collection of essays on objectivity, whilst he had the special issue of Representations I was going to xerox in its entirety anyway. So we traded for the weekend. And we were both packing W.J.T. Mitchell's Picture Theory, except his was signed, had been given to him by Mitchell, who'd apparently been his mentor (and might very nearly have been mine, were it not for mistakenly assumed family responsibilities ...) at The University of Chicago. Should have kept in touch, but ... Anyway, I bought Toy Medium right off the new book shelf at another store, a quick flip through yielding Leibniz, automata, Kleist, meteorology, meteors, fireworks, radiation (his particular fascination when I met him seemed to be the nonlenticular optics involved in radiography), you name it, I was, and remain, into it. Didn't even realize it was by him, though, 'til I was long out of the store ... Also got lucky and scored his Radio Corpse: Imagism and the Cryptaesthetic of ezra Pound (which he was in the process of publishing when I met him) at a powell's in Chicago for six bucks minus twenty percent (vs. the fifty or so smackers Harvard UP wanted at the time). Haven't much thumbed through it yet, esp. as I'm not all too familiar with Pound (though I do recall an echo of his "In the Station of the Metro" or whatever in V., though where at ...?), but radiation on the other hand ... Hope to post a bit more from TM, do think it's highly sugestive here, at least, automata, gravity, grace, tropes, mathematics, birds, pneumatics, you name it. Do also see Otto Mayr's Authority, Liberty and Automatic Machinery (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989?), which I'll post from as well as soon as I remember to haul it along. Automata, philosophy and politics ... From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 16 09:54:00 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 09:54:00 -0600 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 References: <3A11E252.BDF788A9@mpm.edu> <13vyw9-1fYpzEC@fwd01.sul.t-online.com> Message-ID: <3A140318.88401E44@mpm.edu> "Acting as if ..."? Well, actually, I more often feel as if I'm being lectured to, esp. as some of you have far more time, far more patience, and far more incentive to prepapre yr notes, but ... but, well, if yr feeling "narrow and tired," might I suggest expanding yr horizons, getting a little rest? But that "battling" thing ... while I do appreciate anyone who has no problem challenging that proverbial authorial, er, authority--and I do recall noting that, if and when TRP tells us "what it all means," well, then we'll have our opportunity to argue with him a well ...--what I've often found tiring here is precisely the conception of this space of ours as an arena, a stadium, if not quite a Colosseum, for nigh-unto-gladiatorial combat. While I don't quite buy into that Rortian and/or Habermasian ideal of "conversation," I don't think it's necesarily a bad ideal to aspire to. But, hey, I MISS school, myself, having somehwere I can actually get some USE out of all this stuff. Where it seemed to LEAD to something. Which is why I'm "here," In the Arena ((c) Charleton Heston, though my entry in the title CH's autobiography sweepstakes was Goddam You All, Goddam You All to Hell), although where THIS might be leading, well ... But stranded at the university (where they laughed at my experiments, and called me a madman ...) waiting for a film to arrive from New Mexico, wandered through the bookstore. All sorts of nifty classes I would have loved to have taken. Film studies courses on Hong Kong cinema, the French New Wave (finally have that David Goodis novel Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player was adapted from now), Comp Lit class on, I'm guessing, "Time and Narrative" or somesuch, had all the books already, Gilles Deleuze's Cinemas-1 and -2, C.G. Jung's Synchronicity, Gary Saul Morson's Narrative and Freedom, Henri Bergson's Matter and Memory, Leo Tolstoy's The Forged Coupon, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle ... By the way, and speaking of The Man in the High Castle, saw It Happened Here at the university (we'll see who's mad now ...) last night. 60s British film about a Nazi-occupied United Kingdom. Have a copy on video, but far more effective--and effective it is, despite, perhaps even because of, its amateur cast and limited budget--on the big screen. If you can, do ... but which check out that post. Am interested in that Heidegger connexion ... Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote: > Dave Monroe schrieb: > > sic! unlike "can't wait" (- are you still out there?! i like your voice) i > don't have a problem with you acting as if you were here to be on the > blackboard side of the podium. actually, i appreciate the generalism of your > interests. what turns me off is your frequent use of the classroom metaphor > as such (- "here's something for the class ..." etc pp). people have compared > the p-list to many things. personally i consider it to be a mc battling on > the beach with trp at the turntables ... well, you surely don't have to > agree, but i just wanted to let you know that this ongoing classroom > evocation of yours makes me narrow and tired. your thoughts would sound far > better under the endless sky ... kfl (- never going back to his old school) > > ps: if you're really interested in the pynchon/heidegger connection, you may > check out again my "technology & turning" posting from the grgr (34). From millison at online-journalist.com Thu Nov 16 08:59:08 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 07:59:08 -0700 Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1520 In-Reply-To: <200011160526.XAA31539@waste.org> References: <200011160526.XAA31539@waste.org> Message-ID: Flamebait. Gratuitous, too. > >Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 18:31:13 +1100 >From: "jbor" >Subject: That "election" > >Though I don't personally care whether Mayor Quimby or Sideshow Bob finally >gets the nod as "leader of the free world" (!), and sincerely doubt what >difference it will make to anyone else on the planet which bozo does get in, >just for the sake of poetic justice I'd like to think that the margin that >George W. eventually wins by is *precisely* the number of votes Gore has >lost due to the transparent hate-mongering and mud-slinging against Bush >carried on by so-called "professional" commentators -- particularly >"on-line" -- as they impersonate "rigour and seriousness". What a farce. > > >------------------------------ > >Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 07:47:08 +1100 >From: "jbor" >Subject: Re: ooooops, I did it again > >I think you might have misread my post, as I did nothing of the sort. >Nonetheless, seeing as being involved with "Nazi German banking operations" >isn't a genetic hand-me-down, as far as I'm aware, then I can't see the >relevance of the "dirt" being dug in terms of the context which it is being >dug for. Seems to me that if approximately half of the voters in the U.S. >popped their chads for the man, then accusations about "stealing the >presidency" and being a "creepy halfwit with a criminal record" (a drink >driving charge, I believe), and the associated fear-mongering which partisan >Gore-ites seem to be carrying on with, on-line here at least, is just >political lobbying of the lowest kind -- mud-slinging pure and simple >attempting to cloak itself as reputable "history" or "journalism". But, as I >said before, I think they're both bozos. > >best > From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 16 09:50:37 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 10:50:37 -0500 Subject: VV(4) - Horus on the Horizon References: Message-ID: <3A14024D.5E943653@earthlink.net> V. opens with Profane and the moon. It is during the full moon that Benny will have "nightmares about that single abstracted street." He is "visited on a lunar basis by these great unspecific waves of honiness", and in the dream within a dream, just like Stencil's dream within a dream in our current chapter, (the parallels of the mock picaro and the mock romantic quester) he navigates his way, like Odysseus or any other Hero after meeting with the Seer, directed by the witch doctor in this case, and finds the screw driver to unscrew his navel, which will cause his ass to fall off (Sphere is swinging his ass off in that V. Note remember). The screw driver is located inside a red balloon. A red balloon, a red face and the sun. Very sharp young Pynchon, but we can't forget that the Political is present even in the Benny story, with dark humor, remember that Shoenmaker's nose jobs have the Politics of Nazism, that his assistant Trench amuses himself by throwing scalpels at an award given to Shoenmaker by the Jewish League, later this will show up in the Stencil story. And Benny's chief, the mad Brazilian De Concho, dreams of lunar looking deserts, and nails, above the mezuzah and the Zionist banner, his gun. Benny, balefully drunk, pisses on the sun: "It went down; as if he'd extinguished it after all and continued on immortal, god of a darkened world." But before we get to the sun, Pynchon slips in a few stars, the northern and southern constellations will become more important later and then turns to the planets and their orbits. We discussed this. Pynchon has got all the traditional devices of satire at play here--burlesque, caricature, irony, invective, hyperbole, meiosis, sarcasm, travesty, wit. His pattern, which he continues from V. to M&D is Parody, Comedy, Fantasy. His astronomicals (which, as we know become more and more important and complex has he matures as an author, the sun in GR, btw, is THEIR sphere, the wind belongs to the Rocket) provide some clues to how and why Pynchon subjects the Benny story, the whole sick crew and their sterility, lack of originality, decadence, and so on, and the Stencil story, the 20th century decadence and Violence, to parallel and overlapping satires. Dave Monroe, did you mention the Shadow and Peter Schlemihl? In The Confidence Man, it's not the shadow that is the Devil's bargain, but what CASTS (long entry in the dictionary) it. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/atkins/cmintro2.html PS Paul M, hope all is well. I won't be getting a pig's or a plastic heart just yet, thank you for your kind words. Aristotle says, happiness requires one to be in good fortune and good health. I hope you are. From millison at online-journalist.com Thu Nov 16 09:47:31 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 08:47:31 -0700 Subject: another bulb story Message-ID: On KPFA radio a minute ago, the authors of I book I think they said is called California Babylon call our attention to a light bulb that's been burning since 1901 in a fire station somewhere in California, I missed the name of the town. From keith at pfmentum.com Thu Nov 16 11:11:58 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 09:11:58 -0800 Subject: another bulb story Message-ID: <000c01c04ff0$58e01640$ce3e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> http://cgi.cnn.com/TECH/9703/25/longest.lasting.bulb/ A 96-year-old light bulb: It's still going March 25, 1997 Web posted at: 11:43 p.m. EST (0443 GMT) >From Correspondent Don Knapp LIVERMORE, California (CNN) -- It is no great surprise that the fire bell at the Livermore Fire Station, installed in 1876, still works. But, surprise! So does the fire station's nightlight, a turn-of-the-century light bulb that Chief Lynn Owens claims has been burning practically nonstop since 1901. also: http://www.snopes.com/spoons/noose/lightbul.htm From MalignD at aol.com Thu Nov 16 12:09:47 2000 From: MalignD at aol.com (MalignD at aol.com) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 13:09:47 EST Subject: another bulb story Message-ID: <<... somewhere in California, I missed the name of the town.>> Doug Millison, Online Journalist From keith at pfmentum.com Thu Nov 16 12:55:03 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 10:55:03 -0800 Subject: Flamebait Alert #2 Message-ID: <000701c04ffe$bca39ae0$8e3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> From: MalignD at aol.com To: pynchon-l at waste.org Date: Thursday, November 16, 2000 10:43 AM Subject: Re: another bulb story <<... somewhere in California, I missed the name of the town.>> Doug Millison, Online Journalist From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 16 13:19:41 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 13:19:41 -0600 Subject: 10 Myths about the 2000 Election Results Message-ID: <3A14334D.F8264BFE@mpm.edu> Just thought some of you might be interested, is all ... http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/21/47/columnists/commentary_election.html See also ... http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/21/47/columnists/media_musings.html >From the local "independent weekly." Though that current issue of The Onion already posted (http://www.theonion.com) is, as far as I can recall, not only spot on, but perhaps their finest moment as well. Much hilarity when the hardcopies hit the streets here ... From jbor at bigpond.com Thu Nov 16 14:59:55 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 07:59:55 +1100 Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1520 Message-ID: <20475410903154@domain6.bigpond.com> No, just engaging with another of the list-topics under discussion recently. American politics's my hobby, not my career. : ) ---------- >From: Doug Millison > > Flamebait. Gratuitous, too. From jbor at bigpond.com Thu Nov 16 14:59:37 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 07:59:37 +1100 Subject: Indecision 2000 Message-ID: <20473868703145@domain6.bigpond.com> Yes, I was commenting more on the transparent use of email and discussion-lists for spreading propaganda, and don't know enough about the policies or backgrounds to know which candidate is "better" in terms of the domestic situation. I don't think either of them, like many Americans, know where the rest of the world is anyway. It amused me to think, narrow as the margin appears it will be, that it could be attributed to votes lost by virtue of the transparent lobbying of a notorious discussion-list pest. The beauty of the internet over other media is that journalistic bias and pretence seem so much more obvious here, due to the interactive nature of the medium. By the way, is it true that if the presidential vote count is close in New Mexico or somewhere then the issue is decided by a contest like a game of two-handed stud poker or something? Comedians and newscasters over here have been having a field day. It seems that what has been pointed up are the flaws in the system rather than the relative virtues of the candidates. I think the only U.S. political figure who has emerged with any credibility in the last 8 years, from this vantage anyway, is good ol' Hillary. Perhaps you guys should just abandon the whole process, hire Clay Blaisdell to shoot the two incumbents or something, and make *her* monarch. best ---------- >From: calbert at tiac.net >To: "jbor" >Subject: Re: ooooops, I did it again >Date: Thu, Nov 16, 2000, 8:23 AM > > >> Nonetheless, seeing as being involved with "Nazi German banking >> operations" isn't a genetic hand-me-down, as far as I'm aware, then I >> can't see the relevance of the "dirt" being dug in terms of the >> context which it is being dug for. > > Fair enough....except it appears that whatever character flaw drove > Prescott to deal with "the enemy" has been passed on......George > Sr.'s sins don't begin or end with his CIA efforts, but continue > through Iran/Contra/Crack (the CIA has now fessed up to "not > paying enough attention" - we'll wait another decade for its > confession that it was more than a case of indifference); its > contribution to the S&L mess of the 80's......Poppy's brother also > has the bug, having engaged in various business ventures with the > Yakuza.... > > I don't care at all about Snort's OUI matter..... I care a lot more > about the abuse of process that characterized his land grab in the > Texas Stadium matter, as well as the fact that those who bailed him > out of his oil field failures (and they were pretty much uninterrupted > from the start) would often find plum appointments in his father's > administration..... > > Jeb took $75,000 to facilitate a $200 mill dollar fraud, he also > benefitted from some curious dealings regarding a defaulted loan > (the default was forgiven, the building turned over to him and his > partner for 10% of the original value, and the tax payer picked up > the $4 mill dollar balance)......Neil, in spite of flagrant abuse of his > fiduciary duties, walked away from a fiasco at Silverado, caused in > large part by his generosity to his cronies....... > > the criminal behavior, if not congenital, can at least be categorized > as systemic..... > > >> Seems to me that if approximately >> half of the voters in the U.S. popped their chads for the man, then >> accusations about "stealing the presidency" and being a "creepy >> halfwit with a criminal record" (a drink driving charge, I believe), >> and the associated fear-mongering which partisan Gore-ites seem to be >> carrying on with, on-line here at least, is just political lobbying of >> the lowest kind -- mud-slinging pure and simple attempting to cloak >> itself as reputable "history" or "journalism". > > hey, it is politics after all. But I would caution you not to dismiss the > smoke......and I must confess to not having paid much attention to > the list goings on, so I can't address the intentions of other posters. > In my efforts to shine light on the criminal conspiracy known as the > Bush clan, I always provide documentation, and take care to > eliminate from consideration anything which I cannot corroborate > with another source..... > > > But, as I said before, >> I think they're both bozos. > > And I wouldn't argue.... I favored McCain, myself.....It is just that the > Bush family has taken the Kennedy ethos and "turned it up to 11".... > > take care, > > love, > cfa > From JBFRAME at aol.com Thu Nov 16 14:55:31 2000 From: JBFRAME at aol.com (JBFRAME at aol.com) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 15:55:31 EST Subject: Indecision 2000 Message-ID: <66.9559bde.2745a3c3@aol.com> In a message dated 11/16/2000 12:49:58 PM Pacific Standard Time, jbor at bigpond.com writes: << Perhaps you guys should just abandon the whole process, hire Clay Blaisdell to shoot the two incumbents or something, and make *her* monarch. >> It's ironic that in the "land of the Free" I, as a US citizen, would be putting myself in the position of being prosecuted for making the above statement. There is a Federal law against making any public statements that might be construed as a threat against any presidential candidate. jbf From jbor at bigpond.com Thu Nov 16 15:11:14 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 08:11:14 +1100 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 Message-ID: <20591726503555@domain6.bigpond.com> ---------- >From: Dave Monroe > > "Acting as if ..."? Well, actually, I more often feel as if I'm being lectured to, > esp. as some of you have far more time, far more patience, and far more > incentive to > prepapre yr notes Let alone to type out pages and pages of wordy quotes from books at seeming random, in what must amount to a virtual defiance of copyright law. Or, as elsewhere here, to invent all those charming "impersonations" and start up and maintain all those offshore email accounts just to keep the hoaxes going (let alone sending off-list mail to check how well the hoax-identity has taken as well). Oh well, to each his own, as they say. From calbert at tiac.net Thu Nov 16 15:49:43 2000 From: calbert at tiac.net (calbert at tiac.net) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 16:49:43 -0500 Subject: 10 Myths about the 2000 Election Results In-Reply-To: <3A14334D.F8264BFE@mpm.edu> Message-ID: For some great spin anti-dote, check out: www.dailyhowler.com and for fun http://www.kaos2000.net/newstuff/ scroll past the Adam Sandler humell...... love, cfa > Just thought some of you might be interested, is all ... > > http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/21/47/columnists/commentary_e > lection.html > > See also ... > > http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/21/47/columnists/media_musing > s.html > > >From the local "independent weekly." Though that current issue of > >The > Onion already posted (http://www.theonion.com) is, as far as I can > recall, not only spot on, but perhaps their finest moment as well. > Much hilarity when the hardcopies hit the streets here ... > > From richardromeo at hotmail.com Thu Nov 16 15:51:38 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 21:51:38 GMT Subject: Critique, Once More Message-ID: Hey all-- The fall 2000 issue of Critique is devoted to (John Verity, heads up) The Public Burning--5 essays, and a new interview with my hero. Geez, not too long ago, my other hero, jeff baker, had a kick ass article in there. someone in minnesota is doing something right. I do admit to enjoying all this plot twisting in Florida. Gore is trying so hard to be presidential and bush looks perpetually constipated (and vice-versa). Ah for the days of the the Supreme Court slipping and sliding in elephant shit. But that was the 50s. thx for the thx heikki--librarians unite! Rich _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From jeremy at xyris.com Thu Nov 16 15:48:21 2000 From: jeremy at xyris.com (Jeremy Osner) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 16:48:21 -0500 Subject: 10 Myths about the 2000 Election Results References: Message-ID: <3A145625.CA95527D@xyris.com> ... and for news of "SuperDecision 2000" -- the more important worldwide election for Internet Mayor -- take a look at The Big Empire, http://www.bigempire.com/decision/index.html From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 16 19:03:33 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 20:03:33 -0500 Subject: why is VICTORIA laughing at the Sun Message-ID: <3A1483E5.C6EC77D0@earthlink.net> Bryn Mawr Classical Review 95.06.08 John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (edd.), The Cultures of Collecting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Pp. viii + 312; ills. $39.95 (hb). $18.95 (pb). ISBN 0-674-17992-7 (hb). ISBN 0-674-17993-5 (pb). Reviewed by A.A. Donohue, Bryn Mawr College. John Forrester's discussion of Freud and collecting touches on many aspects of the correspondences between analysis and archaeology, a relationship made famous by Freud's fantasy of Rome as "a psychical entity". Most surprising is the poignance of Freud's love for his objects: "Every piece or item in each of his collections thus represented a paternal figure standing guard over the mysterious feminine. And every successful act of analysis of them represented an Oedipal victory" (251). The essay ends, touchingly, with Freud's recollection of a childhood nightmare involving bird-headed people, juxtaposed with an illustration of his falcon-headed Horus figurine, which is a fake. http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1995/95.06.08.html http://freud.t0.or.at/freud/chronolg/horus-e.htm http://freud.t0.or.at/freud/topogr/arbtz2-e.htm http://freud.t0.or.at/freud/themen/arch3-e.htm From fqmorris at hotmail.com Thu Nov 16 20:34:31 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 20:34:31 CST Subject: VV($) - The Daisy Chain Message-ID: The Daisy Chain: Fuckin and being fucked. Mostly in the world of V. it's a coorperative transaction, although it's most always a union of disparate levels of power. It's all about getting "needs" met and paying the bills. In some ways it's about the survival of the self in a hostile world. The wind is always blowing. We all seek the levels of protection we can afford. The Daisy Chain is all about human interaction, but not between "equals." It's between the Haves and Have Nots. Stencil's impersonations clearly expose the dehumanizing nature of this economic reality. The Fucked quickly become objects, fetishes, consumable products. But for some, like Stencil and like others who've enslaved themselves willingly to a cause, become "public servants" and living Saints, the loss of humanity is chosen for the good of others. That's all my ramling for the night, David Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From landa at earthlink.net Thu Nov 16 17:27:52 2000 From: landa at earthlink.net (Kaminker/Wood) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 18:27:52 -0500 Subject: [off & long] bush & nazis Message-ID: <200011162328.PAA21089@snipe.prod.itd.earthlink.net> From: http://www.iahushua.com/WOI/nixon_bush.htm GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH Like Richard Nixon, George Bush was a strong anti-marijuana/hemp president, escalating the so-called "war on drugs" begun by Nixon. And, like Nixon, George Bush was deeply involved with supporting the Nazis in the Republican's closet. In fact, support for the Nazis was a Bush family tradition which goes back more than six decades and, once again, to Allen Dulles. Loftus and Aarons write: "The real story of George Bush starts well before he launched his own career. It goes back to the 1920s, when the Dulles brothers and the other pirates of Wall Street were making their deals with the Nazis. . . ." THE BUSH-DULLES-NAZI CONNECTION "George Bush's problems were inherited from his namesake and maternal grandfather, George Herbert 'Bert' Walker, a native of St. Louis, who founded the banking and investment firm of G. H. Walker and Company in 1900. Later the company shifted from St. Louis to the prestigious address of 1 Wall Street. . . . "Walker was one of Hitler's most powerful financial supporters in the United States. The relationship went all the way back to 1924, when Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist, was financing Hitler's infant Nazi party. As mentioned in earlier chapters, there were American contributors as well. "Some Americans were just bigots and made their connections to Germany through Allen Dulles's firm of Sullivan and Cromwell because they supported Fascism. The Dulles brothers, who were in it for profit more than ideology, arranged American investments in Nazi Germany in the 1930s to ensure that their clients did well out of the German economic recovery. . . . "Sullivan & Cromwell was not the only firm engaged in funding Germany. According to 'The Splendid Blond Beast,' Christopher Simpson's seminal history of the politics of genocide and profit, Brown Brothers, Harriman was another bank that specialized in investments in Germany. The key figure was Averill Harriman, a dominating figure in the American establishment. . . . "The firm originally was known as W. A. Harriman & Company. The link between Harriman & Company's American investors and Thyssen started in the 1920s, through the Union Banking Corporation, which began trading in 1924. In just one three-year period, the Harriman firm sold more than $50 million of German bonds to American investors. 'Bert' Walker was Union Banking's president, and the firm was located in the offices of Averill Harriman's company at 39 Broadway in New York. "In 1926 Bert Walker did a favor for his new son-in-law, Prescott Bush. It was the sort of favor families do to help their children make a start in life, but Prescott came to regret it bitterly. Walker made Prescott vice president of W. A. Harriman. The problem was that Walker's specialty was companies that traded with Germany. As Thyssen and the other German industrialists consolidated Hitler's political power in the 1930s, an American financial connection was needed. According to our sources, Union Banking became an out-and-out Nazi money-laundering machine. . . . "In [1931], Harriman & Company merged with a British-American investment company to become Brown Brothers, Harriman. Prescott Bush became one of the senior partners of the new company, which relocated to 59 Broadway, while Union Banking remained at 39 Broadway. But in 1934 Walker arranged to put his son-in-law on the board of directors of Union Banking. "Walker also set up a deal to take over the North American operations of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a cover for I.G. Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the United States. The shipping line smuggled in German agents, propaganda, and money for bribing American politicians to see things Hitler's way. The holding company was Walker's American Shipping & Commerce, which shared the offices at 39 Broadway with Union Banking. In an elaborate corporate paper trail, Harriman's stock in American Shipping & Commerce was controlled by yet another holding company, the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, run out of Walker's office. The directors of this company were Averill Harriman, Bert Walker, and Prescott Bush. . . . ". . . In a November 1935 article in Common Sense, retired marine general Smedley D. Butler blamed Brown Brothers, Harriman for having the U.S. marines act like 'racketeers' and 'gangsters' in order to exploit financially the peasants of Nicaragua. . . . ". . . A 1934 congressional investigation alleged that Walker's 'Hamburg-Amerika Line subsidized a wide range of pro-Nazi propaganda efforts both in Germany and the United States.' Walker did not know it, but one of his American employees, Dan Harkins, had blown the whistle on the spy apparatus to Congress. Harkins, one of our best sources, became Roosevelt's first double agent . . . [and] kept up the pretense of being an ardent Nazi sympathizer, while reporting to Naval Intelligence on the shipping company's deals with Nazi intelligence. "Instead of divesting the Nazi money," continue the authors, "Bush hired a lawyer to hide the assets. The lawyer he hired had considerable expertise in such underhanded schemes. It was Allen Dulles. According to Dulles's client list at Sullivan & Cromwell, his first relationship with Brown Brothers, Harriman was on June 18, 1936. In January 1937 Dulles listed his work for the firm as 'Disposal of Stan [Standard Oil] Investing stock.' "As discussed in Chapter 3, Standard Oil of New Jersey had completed a major stock transaction with Dulles's Nazi client, I.G. Farben. By the end of January 1937 Dulles had merged all his cloaking activities into one client account: 'Brown Brothers Harriman-Schroeder Rock.' Schroeder, of course, was the Nazi bank on whose board Dulles sat. The 'Rock' were the Rockefellers of Standard Oil, who were already coming under scrutiny for their Nazi deals. By May 1939 Dulles handled another problem for Brown Brothers, Harriman, their 'Securities Custodian Accounts.' "If Dulles was trying to conceal how many Nazi holding companies Brown Brothers, Harriman was connected with, he did not do a very good job. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, word leaked from Washington that affiliates of Prescott Bush's company were under investigation for aiding the Nazis in time of war. . . . ". . . The government investigation against Prescott Bush continued. Just before the storm broke, his son, George, abandoned his plans to enter Yale and enlisted in the U.S. Army. It was, say our sources among the former intelligence officers, a valiant attempt by an eighteen-year-old boy to save the family's honor. "Young George was in flight school in October 1942, when the U.S. government charged his father with running Nazi front groups in the United States. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, all the shares of the Union Banking Corporation were seized, including those held by Prescott Bush as being in effect held for enemy nationals. Union Banking, of course, was an affiliate of Brown Brothers, Harriman, and Bush handled the Harrimans' investments as well. "Once the government had its hands on Bush's books, the whole story of the intricate web of Nazi front corporations began to unravel. A few days later two of Union Banking's subsidiaries -- the Holland American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation -- also were seized. Then the government went after the Harriman Fifteen Holding Company, which Bush shared with his father-in-law, Bert Walker, the Hamburg-Amerika Line, and the Silesian-American Corporation. The U.S. government found that huge sections of Prescott Bush's empire had been operated on behalf of Nazi Germany and had greatly assisted the German war effort." (1) "Try as he did," continue the authors, "George Bush could not get away from Dulles's crooked corporate network, which his grandfather and father had joined in the 1920s. Wherever he turned, George found that the influence of the Dulles brothers was already there. Even when he fled to Texas to become a successful businessman on his own, he ran into the pirates of Wall Street. "One of Allen Dulles's secret spies inside the Democratic party later became George Bush's partner in the Mexican oil business. Edwin Pauley, a California oil man, was . . . one of Dulles's covert agents in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations . . . a 'big business' Democrat. . . ." Among the key posts held by Pauley were: treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, director of the Democratic convention in 1944 and, after Truman's election, Truman appointed him the "Petroleum Coordinator of Lend-Lease Supplies for the Soviet Union and Britain." Just after the end of World War II, "in April 1945 Truman appointed Pauley as the U.S. representative to the Allied Reparations Committee, with the rank of ambassador," as well as "industrial and commercial advisor to the Potsdam Conference, 'where his chief task was to renegotiate the reparations agreements formulated at Yalta.' As one historian noted, the 'oil industry has always watched reparations activities carefully.' There was a lot of money involved, and much of it belonged to the Dulles brothers' clients." At the same time, report Loftus and Aarons, "the Dulles brothers were still shifting Nazi assets out of Europe for their clients as well as for their own profit. They didn't want the Soviets to get their hands on these assets or even know that they existed. Pauley played a significant role in solving this problem for the Dulles brothers. The major part of Nazi Germany's industrial assets was located in the zones occupied by the West's forces. As Washington's man on the ground, Pauley managed to deceive the Soviets for long enough to allow Allen Dulles to spirit much of the remaining Nazi assets out to safety. . . . "Pauley, a key player in the plan to hide the Dulles brothers' Nazi assets, then moved into another post where he could help them further. After successfully keeping German assets in Fascist hands, Pauley was given the job of 'surveying Japan's assets and determining the amount of its war debt.' Again, it was another job that was crucial to the Dulles clique's secret financial and intelligence operations." (2) After Pauley retired from government work he went back to being an independent oil man. Loftus and Aarons state that: "In 1958 he founded Pauley Petroleum which: . . . teamed up with Howard Hughes to expand oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. "Pauley Petroleum discovered a highly productive offshore petroleum reserve and in 1959 became involved in a dispute with the Mexican Government, which considered the royalties from the wells to be too low. "According to our sources in the intelligence community, the oil dispute was really a shakedown of the CIA by Mexican politicians. Hughes and Pauley were working for the CIA from time to time, while advancing their own financial interests in the lucrative Mexican oil fields. Pauley, say several of our sources, was the man who invented an intelligence money-laundering system in Mexico, which was later refined in the 1970s as part of Nixon's Watergate scandal. At one point CIA agents used Pemex, the Mexican government's oil monopoly, as a business cover at the same time Pemex was being used as a money laundry for Pauley's campaign contributions. As we shall see, the Mexican-CIA connection played an important part in the development of George Bush's political and intelligence career. . . . "Pauley, say the 'old spies,' was the man who brought all the threads of the Mexican connection together. He was Bush's business associate, a front man for Dulles's CIA [Allen Dulles was CIA director then], and originator of the use of Mexican oil fronts to create a slush fund for Richard Nixon's various campaigns. . . . "Although it is not widely known, Pauley, in fact, had been a committed, if 'secret,' Nixon supporter since 1960. It should be recalled that Nixon tried to conceal his Mexican slush fund during the Watergate affair by pressuring the CIA into a 'national security' cover-up. The CIA, to its credit, declined to participate. Unfortunately, others were so enmeshed in Pauley's work for Nixon that they could never extricate themselves. According to a number of our intelligence sources, the deals Bush cut with Pauley in Mexico catapulted him into political life. In 1960 Bush became a protege of Richard Nixon, who was then running for president of the United States. . . . "The most intriguing of Bush's early connections was to Richard Nixon, who as vice president had supervised Allen Dulles's covert planning for the Bay of Pigs [invasion]. For years it has been rumored that Dulles's client, George Bush's father, was one of the Republican leaders who recruited Nixon to run for Congress and later convinced Eisenhower to take him on as vice president. There is no doubt that the two families were close. George Bush described Nixon as his 'mentor.' Nixon was a Bush supporter in his very first tilt at politics, during his unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1964, and turned out again when he entered the House two years later. "After Nixon's landslide victory in 1972, he ordered a general house cleaning on the basis of loyalty. 'Eliminate everyone,' he told John Ehrlichman about reappointments, 'except George Bush. Bush will do anything for our cause.' . . . According to Bush's account, the president told him that 'the place I really need you is over at the National Committee running things.' So, in 1972, Nixon appointed George Bush as head of the Republican National Committee. "It was Bush who fulfilled Nixon's promise to make the 'ethnic' emigres a permanent part of Republican politics. In 1972 Nixon's State Department spokesman confirmed to his Australian counterpart that the ethnic groups were very useful to get out the vote in several key states. Bush's tenure as head of the Republican National Committee exactly coincided with Laszlo Pasztor's 1972 drive to transform the Heritage Groups Council into the party's official ethnic arm. The groups Pasztor chose as Bush's campaign allies were the emigre Fascists whom Dulles had brought to the United States. . . . ". . . Nearly twenty years later, and after expose's in several respectable newspapers, Bush continued to recruit most of the same ethnic Fascists, including Pasztor, for his own 1988 ethnic outreach program when he first ran for president. "According to our sources in the intelligence community," state the authors, "it was Bush who told Nixon that the Watergate investigations might start uncovering the Fascist skeletons in the Republican party's closet. Bush himself acknowledges that he wrote Nixon a letter asking him to step down. The day after Bush did so, Nixon resigned. "Bush had hoped to become Gerald Ford's vice president upon Nixon's resignation, but he was appointed U.S. ambassador to the UN. Nelson Rockefeller became vice president and chief damage controller. He formed a special commission in an attempt to preempt the Senate's investigation of the intelligence community. The Rockefeller Commission into CIA abuses was filled with old OPC [Dulles's Office of Policy Coordination] hands like Ronald Reagan, who had been the front man back in the 1950s for the money-laundering organization, the Crusade for Freedom, which was part of Dulles's Fascist 'freedom fighters' program." (3) In 1988, Project Censored, a news media censorship research organization, awarded the honor of "Top Censored story" to the subject of George Bush. The article revealed "how the major mass media ignored, overlooked or undercovered at least ten critical stories reported in America's alternative press that raised serious questions about the Republican candidate, George Bush, dating from his reported role as a CIA 'asset' in 1963 to his Presidential campaign's connection with a network of anti-Semites with Nazi and fascist affiliations in 1988." (4) NOTES: GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH The Secret War Against the Jews, pp. 357-361 Ibid., pp. 362-364 Ibid., pp. 365-371 The 1993 Project Censored Yearbook: The News That Didn't Make The News - And Why, Project Censored; Dr. Carl Jensen, Director., pp. 230. Also stuff at: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/8820/skull.htm In 1932, the Union Banking Corporation of New York City had enlisted four directors from the ('17) cell and two Nazi bankers associated with Fritz Thyssen, who had been financing Hitler since 1924. "President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number 248 [11/17/42] seizing the property of Prescott Bush under the Trading with Enemy Act. The order, published in obscure government record books and kept out of the news, Note #4 explained nothing about the Nazis involved; only that the Union Banking Corporation was run for the 'Thyssen family' of 'Germany and/or Hungary' 'nationals ... of a designated enemy country. "By deciding that Prescott Bush and the other directors of the Union Banking Corporation were legally 'front men for the Nazis', the government avoided the more important historical issue: In what way 'were Hitler's Nazis themselves hired, armed, and instructed by' the New York and London clique of which Prescott Bush was an executive manager? ... "4. New York Times, December 16, 1944, ran a five-paragraph page 25 article on actions of the New York State Banking Department. Only the last sentence refers to the Nazi bank, as follows: 'The Union Banking Corporation, 39 Broadway, New York, has received authority to change its principal place of business to 120 Broadway.' "The Times omitted the fact that the Union Banking Corporation had been seized by the government for trading with the enemy, and the fact that 120 Broadway was the address of the government's Alien Property Custodian." After the war, Prescott went on to become a U. S. Senator from Connecticut and favorite golfing partner of President Eisenhower. Prescott claims responsibility for getting Nixon into politics and takes personal credit for bringing Dick on board as Ike's running mate in 1952. *** Allan Wood From chicagoist at hotmail.com Fri Nov 17 01:11:20 2000 From: chicagoist at hotmail.com (Saioued Al-Zaioued) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 02:11:20 EST Subject: V. chapter I&II summary? Message-ID: sorry folks, I've been a little slow in the V. reading department, and the events are getting a little hazy. I'm in chapter three and I just lost track of events, anyone know where I can find a section or chapter summary of V. ? I saw the hyperarts one but that is just an encyclopedia, I need a Ulysses style summary telling me what I read. I find the transition between the binge drinking party with Fergus and the egypt scene rather confusing, so here are questions: If anyone can give me the lay down on who on earth is in Egypt (stencil? father or son?) and what happened to the dude, profane, that was going to catch aligators? whatta about Esther and the party crowd? did they just blow up in tacky post-bird beatism? I think this book has made me lose it, I read Under the Rose a year ago and I'm getting the stories confused....anylight appreciated _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Fri Nov 17 03:29:44 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:29:44 +0100 Subject: Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" (Maillardet) References: <3A13FEFB.B6BC42D9@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <13whq4-0Y32SeC@fwd04.sul.t-online.com> Dave Monroe schrieb: > ... Cryptaesthetic of ezra Pound (which he was in the process of publishing > when I met him)... please tell us more about this meeting! thanks in advance: kfl From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Fri Nov 17 03:29:47 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:29:47 +0100 Subject: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. References: <010a01c04fb8$b951daa0$7a5306d5@selltelda.net> Message-ID: <13whq7-0Y32ShC@fwd04.sul.t-online.com> otto schrieb: > THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY > > hereby declares is dissolution claiming the status of a Dutch colony. gott bewahre! i mean, how often have the dutch people, actually, been fußballweltmeister?! you see ... kai ps: of course it's nice that our friendly neighbors produce mdma for the whole globe ... > We are glad to deliver Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Beatrix all monarchial > duties over all provinces and other territories. > > We are grateful that Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Beatrix has accepted our > submission to > > HET KONINGRIJK DER NEDERLANDEN > > > ps > it was time to get under Dutch laws . . . great idea, Dave. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: David Morris > To: > Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 7:33 AM > Subject: RE: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. > > > > > > NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE > > > > To the citizens of the United States of America, > > > > In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to > > govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your > > independence, effective today. > > > > Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties > over > > all states, commonwealths and other territories. > > > > Except Utah, which she does not fancy. > > > > Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you > > who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your > borders) > > will appoint a minister for America without the need for further > elections. > > Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be > > circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. > > > > To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following > rules > > are introduced with immediate effect: > > > > 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then > > look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed > > at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should > > raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". > Using > > the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" > > and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. > > Look up "interspersed". > > > > 2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on > > your behalf. > > > > 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It > > really isn't that hard. > > > > 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the > > good guys. > > > > 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", > > but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get > > confused and give up half way through. > > > > 6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind > of > > football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good > > game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your > > borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You > > will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper > > football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It > is > > a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to > > play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve > > stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body > armour > > like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens > > side by 2005. > > > > 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if > > they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there > > is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The > > Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "shit". > > > > > > 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new > > national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive > Day". > > > > 9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your > > own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we > mean. > > > > 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy. > > > > Thank you for your cooperation. > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > http://profiles.msn.com. > > > > > From pmackin at clark.net Fri Nov 17 12:39:36 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 13:39:36 -0500 Subject: VV(4) - Horus on the Horizon References: Message-ID: <000501c050c5$bd51adc0$061c8fa8@pmackin> >From Terrance: > PS Paul M, hope all is well. I won't be getting a pig's or a > plastic heart just yet, thank you for your kind words. > Aristotle says, happiness requires one to be in good fortune > and good health. I hope you are. > Yes, fine, and glad you are too. Just haven't had much to say. Too long since reading V, P. From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 17 08:36:31 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 08:36:31 -0600 Subject: Happy Birthday, Mikhail Bakhtin! Message-ID: <3A15426F.FBEB54E8@mpm.edu> Everybody, smoke a manuscript today to his memory ... From pmackin at clark.net Fri Nov 17 14:13:33 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 15:13:33 -0500 Subject: VV($) - The Daisy Chain References: Message-ID: <002601c050d2$dcf0d9a0$061c8fa8@pmackin> >From David Morris: > The Daisy Chain: Fuckin and being fucked. Mostly in the world of V. it's a > coorperative transaction, although it's most always a union of disparate > levels of power. It's all about getting "needs" met and paying the bills. > In some ways it's about the survival of the self in a hostile world. The > wind is always blowing. We all seek the levels of protection we can afford. > The Daisy Chain is all about human interaction, but not between "equals." > It's between the Haves and Have Nots. Stencil's impersonations clearly > expose the dehumanizing nature of this economic reality. > > The Fucked quickly become objects, fetishes, consumable products. But for > some, like Stencil and like others who've enslaved themselves willingly to a > cause, become "public servants" and living Saints, the loss of humanity is > chosen for the good of others. > > That's all my ramling for the night, Oh, that's OK, David. But sex can also be viewed independently of money and class. The followeing is courtesy of the current New York Review of Books: "It's a fact, I mused to my self, that in societies like ours [France today] sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money: and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, stricly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization. Some men make love every day: others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women: others with none. It's what's known as "the law of the market." In an economic system where unfair dismissal is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find his place. In a sexual system where adultery is prohibited, every person more or less manages to find their bed mate. In a totally liberal economic system certain people accumulate considerable fortunes: Others stagnate in unemployment and misery. In a totally liberal sexual system certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude. Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the stuggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society . . Certain people win on both levels; other lose on both. Businesses fight over certain young progessionals; women fight over certain young men; men fight over certain young women; the trouble and strie are considerable." >From Michael Houellebecq's 1994 _Extension du domaine de la lutte_ appearing in English under the (terrible) title _Whatever._ Houellebecq's also the author of the newer _The Elementary Particles_. P. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 17 09:46:41 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 09:46:41 CST Subject: VV($) - The Daisy Chain Message-ID: Er, it seems to me that this Michael Houellebecq quote isn't so much about sex being independent of money and class but more about how it is a "system of differentiation" (Daisy Chain) equivalent to money and class. The truly elite have all three going for them. BTW, the "$" in this post's title was a typo, meant to be "4." >From: "Paul Mackin" > >From David Morris: > > > The Daisy Chain: Fuckin and being fucked. Mostly in the world of V. >it's a coorperative transaction, although it's most always a union of >disparate levels of power > >Oh, that's OK, David. But sex can also be viewed independently of money >and class. The followeing is courtesy of the current New York Review of >Books: > >"It's a fact, I mused to my self, that in societies like ours [France >today] sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely >independent of money: and as a system of differentiation it functions just >as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, stricly >equivalent. > >From Michael Houellebecq's 1994 _Extension du domaine de la lutte_ >appearing in English under the (terrible) title _Whatever._ _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From pmackin at clark.net Fri Nov 17 15:08:09 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 16:08:09 -0500 Subject: VV($) - The Daisy Chain References: Message-ID: <005a01c050da$7d816ae0$061c8fa8@pmackin> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Morris" To: ; Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 10:46 AM Subject: Re: VV($) - The Daisy Chain > > Er, it seems to me that this Michael Houellebecq quote isn't so much about > sex being independent of money and class but more about how it is a "system > of differentiation" (Daisy Chain) equivalent to money and class. The truly > elite have all three going for them. Don't suppose Houllebecq would deny interdependencies. However he'd probably insist that the "truly elite" in the economic realm are not identical to the "truly" elite in the sexual. The point is, it's a hot new area of injustice to talk about, for those interested in such things. Hot in France. I just only recently even heard of Houellebecq. There are stacks of his newer book--The Elementary Particles-- at the local Borders. P. From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 17 10:20:43 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:20:43 -0600 Subject: Cheese Danish #35 Message-ID: <3A155ADA.ECA48A98@mpm.edu> Ah, yes, much baiting of the flame here ... but will I take said bait? Not as such, not so as to return the (dis)favor. "Virtual defiance of copyright law"? Interesting pun there, first off. And an interesting complaint in this, our (and it IS ours, I'm with Nader on that) copyright-defiant virtual space. And copyright law is a particular interest of mine. Thinking of taking those LSATs at the next possible opportunity, figure that, as I'm past my academic prime, maybe it's time to resign myself to going over to that brightest area of the dark side at least. Else advertising, or the Society of Jesus. Whatever. But my inspirations for those "pages and pages of wordy"--not my wordiness, of course, but ...--"quotes"--and do note that I tend to cite ALL my sources, I believe very strongly in giving credit where credit's due, hardly the inclination of a notorious copyright violator, and, being one who often goes to the bibliography, footnotes, endnotes, FIRST, I personally appreciated knowing where people are getting ideas, iunformation, from, that follow-up thing--were, here, Kai's similar, albeit not quite as extensive, postings, and, elsewhere, not only my own method of taking notes from my paper-writin' days, but, also, such handy resources as Simon Reynolds' (Blissed Out, The Sex Revolts, Generation Ecstasy a.k.a. Energy Flash) online "Rave Theory Tool Kit," @ http://members.aol.com/blissout/toolkit.htm. Something I imagine Kai might well have stumbled on himself, but, hey, if you haven't. Jus' tryin' t'be helpful, is all ... "Random"? Actually, I've been quite pleased not only with just how relevant those little items that cross my path are, but with how I think I've managed to sketch the general idea/theme/argument/whatever of any given text and/or excerpt tehreof I've excerpted here. If they've been of no use to you, well, hey, not everything will be. But am esp. interested in the point Tiffany, for example, makes about not only the pneumatic origins of automata, but about the association of automata with the musical, the oracular, the uncanny, the angelic. About the articulation of poetics and mathematics, say, those mathematical figures mapped by such tropes as the parable, et al. And I plan on posting more to that effect, so ... Now, on these "impersonations," hey, sorry, have two e-mail addresses I use, depending on where I am, what I have access to, but do note they are clearly in my name. As if I could disguise my particular online idiolect. Nota bene: was very early on under the influence (...) of a professor who, realizing that he himself was no doubt implicated in the conferral of authority by virtue of one's position, by virtue of one's very rhetoric, that academic publishing grants, even as one critiqued said conferral of authority, experimented with writing more colloquially and publishing anonymously. My rejoinder was that anonymity, or even pseudonymity, might well be read as a certain abdication of responsibility, as a disavowal of one's words. But I kept that counterauthoritative colloquialism bit, esp. in such presumably informal situations as, say, a listserv discussion group. Hence ... but, again, I'm here to float a few bits of info, maybe even a few ideas, not to mention catch a lift from whatever might drift by. I'd say sorry if I haven't floated yr particular boat, but, hey, I read plenty of stuff here I find myself having no particular interest in, use for, as well, so, no apologies, as none needed ... From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 17 10:42:59 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:42:59 -0600 Subject: VV(4) - Horus on the Horizon Message-ID: <3A156013.BA608378@mpm.edu> ... "the Shadow and Peter Schlemihl"? Nope, not me, not so far as I can recall. Let me know why I might have, should have. Reminds me, though, sitting around with a friend last night who's always reliable for an evening of infotainment (Chinese hopping vampire movies, African American units in WWII, his own youthful exploits, inc. squatting with G.G. Allin). Laying out some sources for Max Ernst paintings, he mentioned the so-called "Adamite" painters, whose works were largely destroyed in a purge of the heretical sect (they apparently attempted to live the prelapsarian, pre-original sin, pre-clothing life, which, of course, the Church did NOT appreciate). Apparently big on sun/moon imagery. The crescent moon facing TOWARDS the sun (rather than away, as would be "natural" in terms of light source here) is the giveaway. General discussion of the heretical, the alchemical, the occult in art (Fred Gettings, The Occult in Art [New York: Rizzoli, 1975], something like that). Imagery no doubt in play in those Pynchonian texts. Even mentioned that those, er, "dots" or whatever of the sephiroth (?), properly "connected," make a lightning bolt-like pattern (and recall lightning in GR, Martin Luther's thunderbolt [see Norman O. Brown, Life against Death], that tarot card [The Tower], that "Polish undertaker," the Blitzkrieg, that SS insignia, and so forth ...). Veddy, veddy interesting. Recall Kai mentioning those "eight quick impersonations" (and we're complaining about "impersonation" here ...?) of Stencil's in re: the sephiroth, but I'm under the impression that there are ten ... "ots" there (connected 22 ways). Also reminded of the importance of astronomy in Shakespeare, in particular. Anybody have the author, title at hand of that recent book hinging the attribution of those Shakespearean texts on the astronomical references therein? Let me know ... From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 17 10:48:10 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:48:10 CST Subject: VV($) - The Daisy Chain Message-ID: Well the French ARE supposed to be great lovers, but I'd say that points another injustice-system interdependency: French Cuisine! How can anyone compete? http://www.ffcook.com/ >From: "Paul Mackin" > >Don't suppose Houllebecq would deny interdependencies. However he'd >probably insist that the "truly elite" in the economic realm are not >identical to the "truly" elite in the sexual. The point is, it's a hot new >area of injustice to talk about, for those interested in such things. Hot >in France. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 17 10:48:02 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 11:48:02 -0500 Subject: VV(4) - Horus on the Horizon References: <3A156013.BA608378@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A156142.F5C6C86F@earthlink.net> You might want to check this out: Zimmerman, Brett, 1958, Herman Melville -- Stargazer Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998. The first book on Melville and Astronomy. I have a feeling we won't have to wait so long for the fist book on Pynchon and Astronomy, just a feeling, hey, maybe the author will toss in the wind too. From millison at online-journalist.com Fri Nov 17 10:29:53 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 09:29:53 -0700 Subject: Fwd: [Mike's Message] Blame Monica! Message-ID: >From: "Mike Mail" >To: >Subject: [Mike's Message] Blame Monica! >Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 09:06:04 -0800 > >Blame Monica! > >November 17, 2000 > >Dear friends, > >For the past week I have suffered this unbearable >guilt that I may have put George W. Bush in the >White House. I thought back to the time I first met >with Ralph Nader and, secretly, we hatched The Plot. > >Our goal? To make this country suffer, suffer, >SUFFER under George W. Bush! All we needed to >do was convince just 300 people, preferably in a >"swing state," to vote for Nader instead of Gore. >Simple! Genius! That would put Bush in the White >House and THAT would lead to mass revolution >and THAT would lead to ... well, something. This >stuff ALWAYS leads to something! > >I told Ralph, though, that "running" and hanging out >with "celebrities" would NOT be enough. So I was >dispatched to secretly meet with Al Gore. Using my >incredible powers of persuasion, I was the one who >persuaded Gore to ignore not only his traditional >Democratic base, but also his home state of >Tennessee in the campaign. He agreed! I then >got him to prevent Clinton from campaigning in >Arkansas. He went along with this also -- and >together those two states cost him 16 critical >electoral votes! > >So you can see why I have been convinced for >the past week that it was me, all me, the one >who is responsible for costing Gore the >election. > >That is, until I saw the official results from >Florida, as confirmed by Secretary of State/Bush >Campaign Chair Katherine Harris: > >FLORIDA Presidential Results > Precincts Reporting: 100% > Al Gore, Dem 2,910,192 48.8% > George W. Bush, GOP 2,910,492 48.8% > Pat Buchanan, RP 17,472 0.3% > Ralph Nader, Grn 97,422 1.6% > Harry Browne, Lib 16,401 0.3% > John Hagelin, NLP 2,273 0% > James Harris, SWP 588 0% > David McReynolds, Soc 618 0% > Monica Moorehead, Workers World 1,805 0% > Howard Phillips, CST 1,370 0% > >As I studied these results, I suddenly saw the true >culprit, the one candidate responsible for putting >Bush in the White House. And it was NOT >Ralph Nader. > >It was MONICA MOOREHEAD! > >That's right. Monica Moorehead, Presidential >Candidate of the Worker's World Party. > >Ms. Moorehead received 1,805 votes in Florida, >1,500 more votes than what now separates >Bush and Gore. > >Had Monica not been on the ballot, it is safe to >assume that at least 300 of her supporters would >have voted for Al Gore! Exit polls confirm this fact. >Al Gore was the second choice of over half of the >Moorehead voters! > >The Worker's World Party is a socialist political >organization that has been around for decades. They >are the ones who always have the best-looking >banners at any political demonstration (black italic >lettering on a yellow-orange background). They are >for unions, a fair distribution of the wealth, and are >pro-choice, pro-environment and pro-gay. You can see >why, if they had nowhere else to go, Moorehead voters >would have held their nose and voted for Gore. > >And we wouldn't be in the mess we're in right now! > >I hold Monica Moorehead personally responsible >for all the havoc a Bush presidency will wreak. If >women are forced to return to back alley >coathanger abortions, it will be because of >Monica. If the Alaskan wilderness is ravaged >by corporate greed, it will be because of Monica. >If we are unable to repel an attack of Martians, >it will be because of Monica. > >What kind of weird, sick ego filled this candidate, >compelling her to run and do so much damage? Oh, >I get it -- "principle!" She was running for "principle," >not to actually WIN. Hey, get a clue, Monica -- this >is the REAL world the rest of us live in. While you >decided to have your ego party and travel the country >with celebrities, the rest of us were trying to do >something practical. Was it simply your greed to get >matching federal funds in the next election? Was that >what your candidacy was all about? Money for >YOU? I read in Salon.com you live in a Park Ave. >penthouse! And they are NEVER wrong!! So while >you get rich in the next four years, selling your >pamphlets on "The Dialectic of Political Reform in >Socialist Romania 1951-1984," the rest of us will >just have to suffer! > >Well, I for one, will not let this drop. I encourage >everyone to shun Monica Moorehead. If she enters >a room, just leave. If she speaks to you, tell her >that she is a "non-person" and then leave. When her >name comes up in conversation, change the subject >-- and then leave. If she comes on TV, switch the >channel. If they put her name on a candy bar, don't >eat it. If you find yourself in the same restaurant as >her, don't order what she has ordered. And don't >ever go back to that restaurant because you may >end up drinking from the same glass she drank from! > >Let us all make the name "Monica Moorehead" >synonymous with EVIL. Do NOT return her calls. >Delete her name from your Palm Pilot. > >I have read some of Monica's latest comments in >the past couple days as she has attacked the vote >fraud in Florida. Hey, Monica -- you're a little late, >aren't you? Where were you when you were helping >Bush get elected? Why didn't you drop out of the >race when you saw how close it was? All our lives >we have respected you, and now you just went and >blew it! Why should we listen to you from this point >on? You say we should "take to the streets of West >Palm Beach!" How the hell do you expect us to >do that when we have to spend time writing you these >angry letters? > >I am announcing the formation of the "Blame Monica >Movement." Heretofore, whenever anyone wants to >know WHO is responsible for putting Bush in the >White House, you just tell them, "IT WAS MONICA!" > >Blame Monica! > >Yours, > >Michael Moore >mmflint at aol.com >www.michaelmoore.com > >P.S. This Saturday, November 18, may be the >last chance to take to the streets to stop "The >Bush Ballot Theft." Rallies and demonstrations >are being held in cities all over the country at 1pm. >Click here to find out where: >www.geocities.com/countercoup > >Let's get thousands out there and make our >voices heard. No matter which candidate each >of us voted for, we must insist that the person >with the most votes gets the job. Remember -- > if this kind of thievery can take place amongst >the two corporate-controlled parties, just imagine >what they would do to us if we ever got close >with a viable third party! If they get away with >this, they will be able to get away with anything. >Take a stand on Saturday. > >P.P.S. Tonight (Friday) on "The Awful Truth" >(Bravo, 8pm and 11pm ET), we send our >Congressional Pimp to walk the halls of Congress. >Don't miss this lesson in democracy at work! Also, >we present our salute to Male Apartheid! -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 17 13:16:03 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 13:16:03 -0600 Subject: why is VICTORIA laughing at the Sun Message-ID: <3A1583F3.A8FA401F@mpm.edu> ... you know, Terrance, looking at the times you posted at last night, my friend and I would have been talking about, say, Adamite sun/moon imagery, textbook illustrations of ellipses and the shadows they cast (both as sources for imagery in Max Ernst's paintings), Max Ernst's Loplop paintings (speaking of "bird-headed people"--and my very first college paper was on "bird-headed people" in the paintings of Max Ernst), palimpsests, and the creeps Rome gave Freud precisely as a palimpsest of the dead of sorts, just as you were posting. Talk about yr synchronicity ... Anyway, a couple of references you might be interested in. Barker, Steven, ed. Excavations and Their Objects: Freud's Collection of Antiquity. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. Spies, Werner. Loplop: The Artist in the Third Person. New York: George Braziller, 1983. And see as well http://www.reed.edu/~mkerr/syllabi/Romcit94.html ... but, again, ev'rybody, hardly lecturing, just passing notes is all ... From brucea at bestweb.net Fri Nov 17 12:24:59 2000 From: brucea at bestweb.net (Bruce Appelbaum) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 14:24:59 EDT Subject: another bulb story Message-ID: <3a15860b.93ea.0@bestweb.net> It is possible for an incandescent bulb to burn for that long -- it is generally the shock to the filament at start-up that causes the burn-out. >http://cgi.cnn.com/TECH/9703/25/longest.lasting.bulb/ > >A 96-year-old light bulb: It's still going > March 25, 1997 >Web posted at: 11:43 p.m. EST (0443 GMT) >From Correspondent Don Knapp > >LIVERMORE, California (CNN) -- It is no great surprise that the fire bell at >the Livermore Fire Station, installed in 1876, still works. >But, surprise! So does the fire station's nightlight, a turn-of-the-century >light bulb that Chief Lynn Owens claims has been burning practically nonstop >since 1901. > >also: http://www.snopes.com/spoons/noose/lightbul.htm > > > From scuffling at hotmail.com Fri Nov 17 13:58:07 2000 From: scuffling at hotmail.com (Musashi Miyamoto) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 14:58:07 -0500 Subject: NP, Internet Searchs (was Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" (Maillardet)) References: Message-ID: If you're using any versions of Windoze, this is a great internet search tool: http://www.copernic.com/download/ Comme toujours, Henry Mus ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Morris" To: ; Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 12:00 AM Subject: Re: Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" (Maillardet) > > Mine too. > > >From: "s~Z" Google is my most successful single engine > > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > > From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 17 14:16:12 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 14:16:12 -0600 Subject: Tiffany, "The Natural Philosophy of Toys" (Maillardet) References: <3A13FEFB.B6BC42D9@mpm.edu> <13whq4-0Y32SeC@fwd04.sul.t-online.com> Message-ID: <3A15920C.44C94D64@mpm.edu> ... hey, maybe you can answer this one for me: is "weisenheimer" German (slang, at least) for "wiseguy"? One has one's enthusiasms, you certainly have yours, I certainly have mine, there might even be a bit of crossover there, but I'm just glad to see someone else out there's stumbled onto Daniel Tiffany and his Toy Medium as well. Hell, I was happy enough just to FIND my copy again--it's been a while. Let me know what you think, Keith, onlist, offlist, whatever. And, kai, I imagine you're already familiar with Simon Reynolds, but let me know as well. Do actually think you'd find that "Rave Theory Toolkit" useful, at least. Selling arms to all sides, and then some? Again, am not Professor Monroe, nor was meant to be, apparently (sniff ...). But I do like to send out these littel bits of info into the void, see if anything comes back. And we were doing so nicely ... Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote: > Dave Monroe schrieb: > > > ... Cryptaesthetic of ezra Pound (which he was in the process of publishing > > when I met him)... > > please tell us more about this meeting! thanks in advance: kfl From scuffling at hotmail.com Fri Nov 17 14:15:23 2000 From: scuffling at hotmail.com (Musashi Miyamoto) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 15:15:23 -0500 Subject: Indecision 2000 References: <20473868703145@domain6.bigpond.com> Message-ID: From: "jbor" Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 3:59 PM > Yes, I was commenting more on the transparent use of email and > discussion-lists for spreading propaganda, and don't know enough about the > policies or backgrounds to know which candidate is "better" in terms of the > domestic situation. I don't think either of them, like many Americans, know > where the rest of the world is anyway. It amused me to think, narrow as the > margin appears it will be, that it could be attributed to votes lost by > virtue of the transparent lobbying of a notorious discussion-list pest. The > beauty of the internet over other media is that journalistic bias and > pretence seem so much more obvious here, due to the interactive nature of > the medium. > > By the way, is it true that if the presidential vote count is close in New > Mexico or somewhere then the issue is decided by a contest like a game of > two-handed stud poker or something? Comedians and newscasters over here have > been having a field day. It seems that what has been pointed up are the > flaws in the system rather than the relative virtues of the candidates. > > I think the only U.S. political figure who has emerged with any credibility > in the last 8 years, from this vantage anyway, is good ol' Hillary. Perhaps > you guys should just abandon the whole process, hire Clay Blaisdell to shoot > the two incumbents or something, and make *her* monarch. Subject: FW: NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE To the citizens of the United States of America, In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect: 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminum". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed". 2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through. 6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armor like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005. 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "*hit". 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day". 9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are cr*p and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy. Thank you for your cooperation. From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 17 16:12:31 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 16:12:31 -0600 Subject: VV(4) - Horus on the Horizon Message-ID: <3A15AD4E.3BF7D0E1@mpm.edu> ... but speaking, as you were, Terrance, of devils, deals, not only did I recently clear my palate of that godawful Bedazzled remake with the delightful (really) Stanley Donen/Dudley Moore/Peter Cook original, not only am I reminded that someone, somehwere is now working on a big screen The Devil and Daniel Webster, but am also reminded of another interesting possible reference my friend had pointed out to me, i.e., Edgar Allen Poe's Toby Dammit ("Never Bet the Devil Your Head") as a possible inspiration for Thomas Ruggles Pynchon's Benny Profane (er, V.). The name, of course, but see also the story, conveniently online @ http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/POE/neverbet.html Some interesting metafictional commentary there, pluys, apparently, a critique of American Transcendentalism. "NBTDYH" was filmed by Federico Fellini as "Toby Dammit" (starring Terrance Stamp) for the 1968 portmanteu film, Spirits of the Dead. As always, let me know ... From millison at online-journalist.com Fri Nov 17 15:27:49 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 14:27:49 -0700 Subject: NP web resources Message-ID: Movies.com -- Fact City http://movies.factcity.net/factcity/factcity This easy-to-use "facts on demand service" from Movies.com and Fact City offers quick answers to your movie questions. Drawing on a database of over 400,000 actors and actresses, 40,000 directors, and hundreds of thousands of movies and other movie professionals, the site provides instant answers to questions submitted via a fill-in-the-blank interface. Preset questions include: who starred in, who directed, who produced, list all movies starring, what is the running time of, and who won the academy award, among others. A nice, compact, and fast resource for looking up a wide variety of movie facts. New Document Releases of MI5 material relating to WWII -- PRO http://www.pro.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/MI5/mi5_intro.htm Images http://www.pro.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/MI5WW2/MI5_1.htm The UK Public Record Office has recently announced the release of MI5 (Security Service) records related to World War II. The bulk of the release is mainly personal files of British traitors, double agents, and Nazi spies. These include William Joyce ("Lord Haw Haw") and his wife Margaret; other individuals connected with the British Union of Fascists; double agents HAMLET, PUPPET, and MULLET; and some leading Nazi intelligence officers and agents. A link at the bottom of the first URL will lead visitors to brief summaries of the individuals covered, along with their file numbers. These will probably be most interesting to scholars, but the collection of images should appeal to anyone with an interest in the Second World War, traitors, and secret agents. Chile: 16,000 Secret US Documents Declassified -- NSA [.pdf] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20001113/ Chile Documentation Project http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/latin_america/chile.htm On November 13, the National Security Archive (NSA) (last discussed in the October 6, 2000 _Scout Report_) announced the release of over "16,000 secret US records on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent overthrow of the Allende government and the advent of the military regime to power." Totalling more than 50,000 pages, the records include numerous controversial documents that the CIA had refused to release until they were pressured by the White House. The NSA has posted a selection of some of the key documents on its site. They are offered in .pdf format with a brief description. ...and one for MalignD, for eponymous reasons: International Victimology Website [.pdf, .doc] http://www.victimology.nl/ A joint project of the UN Center for International Crime Prevention, the Research and Documentation Center of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice, and the World Society of Victimology, this site was created to disseminate information about current research and practices in victimology and criminology. To that end, the site offers two databases. The first of these, the Victimology Research Database, contains detailed information on current and ongoing projects. The second, the Victim Services and Victimization Prevention Database, offers information on both successful and not-so-successful efforts in the field. The site also hosts a very large collection of documents and publications related to victimology and criminology, which are listed by country. Please note that some of these documents are not in English. A news section and bulletin board round out the site. from: The Scout Report -- November 17, 2000 -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 17 18:09:58 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 18:09:58 CST Subject: VV(4) - At the Mercy of Fortune Message-ID: --------- (57) Perhaps the only reason they [TWSC] survived, Stencil reasoned, was that they were not alone. God knew how many more there were with a hothouse sense of time, no knowledge of life, and at the Mercy of Fortune. ---------- One of Stencil's impersonations will soon express some very poignant thoughts about being at the Mercy of Fortune.... TTTT, David Morris _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From o.sell at telda.net Fri Nov 17 23:30:05 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 06:30:05 +0100 Subject: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. References: <010a01c04fb8$b951daa0$7a5306d5@selltelda.net> <13whq7-0Y32ShC@fwd04.sul.t-online.com> Message-ID: <010201c05120$9c85ed80$c55406d5@selltelda.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Lorentzen / Nicklaus To: Cc: Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 10:29 AM Subject: Re: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. otto schrieb: > THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY > > hereby declares is dissolution claiming the status of a Dutch colony. Kai schrieb: gott bewahre! i mean, how often have the dutch people, actually, been fußballweltmeister?! you see ... kai Otto sez: Ok, but then we would be united in soccer, assumingly unbeatable forever- wasn't it that what we always claim, always wanted and want to be, unbeatable German tanks. I must admit always having been a fan of England when it comes to soccer. The words *dutch/deutsch* are very close, the difference will be forgotten soon. Kai schrieb: ps: of course it's nice that our friendly neighbors produce mdma for the whole globe ... Otto had said already: > it was time to get under Dutch laws . . . and adds: . . . plus the whole attitude towards "crimes" which do not harm anybody the Dutch have developed according to their proverbial tolerance . . . --------------------------------------- "I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; (Tristram Shandy) http://www.itap.de/homes/otto/index.html From o.sell at telda.net Sat Nov 18 00:05:42 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 07:05:42 +0100 Subject: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. References: <010a01c04fb8$b951daa0$7a5306d5@selltelda.net> <13whq7-0Y32ShC@fwd04.sul.t-online.com> Message-ID: <014001c05125$95de7d80$c55406d5@selltelda.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Lorentzen / Nicklaus To: Cc: Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 10:29 AM Subject: Re: Indecision 2000 - from H.R.M. Kai wrote: ps: of course it's nice that our friendly neighbors produce mdma for the whole globe ... ----------------------- Thought this could be interesting to some of us: "anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means." WS Burroughs, quoted at: The Future of Drugs http://www.feedmag.com/drugs/?from=AC Adventures Through Inner Space http://www.feedmag.com/drugs/drugissue_erikdavis.html The War on the War on Drugs http://www.feedmag.com/drugs/drugissue_dialogintro.html What I did on My Chemical Vacation http://www.feedmag.com/drugs/drugissue_chemvacation.html "When I'm high or intoxicated, I don't have the discipline to sit down at a desk and type something. I'll happily ramble and be a terrible bore, but I can't sit down and write..." WHEN AN OFFICER OCCURS Hubert Selby, Jr. http://www.feedmag.com/drugs/selby.html "ONCE UPON A DREADFUL TIME I was driving home from the connection. It was about four or five PM so there was an abundance of traffic on the L.A. streets, even back then in l967. I was stopped for a light, only one very short block from home, when a police officer suddenly occurred by the driver's side of the car. He also had a very large-size gun pointing at my head, and when I looked down the barrel it was like looking down the tunnel of the subway. He told me to get out and I was so frightened I started to get out without turning the car off or putting it in park so the car started to move forward and the cop was reaching in the car trying to get the keys out of the ignition and the gun is waving back and forth in front of my face and he's yelling something and I finally stepped on the brake. A less than auspicious end to the day and beginning of a new phase of my life. I knew I was going to die. I had tried kicking this habit in the hospital and couldn't do it. I have less than one lung and it just wouldn't function. It just hung there hanging out and refused to work, so I knew I would never make it out of jail alive." And so on . . . Otto From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Sat Nov 18 09:23:09 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 15:23:09 +0000 (GMT) Subject: VV(4) -Horus on the Horizon In-Reply-To: <3A156013.BA608378@mpm.edu> Message-ID: Re: Sephiroth. As far as I'm aware there are 10 Sephioroth with 22 other paths each representing a certain form of enlightenment. Each of the ten is grouped into a hierarchy starting off with heaven (cf. Elijah, the only prophet to have reached the top Sephiroth with the chariot of angels), and spilling out until you get the lowest sphere, which is Earth. Interestingly, the Lord's Prayer: "thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory" seems to be Kabbalistic in nature (kingdom, power, and glory being all separate Sephirtoth). Seems like these Jews are everywhere nowadays. A good source of information is http://www.inner.org (but don't subscribe to the email, you'll just receive messages on Kabbalah and mental health, plus it seems to be a peculiarly capitalistic form of spirituality). Mark P.S. You might want to check out http://www.members.aol.com/Kafka100/kafkakabbalah.html. Is it me or is it the old problem of Kafka's ambiguity, combined with the overeasiness of Kabbalah as a literary tool ( ditto Jung and Freud)? P.P.S. The Jew remark is a joke. I am not in any way anti-Semitic, and find any form of racism to be just plain vulgar and inaccurate!! So please no emails accusing me of being Hitler... From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Sat Nov 18 11:27:16 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 17:27:16 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Passion in a vacuum... Message-ID: Sorry, if you've already received a version of this but my email system doesn't seem to have registered the first reply. Bob, re: Shakepeare As a Shakespeare novice, perhaps you'd suggest which plays I should be looking to read (or should that be "see") re: the Elizabethan audience so Iguess Romeo and Juliet would have been their favourite too, huh? re: Beckett I agree about the difficulty of comparing Becket to Joyce. If I had to, I would do so using a H. G. Wells short story about a man who disappeared into a parallel universe, only to reappear in this one as a mirror image of himself. But if I had to compare Beckett to anyone, I think perhaps Duchamp is the closest comparison. Duchamp's reply to Neo-Dadaism: "I taunt them with my jokes, and they call it art!" would have been quite at home coming from Beckett's mouth. to finish, a Beckett anecdote (I loathe biographies, but will confess to a soft spot for anecdotes): On a visit to England, Beckett went for a stroll with some friends. One of them remarked: "What a beautiful day. It makes one aalmost glad to be alive!". To which Beckett replied: "I wouldn't go that far" Mark From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sat Nov 18 17:56:23 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 17:56:23 CST Subject: Passion in a vacuum... Message-ID: >From: Mark David Tristan Brenchley On a visit to England, Beckett went >for a stroll with some friends. One of them remarked: "What a beautiful >day. It makes one aalmost glad to be alive!". To which Beckett replied: "I >wouldn't go that far" Quick Quizz: Question 1: What is the name of the architect who once remarked that he didn't like the color green because he didn't like plants (paraphrased, of course)? Hint W: Abstracion. Hint X: "Der" Style. Hint Y: Modern, very early. Question 2: What? Hint Z: What WHAT? _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Sun Nov 19 08:39:28 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 14:39:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: a lesson for a young upstart? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David, Hmmm, quiet night on the e-group. Looks like only us English work on a Saturday night... > Quick Quizz: > > Question 1: What is the name of the architect who once remarked that he > didn't like the color green because he didn't like plants (paraphrased, of > course)? > > Hint W: Abstracion. > Hint X: "Der" Style. > Hint Y: Modern, very early. > You got me. Architecture not really my field (though you have got me interested in the work of German Modernism and Mies Van Der Rohe) > Question 2: What? > Hint Z: What WHAT? > I'll get back to you on this one... Mark > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > > From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sun Nov 19 09:31:45 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 09:31:45 CST Subject: a lesson for a young upstart? Message-ID: > > Quick Quizz: > > > > Question 1: What is the name of the architect who once remarked that he >didn't like the color green because he didn't like plants (paraphrased, of >course)? > > > > Hint W: Abstracion. > > Hint X: "Der" Style. > > Hint Y: Modern, very early. http://www.archinform.net/start.htm?page=/medien/00000089.htm http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/AWork?id=3628 http://moma2000.moma.org/makingchoices/individual?mad_id=529 http://www.uol.com.br/bienal/24bienal/nuh/enuhmondoes03a.htm "Color contruction in the 4th dimension of space-time" _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From keith at pfmentum.com Sun Nov 19 14:40:11 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 12:40:11 -0800 Subject: "Being born. That's all you have to do." Message-ID: <000401c05268$ebc979e0$af3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1028000/1028648.stm From crawdad at one.net Sun Nov 19 22:11:09 2000 From: crawdad at one.net (Don Corathers) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 23:11:09 -0500 Subject: V.V.--Inanimate jazz Message-ID: <007301c052a7$c442c4a0$532417d8@bob> This from a New York Times piece about hillbilly jazz of the forties and fifties, referring specifically to the practice of substituting electric guitars for horns by players like Spade Cooley and Tex Williams: "And strange this music is, although differently strange from the things the jazz modernists were turning out. Where the boppers were trying to find new uses for old tools--acoustic instruments--the hillbilly modernists applied new electric tools to old material, fundamentally altering it. A line that would be warm and swinging if played on a trumpet hums and crackles with an alien, barely controlled energy. The songs' melodies and harmonies might be familiar, but their tonalities have become inhuman, metallic." Don -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dmeury at lioninc.com Mon Nov 20 09:11:27 2000 From: dmeury at lioninc.com (Dave Meury) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 07:11:27 -0800 Subject: "Being born. That's all you have to do." Message-ID: <01C052C1.1A4A0C00.dmeury@lioninc.com> Oh! no! I'm not falling for this again, not after that puppeteer link! Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 12:40:11 -0800 From: "s~Z" Subject: "Being born. That's all you have to do." http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1028000/1028648.stm ------------------------------ From scuffling at hotmail.com Mon Nov 20 10:14:00 2000 From: scuffling at hotmail.com (Musashi Miyamoto) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 11:14:00 -0500 Subject: NP web resources References: Message-ID: If you're looking for more than who, what, when on movies, then I suggest http://www.imdb.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Millison" Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 4:27 PM > Movies.com -- Fact City > http://movies.factcity.net/factcity/factcity > > This easy-to-use "facts on demand service" from Movies.com and Fact > City offers quick answers to your movie questions. Drawing on a > database of over 400,000 actors and actresses, 40,000 directors, and > hundreds of thousands of movies and other movie professionals, the > site provides instant answers to questions submitted via a > fill-in-the-blank interface. Preset questions include: who starred > in, who directed, who produced, list all movies starring, what is the > running time of, and who won the academy award, among others. A nice, > compact, and fast resource for looking up a wide variety of movie > facts. From monroe at mpm.edu Mon Nov 20 10:36:52 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 10:36:52 -0600 Subject: Happy Birthday, Don DeLillo! Message-ID: <3A195324.4DC3F4C2@mpm.edu> Happy Birthday, Don DeLillo! Not to mention Robert F. Kennedy ... From kuznet at earthlink.net Sun Nov 19 02:36:51 2000 From: kuznet at earthlink.net (Kuznetsov Sergey) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 11:36:51 +0300 Subject: Fw: Pynchon in Russia / Russian in California Message-ID: <009b01c05203$e2e4d140$e7a5b2d1@kuznetss> Dear friends, first of all I want to glad everybody: the two Pynchon volumes are published in the faraway and cold Tchicherin's country - really, in the Russia! It's V. and TCL49 & Short Stories. Unfortunatly, the translations are terrible. But there are my commentary and they are not so awfull. I hope, they are good. And there are thanksgivings to Pynchon_L, John M. Craft, Derec C. Maus and Tim Ware. I would be happy to post them their copies It's very pleasent that Pynchon became really cult writer in Russia too - just after the publications. A few Russian persons have subscribe to the list immideatly. Well... I'm in California now and I think may be somebody from Pynchon_l subscriber have a time and a desire to show me some Pynchon and his generation places in the state. I have many friends (the Russians) in CA, but most of them are located in Sillicon Valley and arrived in the USA at best ten years ago. And of course nobody lived here in the sixties ( Really, most of them didn't live in the sixties genearlly... we are so young). I would be glad to see TCL49 and Vineland locations... as well as any places related with the sixties in California and hear something from the witness of the legent years. The nearest few days I'll be in SF and then may be i'll going to L.A. Sincerely Sergey Kuznetsov Moscow / California From richardromeo at hotmail.com Mon Nov 20 13:19:11 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 19:19:11 GMT Subject: Happy Birthday, Don DeLillo! Message-ID: In fact, Nov 20 issue of Publisher's Weekly has a starred review of DeLillo's new book, The Body Artist, due out in Feb. review calls it mysterious, which raises my hopes. P.S. Anyone have back copies of the Evergreen Review--looking for bibliographic info on a essay Coover wrote about pornography--i think it was 1970 and its title was something like the High Church of Hardcore. Rich (RIP Savannah) >From: Dave Monroe >To: pynchon-l at waste.org >Subject: Happy Birthday, Don DeLillo! >Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 10:36:52 -0600 > >Happy Birthday, Don DeLillo! Not to mention Robert F. Kennedy ... > _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From monroe at mpm.edu Mon Nov 20 13:31:09 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 13:31:09 -0600 Subject: "How the First World War Changed Movies Forever" Message-ID: <3A197BFD.1758EFC4@mpm.edu> ... sorry if someone's already posted this, but today's digest hasn't come down the line yet, so ... nice article in the "Arts and Leisure" section of yesterday's New York Times on "How the First World War Changed Movies Forever." In a nutshell: ... the Great War was the first to be fought before the motion picture camera. In the field, reconnaisance became airborne and cinematic; at home, propaganda leapt from the page to the screen. The effects were so far-reaching, argues Paul Virilio in his often-cited book "War and Cinema," that the war zone itself may be thought of as a kind of film. On the front, perceptions became accelerated, discontinuous, mechanized, as if the soldiers' eyes had turned into cameras. From this condition, there was to be no release; after 1918, cinema's shock techniques continued wartime perception by other means. Stuart Klawans, "How the First World War Changed Movies Forever." New York Times, Sunday, November 19th, 2000. Online @ http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/19/arts/19KLAW.html. See as well the deservedly "oft-cited" Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Trans. Patrick Camilier. London and New York: Verso, 1989. Nice online interview transcript on "Future War" and said 'logistics of perception" @ http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Watson_Institute/programs/gs/VirtualY2K/futurewar.html Quite enjoyed that "Hillbilly and Jazz" article as well, Don. Passed it on to a friend of mine with his very own "hillbilly" band, who esp. enjoyed Louis Armstrong's comment about bebop: "weird chords which don't mean nothin' and no melody to remember and no beat to dance to" ... From richardromeo at hotmail.com Mon Nov 20 13:47:49 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 19:47:49 GMT Subject: "How the First World War Changed Movies Forever" Message-ID: I saw that david. but I found the article on Elaine Scarry in the magazine section of interest, ( profile of this english professor getting all mixed up in scientific questions regarding airplane crashes) too. Though her claim that the literature she was reading wasn't discussing or describing pain in any meaningful way was a bit odd. I suppose she was only speaking of the Victorians and Shakespeares. Rich >From: Dave Monroe >To: pynchon-l at waste.org >Subject: "How the First World War Changed Movies Forever" >Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 13:31:09 -0600 > >... sorry if someone's already posted this, but today's digest hasn't >come down the line yet, so ... nice article in the "Arts and Leisure" >section of yesterday's New York Times on "How the First World War >Changed Movies Forever." In a nutshell: > >... the Great War was the first to be fought before the motion picture >camera. In the field, reconnaisance became airborne and cinematic; at >home, propaganda leapt from the page to the screen. The effects were so >far-reaching, argues Paul Virilio in his often-cited book "War and >Cinema," that the war zone itself may be thought of as a kind of film. >On the front, perceptions became accelerated, discontinuous, mechanized, >as if the soldiers' eyes had turned into cameras. From this condition, >there was to be no release; after 1918, cinema's shock techniques >continued wartime perception by other means. > >Stuart Klawans, "How the First World War Changed Movies Forever." > New York Times, Sunday, November 19th, 2000. > >Online @ http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/19/arts/19KLAW.html. > >See as well the deservedly "oft-cited" > >Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. > Trans. Patrick Camilier. London and New York: Verso, 1989. > >Nice online interview transcript on "Future War" and said 'logistics of >perception" @ > >http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Watson_Institute/programs/gs/VirtualY2K/futurewar.html > >Quite enjoyed that "Hillbilly and Jazz" article as well, Don. Passed it >on to a friend of mine with his very own "hillbilly" band, who esp. >enjoyed Louis Armstrong's comment about bebop: "weird chords which don't >mean nothin' and no melody to remember and no beat to dance to" ... > _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 20 15:17:47 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 16:17:47 -0500 Subject: VV(4) - Horus on the Horizon References: <3A15AD4E.3BF7D0E1@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A1994FB.4EDFB174@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: > > ... but speaking, as you were, Terrance, of devils, deals, not only did > I recently clear my palate of that godawful Bedazzled remake with the > delightful (really) Stanley Donen/Dudley Moore/Peter Cook original, not > only am I reminded that someone, somehwere is now working on a big > screen The Devil and Daniel Webster, but am also reminded of another > interesting possible reference my friend had pointed out to me, i.e., > Edgar Allen Poe's Toby Dammit ("Never Bet the Devil Your Head") as a > possible inspiration for Thomas Ruggles Pynchon's Benny Profane (er, > V.). The name, of course, but see also the story, conveniently online @ > > http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/POE/neverbet.html > > Some interesting metafictional commentary there, pluys, apparently, a > critique of American Transcendentalism. "NBTDYH" was filmed by > Federico Fellini as "Toby Dammit" (starring Terrance Stamp) for the 1968 > portmanteu film, Spirits of the Dead. As always, let me know ... This work is generally considered a failure. The cause of its ill-success is certainly not to be sought in its lack of power. None of Melville's novels equals the present in force and subtlety of thinking and unity of purpose. Many of the scenes are wrought out with great splendor and vigor, and a capacity is evinced of holding with a firm grasp, and describing with a masterly distinctness, some of the most evanescent phenomena of morbid emotions. But the spirit pervading the whole book is intolerably unhealthy, and the most friendly reader is obliged at the end to protest against such a provoking perversion of talent and waste of power. The author has attempted seemingly to combine in it the peculiarities of Poe and Hawthorne, and has succeeded in producing nothing but a powerfully unpleasant caricature of morbid thought and passion. Pierre, we take it, is crazy, and the merit of the book is in clearly presenting the psychology of his madness; but the details of such a mental malady as that which afflicts Pierre are almost as disgusting as those of physical disease itself. --Philadelphia Graham's Magazine, October 1852 And if the critics calling Mr. Melville a madman was not enough to drive him to silence what his friends would write about his fiction and his immoral moral would. Gives one pause, I should hope, when we see the industry desperate for a new approach digging deep into the hot soil where Nat's plant shot its seeds or creeping about on the stairs with forensic scientists. The most immoral moral of the story, if it has any moral at all, seems to be the impracticability of virtue; a leering demoniacal spectre of an idea seems to be speering at us through the dim obscure of this dark book, and mocking us with this dismal falsehood. Mr. Melville's chapter on "Chronometricals and Horologicals," if it has any meaning at all, simply means that virtue and religion are only for gods and not to be attempted by man. But ordinary novel readers will never unkennel this loathsome suggestion. The stagnant pool at the bottom of which it lies, is not too deep for their penetration, but too muddy, foul, and corrupt. If truth is hid in a well, falsehood lies in a quagmire. --Evert or George Duyckinck, in New York Literary World, August 21 1852 Dave Monroe wrote: > > ... "the Shadow and Peter Schlemihl"? By GR Light and Shadow are Gnostic complexities that the young man that wrote V. and the short stories hadn't quite seen the light and dark of. GR.394 "from above and below at the same time, so that everyone had two shadows: Cain's and Abel's." And this same narrator says GR.429, "In the Zone, all will be moving under the Old Dispensation, inside the Cainists' light and space: not out of any precious Golleri, but because the Double Light was always there, outside all film, and that shucking and jiving ...in deep ignorance, then and now, of what he was showing the nation of starers...so that summer Isle passed herself by, too fixed at some shaodowless interior noon to mark the intersection, or to care." The Supernatural The trend toward the irrational and the supernatural was an important component of English and German romantic literature. It was reinforced on the one hand by disillusion with 18th-century rationalism and on the other by the rediscovery of a body of older literature—folktales and ballads—collected by Percy and by German scholars Jacob and Wilhelm Karl Grimm (see Grimm Brothers) and Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. From such material comes, for example, the motif of the doppelgänger (German for "double"). Many romantic writers, especially in Germany, were fascinated with this concept, perhaps because of the general romantic concern with self-identity. Poet Heinrich Heine wrote a lyric apocryphally titled "Der Doppelgänger" (1827; translated 1846); The Devil's Elixir (1815-1816; translated 1824), a short novel by E. T. A. Hoffmann, is about a double; and Peter Schlemihl's Remarkable Story (1814; translated 1927), by Adelbert von Chamisso, the tale of a man who sells his shadow to the devil, can be considered a variation on the theme. Later, Russian master Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky wrote his famous novel The Double (1846), an analysis of paranoia in a humble clerk. http://www.levity.com/mavericks/romantic.htm http://www.ctheory.com/a61.html In 1814 Chamisso published the peculiar tale of Peter Schlemihl, which, more than any other work, won lasting recognition for its author. The story of a man who sold his shadow to the devil, it allegorized Chamisso's own political fate as a man without a country. Though rewarded with an inexhaustible purse, Schlemihl soon discovers that the lack of a shadow involves him in unexpected difficulties. He refuses, however, an offer to restore the shadow in exchange for his soul and instead, with the help of a pair of seven-league boots, wanders through the world searching for the peace of mind he has bartered away. http://www.britannica.com/seo/a/adelbert-von-chamisso/ Among Hoffmann's longer works are ELIXIERE DES TEUFELS (1816), which studied the theme of doppelgänger. Alternate personalities or their shallow equivalents, can be found in 'Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht' (1815), where a man meets both the shadowless Peter Schlemihl and Erasmus Spikher, who has lost his reflection. LEBENS-ANSICHTEN DES KATERS MURR (...), a fictional autobiography of a cat and a direct parody of Goethe's The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister, was published in two volumes in 1820-21. Hoffmann wrote nine operas and one symphony, his opera The Water Sprite is still occasionally performed. Other compositions include vocal, chamber, orchestral, and piano works. Hoffmann died in Berlin from progressive paralysis on June 25, 1822. - His tales, which weave the fantastic closely into real world, had enormous influence particularly in the United States, where his works affected the writings of Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hoffman.htm Poe is, of course, the great-great-grandfather of the genre Pynchon is playing with here in V. , Dickens of course, revived it after it had died. Someone asked about a summary of these chapters? Well the best one is the one provided by the host. If you don't mind reading "vicariously", you could read chapter 2, ("Duplicity And Duplication in V.") of Molly Hite's book Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon, an excellent study I happen to mostly agree with but disagree with, Postmodern you know, ha, ha, but it does go to the questions you raised-- what the hell is going on in this seemingly fragmented non chronological narrative? It's wild the way postmodernism's discourse gets rootlessly wrapped around everything these days, that Benton article I so admire in the OCULR on anarchy for example, which, when it does finally get to Pynchon, (not a criticism, anarchy is a huge subject) identifies the paradoxical, irreconcilable binary, the chaos and order (Hite), the "creative source of both political revolution and violence & freedom and even and annihilation as creation, also addressed in that OCULR by Francisco Collado-Rodriguez in his essay on the Excluded Middle. On the Baedeker tourism and stage--Rilke's actors, acrobats, film, see William M. Plater's book, The Grim Phoenix: Reconconstructing Thomas Pynchon. The James Wood essay, James Wood, The smallness of the "big" novel.. , is in the The New Republic, 07-24-2000. That's July 24th not July 7th. From keith at pfmentum.com Mon Nov 20 15:43:14 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 13:43:14 -0800 Subject: Kerouac Novella E-Book Message-ID: <002d01c0533a$e4ae2340$823771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> "Orpheus Emerged," a never-before-published Kerouac novella, was released today by the e-book company LiveReads and is available on the Internet at http://www.BN.com. From dsimpson at condor.depaul.edu Mon Nov 20 16:58:23 2000 From: dsimpson at condor.depaul.edu (David Simpson) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 16:58:23 -0600 Subject: V's and Quincunxes: Pynchon, Browne, Galton, etc. References: <200011172224.QAA11776@waste.org> Message-ID: <3A19AC8E.9B10A399@condor.depaul.edu> Not sure if this is the proper place to insert some different stuff into the V. discussion, but am seizing the opportunity anyway (using the "scholarly quest" and "adventure of the mind" passage as my textual point of departure.) For whatever they may be worth, here are a few teasing parallels and cross-connections between Stencil's search for V., the scientific and metaphysical musings served up in Sir Thomas Browne's "The Garden of Cyrus," statistical speculations about randomness and pattern on the part of the British eugenicist Francis Galton, and traditional Gnostic interpretations of cosmic order and design. Browne was a 17th-century physician, natural philosopher, folklorist, antiquarian, amateur theologian, and universal polymath. His "Gardens of Cyrus" is a fantastic (in nearly every sense of the word) study of the occurrence of "quincuncial" designs in nature, art, and mystical lore. A quincunx (from the Latin word for "five twelfths") is an arrangement of five points to form a double V or X, much like the 5-spot on a playing card or gaming die, thus: * * * * * The legendary gardens of Cyrus the Great (Persian emperor 559-529 BC) were supposedly laid out according to this pattern, and the result, as can be imagined, was a vast network of quincunxes: an elaborate grid or reticule of interconnecting X's and V's. In his researches Browne finds this V-form pattern literally everywhere: in a myriad of plants, seeds, and vegetables; in the bone structures of animals and the veins of minerals; in art and architecture; in physical phenomena; in folklore and alchemy; in ancient literature and myth; in sacred history and the Bible; in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Cabalistical arcana; indeed, in everything from honeycombs and sea-hedgehog eggs to Roman battle formations and the physical laws of optical and sonic reflection. The sheer volume of instances and examples Browne furnishes is mind-boggling. So much so that as we read his essay, we hardly know (as is also the case with Stencil) whether he is onto something crucial and pervasive or is simply the dupe of his own overactive ingenuity. (By the end of the essay, Browne's search for quincunxes begins to look -- to modern readers at least -- like "an adventure of the mind" indeed, and possibly the product of some form of godly paranoia or full-blown monomania.) A devout Christian, Browne offers his findings as evidence of a mathematically meticulous Designing God. To him, the omnipresence of the quincunx is simply one more assurance that the Creation is the work of a minutely diligent Maker. In this respect, "The Garden of Cyrus" is a typical, if extreme, contribution to the literature of Natural Theology and to the tradition of cosmic piety (the belief that universal order is the hallmark of a benevolent Creator). Of course, as P-listers are fully aware, such a belief is the exact opposite of the Gnostic (and more Stencilian, and Pynchonian) view. To the Gnostic eye, such revelations of order and system are more terrifying than edifying for they betoken the presence not of a divine Savior-Creator but of the sinister Archons, the ruler-creators of the cosmic Jail. One added note: by an intriguing coincidence, "quincunx" also happens to be the name that the British eugenics pioneer Francis Galton (1822-1911) gave to his device for depicting the "patterns" that emerge within random phenomena. Using a kind of vertical pin-ball machine (designed so that each dropped ball might deflect right or left with equal probability), Galton's contraption provided a graphic demonstation -- in the form of a Bell curve -- of the deeper-level lawfulness of haphazard events. Shades of Mondaugen's sferics. It's not clear whether G's adoption of the name "quincunx" owes anything at all to Browne. In any case, what is probably of greater interest to Pynchon readers is Galton's self-admiring autobiography, "Memories of my Life" (1908). With its earnest recapitulation of the author's eugenic theories and "scientific" views on race and culture, and especially with its middle chapters set in South West Africa (where Galton toured as a sort of ethologist-adventurer), this work qualifies as one of the all-time documents in the history of British racism and imperialism -- as well as a potential source for V. A pleasant holiday to all. -- "Welcome to 'All About the Media,' where members of the media discuss the role of the media in media coverage of the media." -- New Yorker cartoon, 9/25/00. ------- homepage: http://www.depaul.edu/~dsimpson From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 20 20:36:13 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 21:36:13 -0500 Subject: V's and Quincunxes: Pynchon, Browne, Galton, etc. References: <200011172224.QAA11776@waste.org> <3A19AC8E.9B10A399@condor.depaul.edu> Message-ID: <3A19DF9D.3BD0D317@earthlink.net> http://penelope.uchicago.edu/ Thank you very much! From FrodeauxB at aol.com Tue Nov 21 06:53:16 2000 From: FrodeauxB at aol.com (FrodeauxB at aol.com) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 07:53:16 EST Subject: The Future of Genetic Engineering Message-ID: A little something I picked up on the net. ---------- From: futurefeedforward at futurefeedforward.com To: Subject: Researchers Seek Treatment for Mad Soybean Disease Date: Sun, Nov 19, 2000, 06:38 PM August 3, 2058 Researchers Seek Treatment for Mad Soybean Disease NEW YORK--Officials for the World Health Organization announced today the funding of a special initiative dedicated to discovering improved treatment and diagnosis of Bovine-Derived Tofuiform Encephalopathy (BDTE), more commonly known as Mad Soybean Disease.  "Though confirmed cases of BDTE have not been many in number, their global distribution, coupled with the widespread consumption of bovine-derived soy products, is a matter for prudent concern," explained WHO spokesperson Wilfred Inkling. The disease is closely associated with the consumption of bovine-derived tofu.  Prior to widely publicized recent cases of BDTE, few consumers realized that some 30% of tofu sold worldwide was at least in part bovine-derived.  "The tofu industry doesn't want to talk about bovine-derived tofu because they know the market will be suspicious," claims Haril Paltry, executive director of transgenics watchdog group Generation One.  "And we should be suspicious.  The public needs to know about how this stuff is produced." Bovine-derived tofu is harvested from a proprietary, transgenic Soy Cow developed and patented by Soystock inc., a soy industry collaborative standards and research corporation.  A full-grown Soy Cow resembles a traditional cow whose flesh is composed of food-grade tofu.  The tofu is harvested three to four times each season using techniques derived from the traditional shearing of wool.  A freshly-shorn Soy Cow begins to re-grow tofu-flesh on its lean, grey-houndish frame within hours.  During its ten-year lifespan, the typical Soy Cow will produce more than 32 tons of tofu. "People naturally react negatively to unfamiliar innovations," points out lead Soystock researcher Phillipa Reade.  "I think the public is ready for this.  We haven't been advertising the Soy Cow, but we haven't made it a secret either.  The control we have over the product through control of the Soy Cow genome is phenomenal.  We've been able to very closely link Soy Cow behaviors with desirable product qualities.  The firmness of the tofu, for instance, is tied to the exercise regime of the stock animals." Reade is more circumspect when questioned about BDTE:  "BDTE is a serious concern, but I don't think all of the evidence is in yet.  People tend to jump to the conclusion that it is related to Soy Cow tofu when it may be a consequence of engineering of traditionally grown soy, or even of centuries of traditional soy husbandry.  We know much more about the Soy Cow genome because we planned every nucleotide in it.  We know much less about traditional soy." BDTE's symptoms include the rapid development of tofu-like plaques in the spine and in the frontal lobes of the brain, causing dementia, amnesia, uncontrollable body tremors, periodic seizures, and, ultimately, brain death.  To date, few treatments have been effective.  Public domain drugs for treatment of BSE-1, BDE, and BSE-211 have produced noticeable, but temporary relief of some symptoms. "We don't yet fully understand the BDTE's vectors," notes WHO's Inkling. "Because of the lengthy incubation period--as long as 15 years in some cases--we have determined that research dollars should be allocated now, rather than later.  If preliminary investigation indicates that BDTE causative agents are relatively uncommon in the population, then we'll re-evaluate our decision.  Until then, however, a dedicated research initiative is the only humane response." ________________________________________ You have received this story as a subscriber to Futurefeedforward. Visit us at http://futurefeedforward.com To unscubscribe, visit http://futurefeedforward.com/e_list.mv TTFN frodeauxb -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 21 09:14:57 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 09:14:57 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - Sephardim Message-ID: http://www.sirius.com/~ovid/alhambra.decree.html The Alhambra Decree This is the decree of expulsion promulgated by Queen Isabella and Kind Ferdinand of Spain in 1492, which forced the Spanish Jews, the Sephardim, to leave Spain for ever. "You well know that in our dominion, there are certain bad Christians that judaised and committed apostasy against our Holy Catholic faith, much of it the cause of communications between Jews and Christians. Therefore, in the year 1480, we ordered that the Jews be separated from the cities and towns of our domains and that they be given separate quarters, hoping that by such separation the situation would be remedied. And we ordered that and an Inquisition be established in such domains; and in twelve years it has functioned, the Inquisition has found many guilty persons. Furthermore, we are informed by the Inquisition and others that the great harm done to the Christians persists, and it continues because of the conversations and communications that they have with the Jews, such Jews trying by whatever manner to subvert our holy Catholic faith and trying to draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs." "Therefore, with the council and advice of the eminent men and cavaliers of our reign, and of other persons of knowledge and conscience of our Supreme Council, after much deliberation, it is agreed and resolved that all Jews and Jewesses be ordered to leave our kingdoms, and that hey never be allowed to return." http://www.sirius.com/~ovid/abravanel.html Edict Response by Isaac Abravanel "Your Majesties, Abraham Senior and I thank you for this opportunity to make our last statement on the behalf of the Jewish communities that we represent. Counts, dukes, and marquees of the court, cavaliers and ladies.... it is no great honor when a Jew is asked to plead for the safety of his people. But it is a greater disgrace when the King and Queen of Castile and Aragon, indeed of all Spain, have to seek their glory in the expulsion of a harmless people. I find it very difficult to understand how every Jewish man, woman, and child can be a threat to the Catholic faith. Very, very strong charges. We destroy you? It is indeed the opposite. Did you not admit in this edict to having confined all Jews to restricted quarters and to having limited our legal and social privileges, not to mention forcing us to wear shameful badges? Did you not tax us oppressively? Did you not terrorize us day and night with your diabolical Inquisition? Let me make this matter perfectly clear to all present: I will not allow the voice of Israel to be stilled on this day. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, King and Queen of Spain, for I, Isaac Abravanel, speak unto you. I and my family are descended directly from King David. True royal bold, the blood of the Messiah, runs in my veins. It is my inheritance, and I proclaim it now in the name of the God of Israel. On behalf of my people, the people of Israel, the chosen of God, I declare them blameless and innocent of all crimes declared in this edict of abomination. The crime, the transgression, is for you, not us, to bear. The unrighteous decree you proclaim today will be your downfall. And this year, which you imagine to be the year of Spain's greatest glory, will become of Spain's greatest shame." _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 21 09:24:29 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 09:24:29 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - Sephardim #2 Message-ID: http://www.angelfire.com/al/AttardBezzinaLawrenc/Slaves/Slave.html The Jewish Slave Community of Malta "On the island of Malta, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there existed a Jewish community composed exclusively of slaves captured by the Order of St. John, a community protected by the Inquisition and presided over by a Non- Jew." "In 1530, Charles V made over Malta to the knights Hospitaller of the Order of ST. John, who had been driven from Rhodes nine years earlier by the Moslems. The whole raison d�`etre of the body and its tenure of Malta lay in the supposition of a continual state of hostility between the Moslem world and Christendom, of which the members of the Order were, in a sense, the knights-errant. Accordingly, they waged continual maritime warfare, hardly distinguishable from piracy, against the Moslem powers. Seaports were raided and their inhabitants carried off. Shipping was preyed on indiscriminately, captured vessels being brought to Malta, and crew and passengers sold into captivity. Throughout the rule of the Knights, which lasted until they capitulated to the French in 1798, the islands were thus a last European refuge of slave traffic and slave labour. The victims were any persons, of whatever standing, race, age or sex, who happened to be sailing on the captured ships. Jews made up a large proportion of the Levantine merchant class and were hence peculiarly subject to capture. Because of their nomadic way of life, disproportionately large numbers were to be found in any vessel sailing the Eastern ports. Also they formed a considerable element in the population of the Moslem ports subject to raids. So, soon after the establishment of the Knights in Malta, the name of Malta begins to be found with increasing frequency in Jewish literature, and always with an evil association." _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 21 09:46:15 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 09:46:15 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - Sephardim #3 Message-ID: http://www.orthohelp.com/geneal/seph_who.htm Who are the Sephardim? A Brief History "Sefarad is a Hebrew word meaning Spain. So, in the strictest sense of the word the Sephardim (plural of Sephardi) are the Jews who came from the Iberian peninsula. Today however the word Sephardim has taken a much wider meaning and includes Jewish Communities in North Africa, Iraq (Babylon), Syria, Greece, Turkey and most Jews who are not Ashkenazim. The word Ashkenazi has had a similar broadening of its definition. Arising from a Hebrew word meaning "german" it has taken on a broader definition that includes not only German Jews but those of Eastern Europe and Russia as well. Today the distinction between Sephardim and Ashkenazim is primarily one of differing traditions due to their backgrounds. Differing languages (ladino and arabic vs yiddish and polish), religious melodies during the services, festival traditions, Hebrew pronunciation are among the things that differ between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. While Ashkenazim can be religiously subdivided into Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, etc, the Sephardim have remained largely homogeneous and more traditionally religious in what, for lack of a better term, is called Orthodox. However it is an Orthodoxy that encompasses the entire spectrum of Sephardim, with obviously some Sephardim more religious than others, and possibly due to its Moorish exposure and free thinking Jewish philosophers such as Maimonides (see later) it is usually, in practice if not in dogma, often less rigid than one would expect." Early history of Spain "The relatively tolerant and laissez-faire atmosphere then prevalent in the crumbling Roman Empire's province of Hispania was shattered in 409 C.E. when the Visigoths poured into Iberia from their western german homeland. These Aryan Christian (see glossary) Visigoths brought with them intolerance of all non Aryan-Christian minorities, ruthlessly killing and plundering for much of the three centuries they ruled Iberia. A Roman witnessing the early slaughter commented that the Iberian countryside resembled an open air morgue. Christianity was the central focus of their state and Jews in particular were mercilessly persecuted for denying Christ. What remained of the sciences and arts were denounced and abolished. Trade and culture plummeted and a dark age descended on the Iberian peninsula. At the end of the 6th century King Reccared converted to Catholicism and made it the state religion. The Church soon became the real power behind the throne and frequently were the behind the scenes deciding factor on who would become king. In 638 C.E. the Aryan Visigoths declared that "only Catholics could live in Spain",, a statement reasserted and implemented many centuries later with the expulsion of Jews in later Spain and eerily presaging Nazi Germany's stance about non Aryans." The Moors In April 711 C.E. Tariq ibn Ziyad (el Moro) landed at what is now called Gibraltar (Jebel al Tariq or "Tariq's mountain"). Commanding an army of 7,000 Berbers from Morocco,, he promptly burnt the fleet that had transported them and gave his troops a rousing speech in which he told them that with the waters at their rear they had nowhere to go but forward. With 5,000 re-enforcing troops the Moors met and routed a Visigoth army of 60,000 under King Rodrigo. By 712 the Moors had reached the Visigoth capital of Toledo which threw open its gates to the invading army. Soon the Moors ruled all but a small northern slip of the Iberian peninsula and al Andalus (Moorish Spain) had come into being. The reasons for the rapid advance and conquest are numerous but two stand out. Following the initial battle and rout of the Visigoth army under King Rodrigo, the King's body disappeared but his outer clothing was found at a riverside. This peculiar event created a superstitious fear in the minds of the Spaniards about the magical powers of the Moors who could make the king's body disappear right out of his clothes. The other reason was the generous terms the Moors offered which contrasted markedly with the Visigoths' harsh rule. Approaching Toledo, Tariq offered that anyone who wished to leave could do so while those who stayed could retain property, practice their religion freely and be governed by their own rules and laws." The Golden Age "The Ummayad dynasty that rules Moorish Spain for the next century, and most, but not all subsequent Moorish rulers, maintained a tolerant and multicultural atmosphere that respected and protected minorities, encouraged science and the arts and invited scholars from all over to come and serve the Caliph. Flowery poetry and the arts, in Arabic and Hebrew, flourished and were recited in the langorous evening wine-parties while the sciences prospered as never before. Jews, Moors and Christians lived and worked together in this tolerant atmosphere. Many Christians adopted some of the Moors' culture and became known as mozarabs. Jews similarly adopted Moorish customs, studied Arabic and the Koran while Arabs studied Hebrew and Jewish scriptures. The Greek philosophers original writings were studied. Learned Jews and Arab scholars translated them into Arabic and Hebrew and from there into Latin setting the stage for the European Renaissance. Jewish scholars developed the theories that created trigonometry. Algebra was invented. Arabic numbers replaced the unwieldy Roman numerals. Paper was manufactured for the first time. Immense libraries developed and were open to the public. Cordoba had a million volumes at a time when the largest library in Europe had a dozen manuscripts. Jewish philosophers studied Plato and Aristotle and developed new philosophies incorporating these theories with Jewish theology and thinking. Prominent among these was Maimonides who was influenced by the arab philosopher Averroes and whose writings aroused much controversy and criticism from the narrowly traditionalist Jewish religious authorities particularly of France and Germany because of their use of reason and logic rather than tradition and blind faith. Solomon Ibn Gabriol, ibn Ezra and Judah ha Levi wrote exquisite poetry and Moses Ibn Ezra and others wrote grammar and mathematical treatises. With the interest in Arabic grammar, Hebrew grammar was developed and the language revived. Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Christian Europe flocked to Spain much as they did to the USA in our day. Even educated Christian scholars seeking erudition moved to tolerant Spain, some even converting to Judaism. In the 8th and 9th centuries thousands of Jews from Morocco and Egypt migrated to Al Andalus." _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From richardromeo at hotmail.com Tue Nov 21 15:48:58 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 15:48:58 Subject: Flicker Message-ID: Hey-- any of you cats ever read Theodore Roszak, particularly the novel Flicker? Seems also much of his non-fiction, concerned w/ luddism and the evils of technology would be of interest here. Rich _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From millison at online-journalist.com Tue Nov 21 09:50:10 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 08:50:10 -0700 Subject: NP radical librarians Message-ID: Some of you will enjoy this, I expec (the blurb's from Utne Web Watch Daily, Ex Libris is "an E-zine for librarians and information junkies"): SHAKING THINGS UP: PROGRESSIVE AND RADICAL LIBRARIANS by Marylaine Block, Ex Libris -- Marylaine Block, a librarian from Davenport Iowa, dispels the myth that all bookies are stodgy. To illustrate the point, she interviews the self-proclaimed anarchist librarian Jessamyn West. http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib77.html excerpt: "I became a librarian because I believed information should be free and I felt I was good at tracking it down. It was more of a calling than a choice. It wasn't until I took my first intellectual freedom class in library school [um, now the School of Information somethingorother] that I realized there was a place for me and my freaky politics within the profession, and not a small one either. "In many ways, you have to be some sort of a radical to be a librarian. Start out super-smart, get a lot of education, then devote yourself to a low- to middle-paying social service job where even your friends make jokes about your co-workers -- if not you directly -- and think you can be replaced by a computer. It's no wonder a lot of us have something to say on the matter. " -- d o u g m i l l i s o n From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 21 19:01:47 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 19:01:47 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - A Thanksgiving Haiku Message-ID: The sound of crickets Chirrrp chirrrp legrrrrrubbing exo- skeletal dark meat _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From fqmorris at hotmail.com Tue Nov 21 19:13:44 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 19:13:44 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - Chirrrrrrrp Message-ID: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu:8050/course/ent425/tutorial/integ.html _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From richardromeo at hotmail.com Wed Nov 22 17:12:52 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 17:12:52 Subject: Cormac--NP Message-ID: Hey all-- A new hardcover edition of Blood Meridian will be published in January '01, with an intro essay by Harold Bloom. Co-ol. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679641041/qid=974910943/sr=1-41/103-1294482-6144646 Rich _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Wed Nov 22 12:17:32 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 19:17:32 +0100 Subject: gr and m&d (- also vv): playlist addition/: "the great nations of europe" Message-ID: <13yeSa-27q7ouC@fwd01.sul.t-online.com> on randy newman's latest work "bad love" [1999] there's this song, which comes, imo, close to pynchon's perspective on european history in the mirror of its new world adventure: the great nations of europe the great nations of europe had gathered on the shore they'd conquered what was behind them and now they wanted more so they looked to the mighty ocean and took to the western sea the great nations of europe in the sixteenth century hide your wives and daughters hide the groceries too great nations of europe coming through the grand canary islands first land to which they came they slaughtered all of the canaries which gave the land its name there were natives there called guanches guanches by the score bullets, disease, the portugese, and they weren't there anymore now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone you've never seen anyone so gone they're a picture in the museum some lines written in a book but you won't find a live one no matter where you look hide your wives and daughters hide the groceries too great nations of europe coming through columbus sailed for india found salvador instead he shook hands with some indians and soon they all were dead they got tb and typhoid and athlete's foot diphtheria and the flu excuse me --- great nations coming through! balboa found the pacific and on the trail one day he met some friendly indians whom he was told were gay so he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say the great nations of europe were quite holy in their way now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone you've never seen anyone so gone some bones hidden in the canyon some paintings in a cave there's no use trying to save them there's nothing left to save hide your wives and daughters hide your sons as well with the great nations of europe you can never tell from where you and i are standing at the end of a century europes have sprung up everywhere as even i can see but there on the horizon as a possibility some bug from out of africa might come for you and me destroying everything in its path from sea to shining sea like the great nations of europe in the sixteenth century From wkljd at earthlink.net Wed Nov 22 21:05:33 2000 From: wkljd at earthlink.net (william layman) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 22:05:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: Flicker Message-ID: <384332062.974948733629.JavaMail.root@web621-wrb.mail.com> Richard -- I read "Flicker" when it first came out and thought it was one of those truly unusual examples of a "popular" literary novel. While the ending bothered me (as I recall it got sort of SF-ish and weird), the set-up was brilliant. It evoked that feeling of discovering movies as an art form, and the character who was a stand in for Pauline Kael was fascinating. I highly recommend. It came out in paper, and maybe you can still find it. -- Will Layman From mdougla1 at midsouth.rr.com Wed Nov 22 22:01:27 2000 From: mdougla1 at midsouth.rr.com (Mark A. Douglas) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 22:01:27 -0600 Subject: Cormac--NP References: Message-ID: <001a01c05502$0eebbdc0$206a1818@midsouth.rr.com> Well, the brief blurb on Amazon is sort of P-related. "The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner," writes esteemed literary scholar Harold Bloom in his Introduction to the Modern Library edition. "I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable." Mark ----- Original Message ----- From: Richard Romeo To: pynchon-l at waste.org Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 5:12 PM Subject: Cormac--NP Hey all-- A new hardcover edition of Blood Meridian will be published in January '01, with an intro essay by Harold Bloom. Co-ol. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679641041/qid=974910943/sr=1-41/103-1294482-6144646 Rich _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mdougla1 at midsouth.rr.com Wed Nov 22 22:26:38 2000 From: mdougla1 at midsouth.rr.com (Mark A. Douglas) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 22:26:38 -0600 Subject: Flicker References: <384332062.974948733629.JavaMail.root@web621-wrb.mail.com> Message-ID: <006801c05505$9373a140$206a1818@midsouth.rr.com> 11. Flicker by Theodore Roszak. Out of Print--Try our out-of-print search service! Average Customer Review: ----- Original Message ----- From: william layman To: Richard Romeo ; pynchon-l at waste.org Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 9:05 PM Subject: RE: Flicker Richard -- I read "Flicker" when it first came out and thought it was one of those truly unusual examples of a "popular" literary novel. While the ending bothered me (as I recall it got sort of SF-ish and weird), the set-up was brilliant. It evoked that feeling of discovering movies as an art form, and the character who was a stand in for Pauline Kael was fascinating. I highly recommend. It came out in paper, and maybe you can still find it. -- Will Layman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: stars-5-0.gif Type: image/gif Size: 394 bytes Desc: not available URL: From chicagoist at hotmail.com Thu Nov 23 00:59:10 2000 From: chicagoist at hotmail.com (Saioued Al-Zaioued) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 01:59:10 -0500 Subject: V.V. Gibrail? Mountain of Faith Message-ID: I guess that that the other impersonations are in the works, but I thought I might put in my two cents early. Gibrail is the angel that has came down to the prophet Mohammed, but the other variant of the characters name, Gebel, is not a standard variant of Gibrail. Gebel means Mountain, and I think it refers to the size of Gibrail (the character) as a discerning trait. Arabs often call each other by characteristics, for example: I useto be called "Feather" as a child because I weighed what friends and relatives exaggerated to be the weight of a feather. Using this same notion helps to shed light on the ethnicity or social sphere of Gibrail. (I do not have a copy of V. handy, so I am working of memories, infinite apologies before hand.) I beleive the section starts out with him distinguishing himself as not being a "Fellah". In Egypt, the great split after the muslim/coptic split, and oftentimes greater, is the split if some one is a Fellah or a Sa'idi. The distinction is partly ethnic and partly involves farming methods. The Fellah is the traditional farmer that attempts crop rotation and methods that attempt to establish the farm in the long-run, whilst the Sa'idi attempts to gain the most output from a single season. I believe most coptics are Sa'idis, but I beleive there is much overlap. Sa'idi's pride themselves that they where around during the Pharo's time and have similar dissent. The Fellah's are usually associated with the Arabs and the more northern regions of Egypt and somewhat erroneously regarded as latecomers during the Islamic conquest. Anyone who has studied Islamic history or Civilization knows that this is a huge issue of who where the people of egypt, their political situation, etc. because they are the ones who assasinated Uthman and caused the first major schism in Islam, and hence we now have Sunni's and Shiates because of these people. I have digressed too far, back to Pynchon, Anyway, the desert is creeping in on this fellow for a reason, he is a Sa'idi and his farming methods where short-term and he did not irrigate the surrounding region to maintain his farmland, he probably pushed the soil to limits it could no longer endure. In classic Sa'idi fashion, he should have moved to other more ripe land and start a new farm when the season starts, but because of the new property right rules, the density of farmers, etc. he can no longer do that, and has to go to the city and he blames the Ingilezi (Arabic destruction of the word English, sounds like having Italian origin, which makes sense since Mussolini was around in that region, and in Pynchon I beleive it is an Anachronism because I *beleive* they would have called them Anjnabi at that time, which means northern forienger). If anyone has a baedakker, I am sure someone will find some reference to the difference between Fellah and Sa'idi (plurals Fallahin and Sa'aida) and this is what pynchon is making a play on, his impersonation is based on this distinction, and I think is a weaker one because of his lack of understanding of issues and trying to attribute Anarchistic traits to simple people who would have went towards God and the mosque before going towards Anarachism. If he wanted to see anarchists in Egypt at that time, I would've suggested him picking the many scholars the colonizers hung or shot at that time, called the "Itihad Al- Ulama". I guess this section was meant to be tacky, robotic arm and all.... Happy Turkey Day Americans _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From stevemaas at hotmail.com Thu Nov 23 01:30:43 2000 From: stevemaas at hotmail.com (Steve Maas) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 23:30:43 -0800 Subject: VV(5) - Sephardim #2 (Kniggetts Hospitaller) Message-ID: David Morris wrote: "In 1530, Charles V made over Malta to the knights Hospitaller of the Order of ST. John...". The one and same as those who are credited with destroying around that time the remnants of one of the 7 Wonders -- the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (including the then-intact burial) -- you can look it up. Steve Maas _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Thu Nov 23 03:48:22 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 10:48:22 +0100 Subject: Cormac--NP References: <001a01c05502$0eebbdc0$206a1818@midsouth.rr.com> Message-ID: <13yszO-09mswCC@fwd05.sul.t-online.com> with its dark biblical sound "blood meridian" thrilled me from the first to the last page: one of the most intensive books i've ever read. not quite gr, but pretty close. & it surely could be a fruitful thing to compare the judge to weissmann/blicero ... kfl Mark A. Douglas schrieb: > Well, the brief blurb on Amazon is sort of P-related. > > "The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by > Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of > Melville and Faulkner," writes esteemed literary scholar Harold Bloom in his > Introduction to the Modern Library edition. "I venture that no other living > American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and > memorable." > > Mark > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Richard Romeo > To: pynchon-l at waste.org > Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 5:12 PM > Subject: Cormac--NP > > > Hey all-- > > A new hardcover edition of Blood Meridian will be published in January '01, > with an intro essay by Harold Bloom. Co-ol. > > > http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679641041/qid=974910943/sr=1-41/103-1 > 294482-6144646 > > Rich > > _____________________________________________________________________________ > ________ > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com > > > > > > > > > > >
Well, the brief blurb on Amazon is sort of P-related.
>
 
>
"The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by > Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville > and Faulkner," writes esteemed literary scholar Harold Bloom in his > Introduction > to the Modern Library edition. "I venture that no other living American > novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and > memorable."

Mark
>
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; > PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px"> >
----- Original Message -----
>
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: > black">From: > title=richardromeo at hotmail.com>Richard Romeo
> >
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 > 5:12 > PM
>
Subject: Cormac--NP
>

Hey all--

A new hardcover edition of Blood Meridian > will > be published in January '01,
with an intro essay by Harold Bloom.  > Co-ol.

> href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679641041/qid=974910943/sr=1-41 > /103-1294482-6144646">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679641041/qid=97 > 4910943/sr=1-41/103-1294482-6144646

Rich
_______________________ > ______________________________________________________________
Get > more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : > href="http://explorer.msn.com">http://explorer.msn.com

E> > From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 23 09:18:19 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 10:18:19 -0500 Subject: From the mouths of Birds Message-ID: <3A1D353B.2B14047@earthlink.net> Ben Franklin's choice for our national bird, the wild turkey (Meleagris Gallopavo) has not always had an easy time finding a place in its homeland. Native to only North America, the wild turkey became popular game for early colonists, who found easy targets with the abundance of animals and birds in the New World. As the colonists began to stake territory and set up farms, villages and eventually cities, they destroyed the turkey's crucial food and nesting sites in forests and waterways. Eventually, the industrial revolution polluted many of the country's rivers, further reducing endangered flocks. Turkey populations declined because of wide-scale logging, illegal poaching and hunting, poor habitats and even the devastation of the Civil War and Great Depression, when food quality was sparse and the turkey was considered an easy catch and good eating. "...Perhaps a more comely beak, fuller feathering, capacity for flight, however brief...details of Design. Or, had we but found savages on this island, the bird's appearance might have then seemed to us no stranger than that of the wild turkey of North America. Alas, their tragedy is to be the dominant form of Life on Mauritius, but incapable of speech. That was it right there. No language meant no chance of co-opting them to what their round and flaxen invaders were calling Salvation. Did we tell them "Salvation"? Did we mean a dwelling forever in the City? Everlasting life? An earthly paradise restored, their island as it used to be given them back? Probably...Otherwise the dodoes would be only what they appear as in the world's ILLUSORY LIGHT (my Caps)---only our prey. God could not be so cruel." GR.110-11 "The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there -- there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were -- No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it -- this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity -- like yours -- the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you -- you so remote from the night of first ages -- could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything -- because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage -- who can tell? -- but ruth -- truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder -- the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff -- with his own inborn strength. Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags -- rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row -- is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. --Joseph Conrad, Heart Of Darkness From o.sell at telda.net Thu Nov 23 10:15:16 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 17:15:16 +0100 Subject: Naumann Message-ID: <003a01c05568$92a01ba0$609b06d5@selltelda.net> Berlin (dpa) - Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder (SPD) hat am Donnerstag das Ausscheiden von Kulturstaatsminister Michael Naumann (SPD) zum Ende des Jahres bedauert und Verständnis für dessen Wechsel in einen journalistischen «Traumjob» geäußert. Gleichzeitig gab die Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck in Stuttgart die Berufung Naumanns zum neuen Mitherausgeber der Wochenzeitung «Die Zeit» zum 1. Januar 2001 offiziell bekannt. Der frühere Verleger ergänzt damit das Herausgebergremium, dem seit vielen Jahren Marion Gräfin Dönhoff und Altbundeskanzler Helmut Schmidt (SPD) sowie seit Anfang des Jahres Josef Joffe angehören. http://de.news.yahoo.com/001123/3/1710f.html From dermot.stoney at ukonline.co.uk Tue Nov 21 13:35:36 2000 From: dermot.stoney at ukonline.co.uk (Dermot Stoney) Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 19:35:36 -0000 Subject: V's and Quincunxes: Pynchon, Browne, Galton, etc. Message-ID: <004401c053f2$3af37a40$ea1086d4@dStoney> The Quincunx by Charles Palliser , pub 1989 - An enormous Victorian/Dickensian pastiche of over 1100 pages. Worth reading twice. Once so you can wonder what's going on and again to wonder why you've wasted so much time on it. "...hock your imaginary guitar and get a good job. Joe did and he's a...happy guy now." DS. ----- Original Message ----- From: David Simpson To: Sent: 20 November 2000 22:58 Subject: V's and Quincunxes: Pynchon, Browne, Galton, etc. > Not sure if this is the proper place to insert some different stuff into the V. discussion, > but am seizing the opportunity anyway (using the "scholarly quest" and "adventure of the mind" > passage as my textual point of departure.) > > For whatever they may be worth, here are a few teasing parallels and cross-connections between > Stencil's search for V., the scientific and metaphysical musings served up in Sir Thomas > Browne's "The Garden of Cyrus," statistical speculations about randomness and pattern on the > part of the British eugenicist Francis Galton, and traditional Gnostic interpretations of > cosmic order and design. > > Browne was a 17th-century physician, natural philosopher, folklorist, antiquarian, amateur > theologian, and universal polymath. His "Gardens of Cyrus" is a fantastic (in nearly every > sense of the word) study of the occurrence of "quincuncial" designs in nature, art, and > mystical lore. A quincunx (from the Latin word for "five twelfths") is an arrangement of five > points to form a double V or X, much like the 5-spot on a playing card or gaming die, thus: > > * * > * > * * > > The legendary gardens of Cyrus the Great (Persian emperor 559-529 BC) were supposedly laid out > according to this pattern, and the result, as can be imagined, was a vast network of > quincunxes: an elaborate grid or reticule of interconnecting X's and V's. In his researches > Browne finds this V-form pattern literally everywhere: in a myriad of plants, seeds, and > vegetables; in the bone structures of animals and the veins of minerals; in art and > architecture; in physical phenomena; in folklore and alchemy; in ancient literature and myth; > in sacred history and the Bible; in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Cabalistical arcana; indeed, in > everything from honeycombs and sea-hedgehog eggs to Roman battle formations and the physical > laws of optical and sonic reflection. > > The sheer volume of instances and examples Browne furnishes is mind-boggling. So much so that > as we read his essay, we hardly know (as is also the case with Stencil) whether he is onto > something crucial and pervasive or is simply the dupe of his own overactive ingenuity. (By the > end of the essay, Browne's search for quincunxes begins to look -- to modern readers at least > -- like "an adventure of the mind" indeed, and possibly the product of some form of godly > paranoia or full-blown monomania.) > > A devout Christian, Browne offers his findings as evidence of a mathematically meticulous > Designing God. To him, the omnipresence of the quincunx is simply one more assurance that the > Creation is the work of a minutely diligent Maker. In this respect, "The Garden of Cyrus" is a > typical, if extreme, contribution to the literature of Natural Theology and to the tradition > of cosmic piety (the belief that universal order is the hallmark of a benevolent Creator). Of > course, as P-listers are fully aware, such a belief is the exact opposite of the Gnostic (and > more Stencilian, and Pynchonian) view. To the Gnostic eye, such revelations of order and > system are more terrifying than edifying for they betoken the presence not of a divine > Savior-Creator but of the sinister Archons, the ruler-creators of the cosmic Jail. > > One added note: by an intriguing coincidence, "quincunx" also happens to be the name that the > British eugenics pioneer Francis Galton (1822-1911) gave to his device for depicting the > "patterns" that emerge within random phenomena. Using a kind of vertical pin-ball machine > (designed so that each dropped ball might deflect right or left with equal probability), > Galton's contraption provided a graphic demonstation -- in the form of a Bell curve -- of the > deeper-level lawfulness of haphazard events. Shades of Mondaugen's sferics. > > It's not clear whether G's adoption of the name "quincunx" owes anything at all to Browne. In > any case, what is probably of greater interest to Pynchon readers is Galton's self-admiring > autobiography, "Memories of my Life" (1908). With its earnest recapitulation of the author's > eugenic theories and "scientific" views on race and culture, and especially with its middle > chapters set in South West Africa (where Galton toured as a sort of ethologist-adventurer), > this work qualifies as one of the all-time documents in the history of British racism and > imperialism -- as well as a potential source for V. > > A pleasant holiday to all. > -- > "Welcome to 'All About the Media,' where members of the media discuss the role of the media in > media coverage of the media." -- New Yorker cartoon, 9/25/00. > ------- > homepage: http://www.depaul.edu/~dsimpson > > > From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 23 18:05:43 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 18:05:43 -0600 Subject: O'Donnell, Latent Destinies Message-ID: <3A1DB0D6.11D14FBE@mpm.edu> ... well, first off, Happy Thanksgiving, at LEAST to those celebrating it today, and then some. Does that explain the slowdown here? At least amongst the US contingent? Between the election and the holiday ... anyway, I'm giving thanks today not only to coworkers for bringing me dinner, but also to Duke University Press for sending me a complete copy (had been missing several chapters worth of endnotes, as well as an index, so, if you get it, check) of Patrick O'Donnell's Latent Destinies: Cultural Paranoia and Contemporary U.S. Narrative (Durham: Duke UP, 2000), from which ... Cultural paranoia can be seen as a symptomatic response to these contradictions [of gender, race, sexuality, nation, historical epoch], operating through an elision of temporality and a fantasizing of historical centrality in which, for example, self an nation become one. In the identificatory fantasies of cultural paranoia, history become sthe conspiratorial siting of the confluence of destinies where the latent omnipotence of the "individual"--an empowerment underwritten by the abailability and flow of capital--become storied into the narrative of nation or its displacements in other narraitives of identity. (12-3) Haecceitic temporality, or the segmentation of time into dispersed instances whole unto themselves that randomly intersect and cohere into events, is the material of a conspiratorial, destinal history founded on the retrospective forging of connections between those scattered instances. Such a view of temporality both withholds and promises to reveal the one, true, secret history of the real--the latent destiny--that was always there, awiting discovery by the canny witness, participant, or historian. Postmodernist senses of identity as multiple and fluid, both at the periphery and yet the center of disconnected events awaiting amalgamation in a revelatory history, constitute the agency of cultural paranoia ... (147) ... history under this rubric is merely the totalized backdrop--a "homogeneous, empty time" that could be characterized as a spatiotemporal collage of particular instances--for the titanic struggle between them and us as these agenting tags become attached to the mobilities of self, party, clan, or nation. (ibid.) Again, O'Donnell was the editor of Cambridge UP's New Essays on The Crying of Lot 49 (q.v.). Latent Destinies, of course, covers TCOL49 as well (via Jean-Joseph Goux, of all people), as well as Don DeLillo's Libra and Underworld, Kathy Acker's Empire of the Senseless, Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song and Oswald's Tale, and such films as JFK, Reservoir Dogs, The Truman Show and Groundhog Day (!). Have been skipping around, but, so far, so good. Also, saw a trailer today for a forthcoming film (Finding Forrester) in which Sean Connery plays a reclusive writer, albeit more Salinger than Pynchon, I suspect ... From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Thu Nov 23 22:41:31 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 22:41:31 -0600 Subject: Pavlovian Conditioning Message-ID: <3A1DF17B.B1CDC8EE@mediaone.net> Dr. Pavlov makes a brief cameo in Disney's _102 Dalmations_. He's shorter than I imagined . . . From monroe at mpm.edu Fri Nov 24 00:07:12 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 00:07:12 -0600 Subject: Happy Birthday, Laurence Sterne! Message-ID: <3A1E058F.54796AD3@mpm.edu> Just seemed appropriate, is all ... From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Fri Nov 24 02:31:37 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 09:31:37 +0100 Subject: O'Donnell, Latent Destinies References: <3A1DB0D6.11D14FBE@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <13zEGf-1HePKKC@fwd06.sul.t-online.com> Dave Monroe schrieb: > Also, saw a trailer today for a > forthcoming film (Finding Forrester) in which Sean Connery plays a > reclusive writer, albeit more Salinger than Pynchon, I suspect ... btw, anybody else seen already "the steely dan story" with ben stiller as the young donald fagen? kfl From batslug at hotmail.com Fri Nov 24 05:25:06 2000 From: batslug at hotmail.com (fnicki dzolta) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 11:25:06 -0000 Subject: tenuous links Message-ID: right yer know lazy reviewers who fall back on that good old method of comparin an author to another via a third? well, philip k dick is a poor man's pynchon according to one of the afformentioned vermin except he isn't of course you cry but phil is in a different league: whereas pynchon's style is a bit confusin but his plots are kinda straight forward, phil's style is kinda straight forward but his plots are all over the place, and envigoratin to say t' least what im tryin to say is READ PHILIP K DICK AND DO IT NOW for example: valis a scanner darkly ubik the three stigmata of palmer eldritch so from one tenuous link to another: dick writes sf pynchon likes to read sf for all those who do not know dick's work become familiar for all those who do know dick's work buy more read em again there im done i guess this is as relevant as that other message about turkeys bye p.s what the fuck was that german geezer/geezette talkin abaht? summat german no doubt... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From o.sell at telda.net Fri Nov 24 09:49:58 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 16:49:58 +0100 Subject: tenuous links References: Message-ID: <02b101c0562e$33570840$609b06d5@selltelda.net> >p.s what the fuck was that german geezer/geezette talkin abaht? summat german no doubt... Former TP-editor Michael Naumann, now ex-member of the actual German government, has got a new job as an editor of a major German weekly. Marginally Pynchon-related. >ubik the three stigmata of palmer eldritch No doubt that Dick is a recognized author among the Pynchonites. "The three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (1964) came out over here under the strange title "LSD-Astronauten" (LSD-Astronauts) in 1971 first. "Ubik" (1969) is of course "UBIK" at a nice Suhrkamp-edition from 1977, with an afterword by Stanislaw Lem. Tell me, is the opening quote in Middle German been translated or German in the original too? Ich sih die liehte heide in gruner varwe stan dar suln wir alle gehen, die sumerzeit enphahen Not to forget Dick's great "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968), better known as "Blade Runner," and "We Can Remember it for You Wholesale" (1965) which most will remember as "Total Recall." Otto ----- Original Message ----- From: fnicki dzolta To: pynchon-l at waste.org Sent: Friday, November 24, 2000 12:25 PM Subject: tenuous links right yer know lazy reviewers who fall back on that good old method of comparin an author to another via a third? well, philip k dick is a poor man's pynchon according to one of the afformentioned vermin except he isn't of course you cry but phil is in a different league: whereas pynchon's style is a bit confusin but his plots are kinda straight forward, phil's style is kinda straight forward but his plots are all over the place, and envigoratin to say t' least what im tryin to say is READ PHILIP K DICK AND DO IT NOW for example: valis a scanner darkly ubik the three stigmata of palmer eldritch so from one tenuous link to another: dick writes sf pynchon likes to read sf for all those who do not know dick's work become familiar for all those who do know dick's work buy more read em again there im done i guess this is as relevant as that other message about turkeys bye -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 24 10:57:47 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 11:57:47 -0500 Subject: tenuous links References: Message-ID: <3A1E9E0B.B4B8864A@earthlink.net> > fnicki dzolta wrote: > > i guess this is as relevant > as that other message about turkeys > > bye why not? it's certainly as relevant as we chose to make it and we chose to make it so, so pick a Dick book tell us more.... and the turkey too is relevant, it being the subject of TRP's fiction from V. to M&D--Blake's America, apocalypse, colonies and privies, extermination, annihilation, food, guns--that's in that byron the bulb fable--and histories inverted poles mixing black and white and all the rainbow colors like that Paola, yeah she's the one, and Franklin's America too, btw I think Gebel is the city, is the desert (Mts etc.), is the mind of modern man, the city is the mind in Pynchon, the city is Dickensian too and Melville, Dick is cool, relevant, Melville is relevant, read The Confidence-Man, if you have not read it you have not read the great american novel, whatever that may be, and in my opinion, a novel more important to reading Pynchon than any novel by any of his contemporaries, yeah, get that Northwestern-Newberry edition with the notes in the back, those men in Oediapa's life, the gift of tongues, shape shifting confidence and charity, the city, Pynchon says, literary theft, he ain't being disingenuous, no, CL is just what he says, critics make it out to be what they will, Weisenburger would even strip it, all of pynchon in fact, of its satirical Norm, its satire of anything but narrative totalized and blah, blah, nope, like McLintic Sphere represents Pynchon's stoicism, what crap man, pynchon ain't no stoic, can't be, it ain't ok to be no stoic in Pynchon's books, read them, now Tom Wolfe maybe, but stoics are rational dude, they do got that pantheistic thing going, a plus, but now take existential gnosticism and run it through the shadows of gnostic film's double light and existential stoicism--that male Hemingway, don juan 60s philosophy is just one more target of satire, Speaking of confidence and shape-shifting, check out Sarah Jones, youknowwhatImsaying? Alienation, fragmentation, all is phony postmodern language on a stick turning and turning like a pigeon in rat's alley this good friday morning in left over turkey land. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 24 12:24:47 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 12:24:47 -0600 Subject: tenuous links Message-ID: "Valis" might be his best. It can be seen as Dick's attempt to understand his own schitzophrenia. >From: "Otto Sell" >To: "fnicki dzolta" > >ubik >the three stigmata of palmer eldritch > >No doubt that Dick is a recognized author among the Pynchonites. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From keith at pfmentum.com Fri Nov 24 12:39:26 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 10:39:26 -0800 Subject: tenuous links Message-ID: <000601c05645$e13bd1e0$ee3d71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> not sure the schizophrenia he was 'trying to understand' was his but many think so.....read that Poe story someone mentioned 'Never Bet The Devil Your Head'....thanks a lot for that.....excellent little piece on authorial intent and other things.....uncanny sharing of images with chapters 1 and 3 of _The Master and Margarita_ From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Fri Nov 24 12:57:45 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 18:57:45 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Philip K. Dick.... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Read Blade Runner. Underwhelmed. Possibly to do with seeing the film before the book but I doubt it. For sci-fi why not check out Douglas Adams, not only is he English but he is also a genius!! Mark From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Fri Nov 24 13:01:40 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 19:01:40 +0000 (GMT) Subject: The Problem with the Great American Novel... In-Reply-To: <3A1E9E0B.B4B8864A@earthlink.net> Message-ID: IS it me, or is the concept of the Great American novel not just a bit jingoistic? Why don't they just try to write a great novel? Typical Americans, always trying to export there country somewhere else Mark P.S. sorry if the emails are seeming a bit flipant, but 39 hrs without sleep will do that to a guy. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 24 14:15:46 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 15:15:46 -0500 Subject: The Problem with the Great American Novel... References: Message-ID: <3A1ECC72.2E02F0C0@earthlink.net> Mark David Tristan Brenchley wrote: > > IS it me, or is the concept of the Great American novel not just a bit > jingoistic? Why don't they just try to write a great novel? I don't think the idea idea is jingoistic, just the opposite I'd say, and of course American's have written plenty of great american novels. > > Typical Americans, always trying to export there country somewhere else > > Mark I don't think this is typical of Americans. America, or the USA, we use these terms synonymously here, and this may not be politically correct but it's not simply a reflection of U.S. American arrogance either. The US, unlike so many Nations around the globe, does not suffer from extreme nationalism. It has practiced an especially repugnant and belligerent "foreign domestic" (see VL) policy wrapped in a pornographic, faded plastic, chauvinistic patriotism, but the U.S. is not an exporter of its country. The facts, not that the world is a totality of facts not of things Ludwig, do not support this. > P.S. sorry if the emails are seeming a bit flipant, but 39 hrs without > sleep will do that to a guy. Might I suggest a great Irish novel to help you sleep, Famine. From brucea at bestweb.net Fri Nov 24 15:48:20 2000 From: brucea at bestweb.net (Bruce Appelbaum) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 16:48:20 -0500 Subject: Insomnia Message-ID: <004a01c05660$43570740$ea11b3d8@bestweb.net> FYI, Amazon.com has a new cutesy list of "books to banish insomnia." GR comes in 4th behind Moby Dick, Middlemarch, and Walden. The Recognitions (Gaddis) is #5. end Regards Bruce Appelbaum Yorktown Heights, New York From keith at pfmentum.com Fri Nov 24 16:02:15 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 14:02:15 -0800 Subject: Philip K. Dick.... Message-ID: <001601c05662$36f54000$ac3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> >>>Read Blade Runner. Underwhelmed.<<< If that is the only Dick you've read, you have several major treats waiting for you. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Fri Nov 24 16:49:10 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 17:49:10 -0500 Subject: Philip K. Dick.... References: <001601c05662$36f54000$ac3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: <3A1EF066.2120419F@earthlink.net> s~Z wrote: > > >>>Read Blade Runner. Underwhelmed.<<< > > If that is the only Dick you've read, you have several major treats waiting > for you. I was going to suggest Middlemarch, what a novel, perfect. But what? I have not inserted the key? Never drive a car when you're dead. Tom Waits said that. To the car now I do love you, it's the Red Chinese, I hate them well we are all preserved by the absence of something, rather than the presence, the Hynes Gland, hyperthyroid myself and now with this heart, immune system, only the good, but don't let it vug you, had a good argument with my medicine cabinet, Snoozex, Nerduwel, Onerine, what's that brave new drug, soma, coma, whatever....pleasent dreams, Roy Orbison always works. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 24 17:24:58 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 17:24:58 -0600 Subject: tenuous links Message-ID: >From: "s~Z" > >not sure the schizophrenia he was 'trying to understand' was his but many >think so..... Who could be sure? But it is interesting to look at some of Dick's works excursions into a world shook lose by "God's Voice." Paranoia of God is a universal theme. >read that Poe story someone mentioned 'Never Bet The Devil Your >Head'....thanks a lot for that.....excellent little piece on authorial >intent and other things.....uncanny sharing of images with chapters 1 and 3 >of _The Master and Margarita_ Will read it! 'Till then some links: http://www.eserver.org/books/poe/never_bet_the_devil_your_h.html http://www.usna.edu/EnglishDept/poeperplex/neverdev.htm http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/safe/ POE'S REJECTION OF MORAL DIDACTICISM: "NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD" _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From JBFRAME at aol.com Fri Nov 24 17:31:02 2000 From: JBFRAME at aol.com (JBFRAME at aol.com) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 18:31:02 EST Subject: The Great American Novel Message-ID: It's already been written. Twice. Moby Dick & Huckleberry Finn. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Fri Nov 24 17:45:43 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 17:45:43 -0600 Subject: V.V. Gibrail? Mountain of Faith Message-ID: >From: "Saioued Al-Zaioued" If anyone has a baedakker, I am sure someone >will find some reference to the difference between Fellah and Sa'idi >(plurals Fallahin and Sa'aida) and this is what pynchon is making a play >on, Maybe so, but the "Sa'idi" are never mentioned. Pynchon's ecological concerns would seem applicable here if the two types of farmers were to be contrasted. But don't forget that the other desert-component in this story is the City. The desert and the city are relentless inanimate forces. Stll your insight only adds to the Life Vs. Death theme in this story. >his impersonation is based on this distinction, and I think is a weaker one >because of his lack of understanding of issues and trying to attribute >Anarchistic traits to simple people who would have went towards God and the >mosque before going towards Anarachism. If he wanted to see anarchists in >Egypt at that time, I would've suggested him picking the many scholars the >colonizers hung or shot at that time, called the "Itihad Al- Ulama". I >guess this section was meant to be tacky, robotic arm and all.... Yes, you are right that anarchism is not Jihadism. But from the perspective of the dominant invading power the difference is made smaller. >Happy Turkey Day Americans Thanks, David Morris _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From jbor at bigpond.com Fri Nov 24 18:43:25 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 11:43:25 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) 'In the Polite Spirit of the Tusculan Disputations' Message-ID: <00322015528464@domain4.bigpond.com> Talk of (being) an "electro-mechanical doll", and the worth of "humanity", in the argument between Bongo-Shaftsbury and Porpentine which is overheard by Waldetar on the Alexandria-Cairo train (80-81) reminds me a little of the discussion between Pitch and the verbose and obsequious "Philosophical Intelligence Officer" aboard the Fidèle in Melville's _The Confidence-Man_: So saying the bachelor was eying him rather rather sharply, when he with the brass plate recalled him to the discussion by a hint, not unflattering, that he (the man with the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him further on the subject of servants. "About that matter," exclaimed the impulsive bachelor, going off at the hint like a rocket, "all thinking minds are, now-a-days, coming to the conclusion -- one derived from an immense hereditary experience -- see what Horace and others of the ancients say of servants -- coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the human animal is, for most work-purposes, a lsoing animal. Can't be trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions -- carding machines, horseshoe machines, tunnel -boring machines, reaping-machines, apple-paring machines, boot- blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the knavish 'possums, especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting!" [Ch. 22] Horace on the horizon indeed! The dawn of an era of the obsolescence of human labour and servility (and the moral dimensions of same, evinced both explicitly and implicitly); machines (and inanimacy); the fossil analogy (cf. Mildred's trilobite rock); Pitch's presentation of the rifle itself (a killing- machine, cf. the menace of Bongo-S's flick-switch); the inefficacy of "boys" (cf. Gebrail's rumination about whether the "boy [is] possessed by a djinn who makes his hands do work wrong" and thereby lets the desert in) -- there does seem to be a quite definite resonance. And, as in Melville's novel, I'm not entirely sure that one side of the dialectic is in fact being promoted over the other by the text: not only in the Porpentine/ Bongo-Shaftsbury argument, but in the wider context afforded by the narration of Waldetar, Hanne, Yusef, P. Aeuil et. al. Plus, I suspect that V in this early guise as Victoria Wren is on a sort of epistemological quest of her own (see the biog. details about her Catholicism provided by Maxwell Rowley-Bugge at 72.27), one which parallels the somewhat more secular seekings of *both* Stencils, père and fils. And, this sort of aspiration to possess and expound (or, indeed, create) ultimate meaning or truth has always recalled for me Rev. Casaubon's similarly pathetic pretension to write 'The Key to All Mythologies' in _Middlemarch_ (which was mentioned earlier today amongst a group novels to cure -- or, as I rather suspect for a greater majority of readers, *cause* -- insomnia), satirised mercilessly by G. Eliot as the Stencils (and V) and their quests are by Pynchon. best From keith at pfmentum.com Fri Nov 24 19:31:00 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 17:31:00 -0800 Subject: V. (Ch 3) 'In the Polite Spirit of the Tusculan Disputations' Message-ID: <000e01c0567f$5fe125c0$ef3e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Talk of (being) an "electro-mechanical doll", http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1037000/1037730.stm From jeremy at xyris.com Fri Nov 24 21:11:14 2000 From: jeremy at xyris.com (Jeremy Osner) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 22:11:14 -0500 Subject: NP Borges Message-ID: <3A1F2DD2.BEC72B03@xyris.com> Hi all, Just a note to recommend the "Selected Non-Fictions" of J. L. Borges ed. Eliot Weinburger, they're beautiful, at least those that I have read so far, just started reading it yesterday. I particularly dig his assertion that E. A. Poe "invented the reader of detective stories" (from a 1978 lecture on the detective genre) -- besides lectures there are book and film reviews, Feuilletons, "Notes on Germany and the War", "Nine Dantesque Essays", prologues and more! Jeremy -- The city is a recapitulation of the cave, by other means. It is foremost a shield against all realities which are not either brought forth by the city itself, or incorporated into it as mere materials. Coming out of the Cave http://www.readin.com/books/hohlenausgange From jbor at bigpond.com Fri Nov 24 21:34:34 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 14:34:34 +1100 Subject: Chabon's _Kavalier & Clay_ Message-ID: <03225114508706@domain6.bigpond.com> Classic comix, Hitler, and Citizen Kane: sound familiar? http://www.smh.com.au/news/0011/25/books/A35327-2000Nov24.html#top From grladams at teleport.com Fri Nov 24 22:00:05 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 20:00:05 -0800 Subject: VV(4)61.04 Pazzo son! Message-ID: <3A1F3945.2FD37D55@teleport.com> I have discovered where Porpentine is singing the Italian opera, it is Puccini, the scene in ct III of Manon Lescaut where Des Grieux is imploring the guards to allow him to... here, I'll just cut from http://lascala.milano.it/1997_98/manon/soggetto.html.ita Act III Le Havre. An open square near the port. Manon has been condemned to deportation and is in prison awaiting departure. Thanks to a sentry bribed by Lescaut, Des Grieux informs his beloved that her brother has organized a plan of escape. But it is thwarted and Manon is led off with the other women deportees to board the ship for America. After attempting in vain to rescue his beloved from her fate, Des Grieux implores the ship's captain to take him on board too, so that he can stay with Manon. DES GRIEUX Ah! Non v'avvicinate! Ché, vivo me, costei nessun strappar potrà!... No! Pazzo son! these are on Guardate, pazzo son, guardate page 61. com'io piango ed imploro... come io piango, guardate, com'io chiedo pietà! -jill From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Fri Nov 24 21:51:40 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 21:51:40 -0600 Subject: The Great American Novel References: Message-ID: <3A1F374C.83A7FF66@mediaone.net> JBFRAME at aol.com wrote: > It's already been written. Twice. > Moby Dick & Huckleberry Finn. Call me a provincial Fool, call me a closed-minded Nerd with far too much wine in his system at the moment, even call me Ishmael, but part of the problem with identifying the Great American Novel is that we, as Americans, have, do, and always will lack a unified sense of Identity as a nation. Even tho we like to think we are free and fair and melting-potted and all that good stuff, we cannot agree on a unified sense of Identity BECAUSE we are free and fair and melting-potted and all that good stuff. Hence, every generation or so from The Deerslayer thru The Scarlet Letter thru Moby Dick thru Huckleberry Finn thru The Red Badge of Courage thru The Great Gatsby thru My Antonia thru The Grapes of Wrath thru Invisible Man thru Cuckoo's Nest thru you name the novel is a natural product of the national sentiment at the time, yet for all time, making "The Great American Novel" one of those slippery and elusive things we'll never see in our lifetime. All we can ever truly achieve is "The Favorite American Novel." Identifying THAT says as much about the identifier as it does about the book's placement on that Great Cosmic Booklist of Existence. I cast my vote for _The Grapes of Wrath_ --- it embodies all that being "an American" means: the hardship, the undying spirit of justice in the face of beaurocracy, and the sense of "Fuck the System" and "Fuck the Man" that so many other writers try to explore, but can't, not with that Steinbeckian aplomb. Plus, you gotta love salted pork and cooked rabbit. Of course, the old saying goes: you cannot analyze humor, because once you do, it loses its effect. The same holds true in a way for this discussion. Once you identify what you feel is the GAN, you immediately limit, you reject, you narrow the spectrum, and that does little to foster the discussion. Sad, really . . . Dedalus From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Fri Nov 24 21:59:59 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 21:59:59 -0600 Subject: VV(4)61.04 Pazzo son! References: <3A1F3945.2FD37D55@teleport.com> Message-ID: <3A1F393E.2B12BAC@mediaone.net> YOU are a Goddess!!! THANK you!! I actually lost sleep over this a coupla weeks ago, and eventually gave up, thinking it must be somewhere in Verdi! Rossini was my second guess, but I ran out of energy. Awesome! Dedalus jill wrote: > I have discovered where Porpentine is singing the Italian opera, it is > Puccini, the scene in ct III of Manon Lescaut where Des Grieux is imploring > the guards to allow him to... > > here, I'll just cut from > http://lascala.milano.it/1997_98/manon/soggetto.html.ita > > Act III > > Le Havre. An open square near the port. > > Manon has been condemned to deportation and is in prison > awaiting departure. Thanks to a sentry bribed by Lescaut, Des > Grieux informs his beloved that her brother has organized a plan of > escape. But it is thwarted and Manon is led off with the other > women deportees to board the ship for America. After attempting > in vain to rescue his beloved from her fate, Des Grieux implores > the ship's captain to take him on board too, so that he can stay > with Manon. > > DES GRIEUX > Ah! Non v'avvicinate! > Ché, vivo me, costei > nessun strappar potrà!... > No! Pazzo son! > these are on Guardate, pazzo son, guardate > page 61. com'io piango ed imploro... > come io piango, guardate, > com'io chiedo pietà! > > -jill From scuffling at hotmail.com Fri Nov 24 23:13:14 2000 From: scuffling at hotmail.com (Scuffling) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 00:13:14 -0500 Subject: NP MD Message-ID: That's Moby Dick! Has anything been made of M&D/MD? I don't know if this account had been mentioned before on the P-List, but: November 20, 1820: Whaling ship "Essex" attacked and destroyed by a whale The whaling ship "Essex" sailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts to hunt for whales in the South Pacific. On November 20, 1820, the prey turned hunter and the ship was attacked by an enraged whale, which rammed the ship twice and destroyed it. The crewmen set off in three open boats, hoping to reach the west coast of South America, over 2,000 miles away. Only eight of the twenty sailors from the Essex survived the desperate voyage, one of which published an account of the Essex tragedy. That account was the basis for the final chapter of Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick", in which a whaling ship is rammed and sunk by a White Wale. An account of the whale's attack on the Essex: http://ucs.orst.edu/~gildenj/coffin/owencoffin.html AsB4, Henry Mu From grladams at teleport.com Sat Nov 25 00:15:43 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 22:15:43 -0800 Subject: VV(4)61.04 Pazzo son! References: <3A1F3945.2FD37D55@teleport.com> <3A1F393E.2B12BAC@mediaone.net> Message-ID: <3A1F590F.323BFE7A@teleport.com> I am flattered to be complemented by so acute a mind. however, how does Porpentine know the words to Manon Lescaut before he sees the opera? A-and even what-if the scene is out of order, isn't Porpentine to be shot at by the second gunman in the end of VV 5? So, this is just another thing to loose sleep about. I'm trying to compile a VV5 but it's harder than I thought. There is order, yet unfamiliar order. part IV-VII seem out of order. Part III seems to go before part VIII. It means but it doesn't add up. -jill Dedalus wrote: > > YOU are a Goddess!!! THANK you!! I actually lost sleep over this a coupla > weeks ago, and eventually gave up, thinking it must be somewhere in Verdi! > Rossini was my second guess, but I ran out of energy. Awesome! > > Dedalus > > jill wrote: > > > I have discovered where Porpentine is singing the Italian opera, it is > > Puccini, the scene in ct III of Manon Lescaut where Des Grieux is imploring > > the guards to allow him to... > > > > here, I'll just cut from > > http://lascala.milano.it/1997_98/manon/soggetto.html.ita > > > > Act III > > > > Le Havre. An open square near the port. > > > > Manon has been condemned to deportation and is in prison > > awaiting departure. Thanks to a sentry bribed by Lescaut, Des > > Grieux informs his beloved that her brother has organized a plan of > > escape. But it is thwarted and Manon is led off with the other > > women deportees to board the ship for America. After attempting > > in vain to rescue his beloved from her fate, Des Grieux implores > > the ship's captain to take him on board too, so that he can stay > > with Manon. > > > > DES GRIEUX > > Ah! Non v'avvicinate! > > Ché, vivo me, costei > > nessun strappar potrà!... > > No! Pazzo son! > > these are on Guardate, pazzo son, guardate > > page 61. com'io piango ed imploro... > > come io piango, guardate, > > com'io chiedo pietà! > > > > -jill From tommasopincio at iol.it Sat Nov 25 04:27:20 2000 From: tommasopincio at iol.it (tommasopincio) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 11:27:20 +0100 Subject: R: tenuous links References: <3A1E9E0B.B4B8864A@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <004401c056ca$839163e0$ee6a0f97@tommasopincio> anyone of you who could be interested in what kind of link might be established between Mr. Pynchon and the late Philip K. Dick should absolutely read "time out of joint" and think about its amazing similarities with GR which are anything but tenous. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sat Nov 25 07:09:17 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 08:09:17 -0500 Subject: The Great American Dictionary Message-ID: <3A1FB9FD.9882304E@earthlink.net> The main ambition is to create something distinctively American: a democratic dictionary that describes, not prescribes. Of course the debate over whether dictionaries should be prescriptive — asserting that a word has relatively determined meanings and a proper usage; or descriptive, asserting that a word has shifting meanings determined by its popular use — has been raging for several decades. The best dictionaries maintain a precarious balance. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/arts/25SHEL.html From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sat Nov 25 07:29:27 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 08:29:27 -0500 Subject: The Great American Novel References: <3A1F374C.83A7FF66@mediaone.net> Message-ID: <3A1FBEB7.4331A971@earthlink.net> Dedalus wrote: Even tho we like to think we are free and fair and > melting-potted and all that good stuff, we cannot agree on a unified > sense of Identity BECAUSE we are free and fair and melting-potted and > all that good stuff. Maybe our melting days are over, look, all the books you listed as melting pot great may not be what's great about the great american non-melting pot. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/melt0525a.htm From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sat Nov 25 13:06:55 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 14:06:55 -0500 Subject: NP MD References: Message-ID: <3A200DCF.5387F3FE@earthlink.net> Scuffling wrote: > > That's Moby Dick! > Has anything been made of M&D/MD? I don't know if this account had been > mentioned before on the P-List, but: > > November 20, 1820: Whaling ship "Essex" attacked and destroyed by a whale > > The whaling ship "Essex" sailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts to hunt > for whales in the South Pacific. On November 20, 1820, the prey > turned hunter and the ship was attacked by an enraged whale, which > rammed the ship twice and destroyed it. The crewmen set off in three > open boats, hoping to reach the west coast of South America, over > 2,000 miles away. Only eight of the twenty sailors from the Essex > survived the desperate voyage, one of which published an account of > the Essex tragedy. That account was the basis for the final chapter > of Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick", in which a whaling ship is > rammed and sunk by a White Wale. > > An account of the whale's attack on the Essex: > http://ucs.orst.edu/~gildenj/coffin/owencoffin.html > > AsB4, > > Henry Mu Just a note, Herman Melville had a habit of covertly satirizing the authors of the books, articles, accounts, biographies, etc., that he most shamelessly plundered. Moby-Dick, Confidence-Man, and all of Melville's works, his books, letters, his sox and his shoes have been studied by critics. The subtle, often ironic and parodic ways in which Melville incorporates the works, lives, ideas, etc. of others into his fiction has much in common with the methods of Thomas Pynchon. Here in V., we see that Thomas Pynchon has a lot more in common with Melville than critics have noted. While reading these first three chapters note that Pynchon is not only making use of the "texts" of Graves, Adams, Eliot, Frazer, Nabokov, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), De Rougemont, Baedeker, Freud, Jung, Ornette Coleman and the Downbeat Magazines, Kerouac, Machiavelli, Rand, Dante, Plato, Augustine, Old and New Testament heroes and gods, Wittgenstein, Weber, Shakespeare, Detective and Espionage fiction, and so on and so on, ( a very good study is Cowart, David, Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980) like Melville he often satirizes the author's themselves, making jokes, again like Melville, often blasphemous or in "bad taste", about their sexual proclivities, politics, religious or scientific or social scientific beliefs, literary or other relations, aesthetics, etc. In the end we should question what all of these extra textual facts, biographies, histories, and so forth tell us about the fictions and how they have been written and read. In my opinion, for both Melville and Pynchon, these things alone simply don't tell us a hell of a lot. It does tell us that both authors have, at least as part of their target audience, a critical, intelligent, scholarly reader (even if this reader is mocked, as Modernism is mocked in Pynchon and American Literature mocked in Melville, the scholarly reader deliberately overwhelmed by the pedantic use of ideas, language, etc., one of the essential elements of the type of satire both men have written). However, the critical industries discovery of the source or sources of what may be a critical chapter in their respective texts, even when this chapter can be deconstructed or shown to be palimpsest or a touched up copy of the original, once integrated and amalgamated into the texts take on a life completely independent of their sources. PS in The Confidence-Man Melville, in part, plays on the protracted 18th century argument about human nature-- Hobbesian cynicism against Shaftesburyean (shows up in M&D I believe) benevolism, this debate of course was an important structural device (satire/sentiment) of English picaresque fiction. Of course, like Pynchon's V., Melville's C-M is not picaresque fiction, it's Genre is and always will be I think a matter of debate, but it is clearly satire (MS I'd say) and it subsumes a whole bunch of genres including picaresque. From awestrop at komarios.net Sat Nov 25 13:53:19 2000 From: awestrop at komarios.net (Alan Westrope) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 12:53:19 -0700 Subject: Wanda Unveiled Message-ID: <20001125125319.A17700@flatland.dimensional.com> I didn't bother to read the Tinasky letters, mainly because I never believed TRP was the author. A new book, which I'm sure some here are aware of, sheds some interesting light on this affair. I'm enclosing some major points under "Fair Use" provisions, but anyone who wants to learn the rationale for the author's conclusion will need to read the Tinasky chapter (pp. 188-220) in its entirety. The book is: ============================================================= Foster, Donald W., 1950- Author unknown : on the trail of anonymous New York : Henry Holt, 2000. 318 p. ; 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. [283]-302) and index. ============================================================= Foster argues quite convincingly that Wanda was Thomas Donald Hawkins, 1/11/27 - 9/23/88. Hawkins was part of the San Francisco beat scene in the early '60s, writing and mimeographing his 'zines for his own Ahab Press (basically a PO Box), while supporting himself by working for the USPS as a postal clerk. He recycled some of his old stuff for the Wanda letters: In days of old when knights were bold And rubbers were not invented, They trod the ooze in wooden shoes, And waded til they were contented. -- Hawkins, Freak's Clean Poems, 1964 In days of old when knights were bold & rubbers were not invented, They trod the ooze in wooden shoes, & shloshed til they were contented. -- Tinasky letter to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, 1987 Hawkins was a huge fan of _The Recognitions_ who, upon encountering jack green's _newspaper_ no. 12, containing green's Swiftian invective against the critics who had reviewed Gaddis's novel in 1955, decided that green and Gaddis were the same person. He corresponded with green, asking if he had "taken notice of the velikovskyan catastrophism" in the novel, and may later have become convinced that Pynchon was just another avatar of this remarkable man of letters...:-) In September 1988, Hawkins fatally bludgeoned his wife, then "carried Kathy's body inside, into the living room, where he mourned over the corpse for several days until it became infested." He then set the house on fire and drove his wife's car over a ninety-foot cliff to his death. I could add much more, but I'm loath to tred on Foster's copyright for this engaging piece of detective work. Highly recommended. -- Alan Westrope Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. From grladams at teleport.com Sat Nov 25 14:07:47 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 12:07:47 -0800 Subject: VV(5) Intro Message-ID: <3A201C13.1C4E8B4F@teleport.com> In VV(5) we are introduced with a curtain departing to the east and will soon eclipse the scene that occurs in the desert, as if it were the death plague of the encroaching Westwardmen. As the scene creeps forward, the twosome and their Prey is never quite revealed exactly, because of our nearsightedness, we will only stab in the air at finding out what has actually happened. The one will try to seal some kind of bond with Victoria by sleeping with her, the other one is the pimp in the process. the pimp/clown begins to realize that the girl, the master of the mata hari act, might be somewhat of a double agent--since all three simply put, are "anarchists" so can one anarchist trust another anarchist??? Who's to say. Anyway, If she does seal this bond with him and go to the Opera with him, will she gain some knowlege that will hurt her or hurt England or help England? I realize it is all a lot more complicated than this but hey, it's an intro. Goodfellow has that affuent look--but underneath? Goodfellow and Lepsius seem to share the theorem that in Egypt, one can be uncivilized and perpetrate fighting for gain. Lepsius and Goodfellow arrange for a meeting. At the last minute, there will be a failure for one side, or the other. Someone sees the light. So many lights one is blinded, dazzled, the sun being the paradigm of sensual power beginning this scene, so too the light will end this scene, mystifying all. So the aggravation of the war that-doesn't-really-break-out, the war that instead becomes a cold cell for future wars, is it a futile quest because there is no immediate fighting, or is it a winner for perpetrating a cold war? Ha ha. More later, after Lunch. I'll do an analysis with the numbers later. Okay. From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sat Nov 25 14:02:17 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 14:02:17 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - Coptic Optics 1 Message-ID: ---------- (84)Eyes made ipossibly huge with mascara, nose slightly hoooked and bowed, two vertical dimples on either side of the mouth, crocheted shawl covering hair and back, high cheekbones, warm brown skin ---------- http://www.coptic.net/ "The word Copt is derived from the Greek word Aigyptos, which was, in turn, derived from "Hikaptah", one of the names for Memphis, the first capital of Ancient Egypt. The modern use of the term "Coptic" describes Egyptian Christians, as well as the last stage of the ancient Egyptian language script. Also, it describes the distinctive art and architecture that developed as an early expression of the new faith. The Coptic Church is based on the teachings of Saint Mark who brought Christianity to Egypt during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero in the first century, a dozen of years after the Lord's ascension. He was one of the four evangelists and the one who wrote the oldest canonical gospel. " "Under the authority of the Eastern Roman Empire of Constantinople (as opposed to the western empire of Rome), the Patriarchs and Popes of Alexandria played leading roles in Christian theology. They were invited everywhere to speak about the Christian faith. Saint Cyril, Pope of Alexandria, was the head of the Ecumenical Council which was held in Ephesus in the year 430 A.D. It was said that the bishops of the Church of Alexandria did nothing but spend all their time in meetings. This leading role, however, did not fare well when politics started to intermingle with Church affairs. It all started when the Emperor Marcianus interfered with matters of faith in the Church. The response of Saint Dioscorus, the Pope of Alexandria who was later exiled, to this interference was clear: "You have nothing to do with the Church." These political motives became even more apparent in Chalcedon in 451, when the Coptic Church was unfairly accused of following the teachings of Eutyches, who believed in monophysitism. This doctrine maintains that the Lord Jesus Christ has only one nature, the divine, not two natures, the human as well as the divine. The Coptic Church has never believed in monophysitism the way it was portrayed in the Council of Chalcedon! In that Council, monophysitism meant believing in one nature. Copts believe that the Lord is perfect in His divinity, and He is perfect in His humanity, but His divinity and His humanity were united in one nature called "the nature of the incarnate word", which was reiterated by Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Copts, thus, believe in two natures "human" and "divine" that are united in one "without mingling, without confusion, and without alteration" (from the declaration of faith at the end of the Coptic divine liturgy). These two natures "did not separate for a moment or the twinkling of an eye" (also from the declaration of faith at the end of the Coptic divine liturgy). The Coptic Church was misunderstood in the 5th century at the Council of Chalcedon. Perhaps the Council understood the Church correctly, but they wanted to exile the Church, to isolate it and to abolish the Egyptian, independent Pope, who maintained that Church and State should be separate." _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sat Nov 25 14:10:17 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 14:10:17 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - Coptic Optics 2 Message-ID: http://www.stshenouda.com/coptlang/coptval.htm People, especially Copts, often ask why do they need to study Coptic. The cause of their dilemma is that Coptic is rarely used even in its last stronghold, the Coptic Church. The answer to such a perplexing question lies in two distinct but closely related principles. The first is called the Ecclesiastical Principle and the second is referred to as the Coptic Principle. Both of these principles hold explanation for the importance as well as the necessity for keeping such language alive among people in general and Copts in particular. II. The Ecclesiastical Principle: The Ecclesiastical Principle is a 3-component concept that describes the Coptic Church in general terms. Its components are derived from the official name used by the Church but in reverse order. These components are as follows: 1. Church, 2. Orthodox, 3. Coptic. [skip first two] 3. Coptic: The last component of this trio is Coptic. The value of this component is embodied in the second principle to be discussed here, the Coptic Principle. It suffices to say here that this component is what gives the Coptic Church its identity and its distinctive flavor that sets it apart from any other Christian Church. III. The Coptic Principle: The Coptic Principle is an extension of the third component of the Ecclesiastical principle. It is in turn explained within the concept of a 3-component system. Such system will help explain the great benefits that can be achieved the Copts or others by the learning the language. These components are as follows: 1. Identity, 2. Link to the past, 3. Key to the treasures of the Coptic Church. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sat Nov 25 14:28:51 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 14:28:51 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - Coptic Optics 4 Message-ID: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/16078c.htm Coptic Versions of the Bible DIALECTS "The Coptic language is now recognized in four principal dialects, Bohairic (formerly Memphitic), Fayumic, Sahidic (formerly Theban), and Akhmimic. The relative antiquity of these as literary idioms is much debated. But the fact is that no Bohairic manuscript and probably no Fayumic manuscript is older than the ninth century, while some Sahidic and Akhimimic codices are apparently as old as the fifth and even the fourth century. In the ninth century Bohairic was flourishing, in Northern Egypt, particularly in the Province of Bohairah (hence its name) south-west of Alexandria and in the monasteries of the Desert of Nitria, while Sahidic was spread throughout Upper Egypt or Sahid (hence the name of Sahidic) inclusive of Cairo, having already superseded Fayumic in the Province of Fayum (ancient Crocodilopolis) and Akhmimic in the region of Akhmim (ancient Panopolis). Later (eleventh century?) when the Patriarch of Alexandria moved his residence from that city to Cairo, Bohairic began to drive out Sahidic and soon became the liturgical language of the Copts throughout Egypt." _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sat Nov 25 14:31:06 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 14:31:06 -0600 Subject: VV(5) - Coptic Optics 3 Message-ID: http://colophon.com/gallery/cba/coptic/ "In an effort to express his ideas and preserve them in a written language, man has taken many giant steps in the art of bookmaking. One such crucial step was the advent of the sewn book developed around the first century A.D. Following the refinement of this great discovery, we arrive at several monasteries scattered around Northern Egypt. It was here that the monks of the Coptic Church perfected the sewing structure and the protective covers of their codex to what we know today as Coptic Binding. The present exhibition and accompanying catalogue pay homage to those early bookmakers who introduced this important technique to the art of the book, a technique which was to become the model for all other book structures to come, and whose integrity of style and diversity of application have preserved a lasting presence in its original form until today. Using the works of scholars, book artists and student, this catalogue surveys the Coptic structure from a historical perspective and examines its contemporary application for artistic expression." _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From JBFRAME at aol.com Sat Nov 25 16:04:22 2000 From: JBFRAME at aol.com (JBFRAME at aol.com) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 17:04:22 EST Subject: The Great American Novel Message-ID: In a message dated 11/24/2000 7:52:40 PM Pacific Standard Time, dedalus204 at mediaone.net writes: << Once you identify what you feel is the GAN, you immediately limit, you reject, you narrow the spectrum, and that does little to foster the discussion. >> You are correct, Sir, or Madam! Perhaps each generation has its very own GAN, in which I vote V. as mine! chastened but uncrushed, jbf From jbor at bigpond.com Sat Nov 25 16:33:04 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 09:33:04 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Message-ID: <22221164101960@domain2.bigpond.com> ---------- > > Goodfellow has that affuent look--but underneath? Goodfellow and Lepsius > seem to share the theorem that in Egypt, one can be uncivilized and > perpetrate fighting for gain. The exchange between Lepsius and Goodfellow (75.13) at the Fink Restaurant after the party at the Austrian Consulate delineates (for Max R-B at least, and so for the reader) "how the sides were drawn up". Lepsius refers to "this soiled South", while Goodfellow comments that "far enough down the Nile one gets back to a kind of primitive spotlessness"; Lepsius counters that there "are no property rights down there", while Goodfellow demurs that Europeans are "civilized" and thus "jungle law is inadmissable." Each man presumes to speak on behalf of a different colonial faction; but for both of them Africa is merely an abstraction, land to be claimed in the name of one or another European imperial power. What is interesting is that the European alliances are never really clarified, are perhaps still forming in fact. At the Consulate party Yusef the factotum speculates that the looming trouble in Upper Egypt is between England and France, with "Germany (and therefore Italy and Austria)" aligned in a "temporary rapprochement" with the former, and Russia in league with the latter (67.3). However, he notices the Austrian Consul "spending much time in the company of his Russian conterpart" (68.9). Similarly, Lepsius (who is Hanne's "lover") is German, while Goodfellow and Porpy, who are obviously Lepsius's opponents, are unmistakeably British. Bongo-S seems to be a rather heartless (perhaps literally!) mercenary who is working for Lepsius. The reader will never really find out where Victoria fits in (I suspect she is just a "green girl" at this point 72.26, who thinks herself "in love" with Goodfellow and who is asking Porpy to protect his partner, which Porpy does because he is perhaps "in love" with Victoria too 93.8 -- it really is some tragic grand opera!), let alone who is working for which government. This is because from the point of view of the locals who narrate the episodes they are all the same, interchangeable (Gebrail: "How could you say they were people: they were money." 84.15). Pynchon overturns the historical paradigm by changing the perspective of narration. Stencil aspires to represent an objective vantage (it is significant to note that Stencil's final "impersonation" is of a camera lens); he conceives the locals as insignificant, and as impartial witnesses to the political intrigues of the Europeans. However, what seeps through the impersonations is quite a different lesson, one which Stencil possibly misses: these locals are people as well. As Waldetar quips: There's no organized effort about it but there remains a grand joke on all visitors to Baedeker's world: the permanent residents are actually humans in disguise. (78.18) best From richardromeo at hotmail.com Sat Nov 25 23:13:12 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 23:13:12 Subject: Flicker Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fqmorris at hotmail.com Sat Nov 25 17:59:36 2000 From: fqmorris at hotmail.com (David Morris) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 17:59:36 -0600 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Message-ID: >From: "jbor" The exchange between Lepsius and Goodfellow (75.13) at the >Fink Restaurant [...] Each man presumes to speak on behalf of a different >colonial faction; but for both of them Africa is merely an abstraction, >land to be claimed in the name of one or another European imperial power. Yes. The land (of course the people are expendable) is nothing but a potential source of wealth. >What is interesting is that the European alliances are never really >clarified, are perhaps still forming in fact. At the Consulate party Yusef >the factotum speculates that the looming trouble in Upper Egypt is between >England and France, with "Germany (and therefore Italy and Austria)" >aligned in a "temporary rapprochement" with the former, and Russia in >league with the latter (67.3). However, he notices the Austrian Consul >"spending much time in the company of his Russian conterpart" (68.9). >Similarly, Lepsius (who is Hanne's "lover") is German, while Goodfellow and >Porpy, who are obviously Lepsius's opponents, are unmistakeably British. >Bongo-S seems to be a rather heartless (perhaps literally!) mercenary who >is working for Lepsius. Nice synopsis. Yes, the powers have not yet settled on the spoils. The victors are not yet clear. The only clarity is in the distain the powers have for the humanity of its native ("if only they were robots") population. DM _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Sun Nov 26 03:13:49 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 10:13:49 +0100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) References: <22221164101960@domain2.bigpond.com> Message-ID: <13zxsb-0UwpH6C@fwd01.sul.t-online.com> don't know if this has already been mentioned, but looking up the name lepsius in the lexikon (- brockhaus 1982, own translation) i found the following: "lepsius, karl richard (12/23/1810 - 7/10/1884), egyptologist and one of the first africanists, guided the prussian expedition, that did between 1843-46 research in the nile valley up to sudan, founded the egyptian museum in berlin. important for african studies is his invention of an alphabet for oral languages and a structuring [gliederung] of africa's nations and languages." kfl jbor schrieb: > > ---------- > > > > > Goodfellow has that affuent look--but underneath? Goodfellow and Lepsius > > seem to share the theorem that in Egypt, one can be uncivilized and > > perpetrate fighting for gain. > > The exchange between Lepsius and Goodfellow (75.13) at the Fink Restaurant > after the party at the Austrian Consulate delineates (for Max R-B at least, > and so for the reader) "how the sides were drawn up". Lepsius refers to > "this soiled South", while Goodfellow comments that "far enough down the > Nile one gets back to a kind of primitive spotlessness"; Lepsius counters > that there "are no property rights down there", while Goodfellow demurs that > Europeans are "civilized" and thus "jungle law is inadmissable." Each man > presumes to speak on behalf of a different colonial faction; but for both of > them Africa is merely an abstraction, land to be claimed in the name of one > or another European imperial power. > > What is interesting is that the European alliances are never really > clarified, are perhaps still forming in fact. At the Consulate party Yusef > the factotum speculates that the looming trouble in Upper Egypt is between > England and France, with "Germany (and therefore Italy and Austria)" aligned > in a "temporary rapprochement" with the former, and Russia in league with > the latter (67.3). However, he notices the Austrian Consul "spending much > time in the company of his Russian conterpart" (68.9). Similarly, Lepsius > (who is Hanne's "lover") is German, while Goodfellow and Porpy, who are > obviously Lepsius's opponents, are unmistakeably British. Bongo-S seems to > be a rather heartless (perhaps literally!) mercenary who is working for > Lepsius. > > The reader will never really find out where Victoria fits in (I suspect she > is just a "green girl" at this point 72.26, who thinks herself "in love" > with Goodfellow and who is asking Porpy to protect his partner, which Porpy > does because he is perhaps "in love" with Victoria too 93.8 -- it really is > some tragic grand opera!), let alone who is working for which government. > This is because from the point of view of the locals who narrate the > episodes they are all the same, interchangeable (Gebrail: "How could you say > they were people: they were money." 84.15). Pynchon overturns the historical > paradigm by changing the perspective of narration. Stencil aspires to > represent an objective vantage (it is significant to note that Stencil's > final "impersonation" is of a camera lens); he conceives the locals as > insignificant, and as impartial witnesses to the political intrigues of the > Europeans. However, what seeps through the impersonations is quite a > different lesson, one which Stencil possibly misses: these locals are people > as well. As Waldetar quips: > > There's no organized effort about it but there remains a grand joke > on all visitors to Baedeker's world: the permanent residents are > actually humans in disguise. (78.18) > > best > From grladams at teleport.com Sun Nov 26 04:52:13 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 02:52:13 -0800 Subject: VV(5)--Impersonations IV-VI Message-ID: <3A20EB5D.16E72392@teleport.com> Max is nowhere. Impersonation IV takes place on a weird train ride from Alexandria to Cairo. It is the day of the Opera. Last night was the party at the Austrian Consulate. Logically, we should probably look to part VI to follow the events right after the party at the Consulate. We only just left off in the middle of that night, and now for some reason we are jumping ahead one frame. At least that is how I find it. The travellers include Lepsius, who is seen as having blue lenses for eyes, which is another way of saying having blue eyeglasses, right...? Mildred, who is likened to a marine creature, watery eyes, perhaps a limpet, clinging to the rock. And Porpentine, whose face is not yet peeling, but burning like anger. We are presented with an array of examples about how the destruction of things and religions by the encroaching westwardmen has been some bad shit. The slow crush of things hothouse and ecstatic or sensual by the influx of foreign abstract laws and imperial gain. The oddest part of this part is when Bongo Shaftsbury, who has revealed as switch on his arm. Bongo Shaftsbury is two-faced, he's one way or another. His role is blackmailing Victoria and he's her lover. He's got connections to both Lepsius and perhaps also to the side of employing Porpentine and Goodfellow. Pynchon has deliberately given all these characters more than one description, more than one identity, and probably more than one loyalty, or a loyalty that switches to different directions: Porpentine, Goodfellow, Bongo-Shaftsbury, Victoria and Maxwell. (compare to the switch on the arm of Fergus, and the switch in the nasal cavity of Ester) lectures Porpentine on p. 79. It seems sort of read, or mechanical, or robotlike. "Hurrah. General principles again." Corpse fingers jabbed in the air. "But someday, Porpentine I, or another, will catch you off guard. Loving, hating, even showing some absent minded sympathy. I'll watch you. The moment you forget yourself enough to admit another's humanity, see him as a person and not a symbol--then perhaps--" "What is humanity." "You ask the obvious, ha ha. Humanity is something to destroy." I don't think they are kidnapping Mildred, why would Bongo Shaftsbury be involved with that if he's lovers with Victoria (p.61) Impersonation V takes place on the preceding day, following Part I, after Goodfellow and Porpentine are split up and Porpentine goes to the Turkish Quarter. Oddly enough, his face is observed in a higher state of peel than before, which leads me to believe he has removed a disguise, and that this is spirit gum, and his alternating states of red and blotchiness are not enirely due to the sun but to recovery from disguise. It more logically follows part I, when Goodfellow's face is simply red. Impersonation V is also the day in which everyone is preparing for the evening at the consulate party. It is from Gebrail's POV, and whether he descends from a line of family that ruins its land due to agricultural malpractice or not I don't know. I suppose he is Sudanese. The whole history of the Mahdi and Sudanese nationalism is very deep and one could probably read loads about it. However, I sympathise with him and it is one of Pynchon's more sympathetic pictures at this point. There are errands run in which he taxis Porpentine who among other things, locates a chemist. (We hear this after Goodfellow comes out of the Hotel Khedival and rejoins Porpentine). Might this have to do with removing spirit gum... or what? We'll get to that though in Impersonation VII. Porpentine, during these errands, might have learned things from a woman who appears disguised, or who really is Zenobia the Copt. Thanks for the Kai's posting of the text of the Rilke's aufzeichnungen des malte laurids brigge. This text reminds us of what might be a bauble fallen from this grand opera Manon Lescaut that they are going to watch. Thanks by the way to David Morris for his postings about Copts. I think the Copts are painted as the good guys of early Christianity by these writings, not the Egypt-Destroying type. But what do I know? Porpentine visits the jeweler (who might be Lepsius? or the Arab?) and I guess at this point leaves empty handed either because he doesn't get what he wants or else he only exchanges information. Impersonation VI takes place seemingly after the consulate party, somehow the grouping of Porpentine, Goodfellow, B-S and Victoria has dispersed so that we have the following action possible. For if they had remained together, as they were on the curb of Fink's, none of this would make sense. So that's a missing section. Porpentine's face is tissuey only after earlier at the Consulate party having been simply red faced. This is where Girgis sees Porpentine trying to climb ?sneak? into the window in the back of Shepheard's Hotel. Porpentine keeps falling down, and doing that thing with the coals of the cigarette (BTW, Pynchon does this cigarette coal thing with Weissman doesn't he, in the train station in GR), Porpentine hears Girgis and begins to confess to the percieved Bongo-Shaftsbury that that Goodfellow up there is going to make Victoria fall in love with him. 86.16: Porpentine says.... "you haven't got me quite yet. They are up there, on my bed, Goodfellow and the girl. We've been together now for two years, and I can't begin, you know, to count the girls he's done this to... snip... I am thinking B-S still doesn't even murder Porpentine tomorrow on the Train Ride. He's had ample opportunity to do this murdering Porpentine thing. Why wait? Just put this piteous creature out of his misery. He's kinda sad, like a sad character from an opera. More on Impersonations VII-VIII tomorrow. From grladams at teleport.com Sun Nov 26 04:55:04 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 02:55:04 -0800 Subject: VV(5) Notes p. 74-90 Message-ID: <3A20EC08.7E4B2B94@teleport.com> 74.29 Hothouse of his (Waldetar's) fellow Sephardim-compare to Hothouse sense of time the WSC has. Hothouse is a place where the tender young plants can get past the delecate days of youth before they're strong enough to weather the storm. Sephardim are black Jews from the Levant who hold strong traditions who have been seen as a burden to other Jews in the way that huge poor Catholic immigrant families were seen as burden in the US. Sephardim are the butt of jokes of the other Jews. Hothouse is probably used by Henry Adams somewhere to describe a particular safety of a more linear way of looking at history. I am probably generalizing, so fill it in someone if you wish. David Morris Wrote: One of Stencil's impersonations will soon express some very poignant thoughts about being at the Mercy of Fortune.... And it was Waldetar who does this. Waldtedar is a "highly religious man" but probably has no knowledge of life in the place he dreams he will once go, to Israel, where his people will be tossed back out to the desert to settle the undesirable parts of Israel. 75-Ptolemy Theos Philopator (the Ptolemy VIII, 63-47 BC) King of Egypt (51-47) Ruling jointly with his sister and wife Cleopatra VII until he and his advisor expelled her in 48. He murdered Pompey after his defeat by Caesar, hoping for Caesar's favor, but when Caesar reinstated Cleopatra, Ptolomy opposed him and was killed...This reminds me of the mixed impressions of the relationship of Victoria Wren to Alastair, being interpreted as both his wife, mistress and daugter. Also, there is a Ptolemy IV (Ptolemy Philopator) (tol´umE filop´utur) king of ancient Egypt (221-205 B.C.), of the Macedonian dynasty, son of Ptolemy III and Berenice of Cyrene. He had his mother, his brother, his uncle, and possibly his wife (who was his sister Arsinoë) killed. Antiochus III invaded the Egyptian lands in Palestine, and Ptolemy managed to defeat him at Raphia in 217 (an event mentioned in 2 Maccabees), but administration disintegrated in Egypt. Ptolemy's main interest was building remarkable ships, each equipped with 4,000 oars. Ptolemaic system is a universe in which spheres, containing the orbits of Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn surround the earth or something like that. 75 Soul cannot commend no-soul. Only God can. This reminds me of a reverse of this, that scene where the poseurs in the V-Note cannot dig the Jazz, and how perhaps only Theolonius Monk or someone godlike could. 76-Memnon of Thebes-Apparently this huge statue vibrates, as all things do...in Greek mythology, king of Ethiopia, son of Tithonus and Eos. In the Trojan War he fought against the Greeks, and after he had killed Antilochus, he himself was killed by Achilles. Eos obtained immortality from Zeus for her son. Memnon was supposed to have lived in Egypt, and the Greeks gave his name to the great statue of Amenhotep III at Thebes. This statue was said to make a musical sound at daybreak, at which time Memnon greeted his mother, goddess of dawn. 76--the site of the ancient Eleusis but it's not in Egypt is it? Fourteen miles west of Athens on the Bay of Eleusis, opposite the island of Salamis. The tale goes like this, but this is just a snippet of the long story --Overcome with renewed grief over Kore, Demeter retired to her temple in Eleusis and set upon a plan to free her daughter. She caused the world's crops to fail and threatened all of humanity with starvation unless Kore was freed. One by one the Greek gods visited her to implore her to relent, but Demeter refused. Finally Zeus himself was forced to intervene, arranging with Hades to allow Kore to return to the earth. But Hades tricked his wife into eating some pomegranate seeds before she left. The fruit is a symbol of the marriage union and by eating it, Kore bound herself eternally to Hades. Zeus again stepped in to free Kore, decreeing that for two-thirds of the year, Kore will live on the surface but must return to the underworld of the dead for the remainder of the year. When in the underworld, she takes the name Persephone; while on the surface, she is Kore. Grateful for the return of her daughter for a portion of the year, Demeter renewed the earth's fertility. (EXCEPT THIS ONE SPOT) 76--Lake Mereotis--yes this really did happen: here is an excerpt from a General William W. Loring formerly of the United States Army as colonel of the regiment of Mounted Riflemen, and before that a Confederate Major General, and as Pasha in the Egyptian army... So he reports in 1882: http://home.earthlink.net/~atomic_rom/soldier/app2.htm "The country flooded at that time was from ten to fifteen miles wide and from sixty to one hundred miles long, separating a strip of the coast, including Alexandria, Aboukir and Rosetta, from immediate communication with the interior. This land had been drained for thousands of years by the ancient Egyptians, who first established the dike, shutting out the sea and reducing the water to a mere nominal fresh water lake. Before it was destroyed by the English centuries of the Nile inundation had rendered this country extremely fertile, and it was one of the most beautiful gardens of all Egypt. The ancients had vast structures and enormous convents throughout its extent. These convents were used by the early Christians. It was here that Cleopatra and Mark Antony had their vineyards, from which the most delicious wines then in the world were obtained for their grand banquets and the most beautiful and sweetly perfumed flowers to deck them with. Subsequently, through the many invasions of poor Egypt, these beautiful gardens and the grand buildings were levelled in the dust, and finally, through the vandalism of grim visaged war, by our boasted Western civilization and the ambition of the two great nations of that day, a paradise, without regard to life or property, was suddenly converted into a vast waste of waters. History may repeat itself and give the world another opportunity to denounce the barbarian who now leads the national party of Egypt, when the poisoned chalice is presented to another, for having dared to follow a well remembered precedent. It will be thus noticed how easily Egypt is defensible on the Mediterranean.” 78-- Clockwork doll. Clockwork requires someone else to wind usually. Clockwork seems to me to be different than a knife switch. Clockwork runs out eventually and yet can be overwound. Things clockwork seem to be symbols for the desire to overcome the second law of Thermodynamics. 82--Mahdist--five British soldiers executed in 1883 during the successful Mahdist rebellion in Khartoum. 83--Fashoda--I think my readings of historical texts related to Fashoda cause me to sympathize with the French. Unfortunately we are supposed to side with the British since they ostensibly were trying to 'stem the slave trade' And we are supposed to believe that England was being benevolent, regenerating Egypt. Maybe they were but... Look it up. I cannot begin to explain Fashoda. I could post up a text bit by bit from Electric Library if people really want it. ( the librarian in me ) The drama of the French travelling to Fashoda reminds me of an excellent movie that all of you have probably already seen called "Fitzcarraldo" or something like that directed by Herzog. 83--Mahdist--has to do with Fashoda..."Until the Mahdist revolt of the 1880s, led by a Nile boat-builder, Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah who proclaimed himself Mahdi -- herald of the end of the world -- in 1881, the Upper Nile basin had been part of an Egyptian empire extended into Sudan first by Muhammad Ali and later by the Khedive Ismail: hence the Egyptian fort at Fashoda. The defeat of the Anglo-Egyptian force by the Mahdists in 1883, leading to General Gordon's death at Khartoum in 1885 and the Egyptian evacuation of Sudan, left the field open to French and Belgian claims to the Upper Nile region known as Bahr al-Ghazal." -"Steaming through Africa." (Fashoda incident between France and England)(includes bibliography) Searight, Sarah 84--Montebank=Charlatain, Hawker of Phoney potions. 86--Margate--Seaside resort town in England. 90--Lord Cromer follows Major Evelyn, p. 69??? Here is a snip from a british account of.. England In Egypt Relevancy: Bright, James Franck; With limits restricted to territory which it was within its power to defend, with finances which, now that the convention (of London) had secured a breathing-time, were sufficient for its needs, Egypt was henceforward to advance rapidly toward prosperity under the masterly leading of Major Evelyn Baring, subsequently Lord Cromer. The period of vacillation seemed to have reached its conclusion. Some of the magnificent hopes which had been formed in the earlier days of the occupation were laid aside, and a firm hand directed to complete a sufficient, if more restricted, programme of reform. And who follows Lord Cromer? Kitchener. And Cromer can't really ever be assassinated in Part VIII..seems like he retires. See below- Chapter 1B. Muhammad Ali and the Nineteenth Century ( Countries of the World ) Linda D. Lau After Dufferin's mission the record of the British occupation is, in effect, the story of three outstanding proconsuls, each of whom bore the title of British agent and consul general: Sir Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer, from 1883 until his retirement in 1907; Sir John Eldon Gorst, from 1907 until his death in 1911; and Lord Kitchener, from 1911 until 1914. During their tenure it was the British Agency, not the khedive's palace, that was the real locus of authority; an Egyptian ministry functioned under the khedive, whose decrees were ostensibly the principal governmental decisions, but the basic policy was British. Khedive Tawfiq died in 1892 and was succeeded by his son, Abbas Hilmi, also known as Abbas II, who aspired to rid himself of British control. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 26 08:52:16 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 09:52:16 -0500 Subject: tenuous links References: <000601c05645$e13bd1e0$ee3d71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: <3A2123A0.6DC9EF84@earthlink.net> s~Z wrote: > > read that Poe story someone mentioned 'Never Bet The Devil Your > Head'....thanks a lot for that.....excellent little piece on authorial > intent and other things.....uncanny sharing of images with chapters 1 and 3 > of _The Master and Margarita_ http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/a_g_pym/toc.html Victoria is a Catholic. We can note the sun, the desert, the city, Baedeker, tourism, skin and disease, clothes and disguise, Vs (including the Vatican, Victoria(s)--Australia, Queen of Ireland, Empress of India and so on, mirrors, clocks, balloons, chess, yes, but it's RELIGION, and once again it is deviant sexuality--little girls, fetishes, voyeurism, and Religion--virginity--chased venery, apostolic succession, gift of tongues, and colonial S&M, Religion, and most importantly here, the ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION, the bride, the groom still waiting at the alter, that we should not overlook. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/140615.htm http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/religion/cath1.html From richardromeo at hotmail.com Sun Nov 26 15:14:51 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 15:14:51 Subject: Sleepy Hollow Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Sun Nov 26 10:09:25 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 17:09:25 +0100 Subject: vv (5): business ethics Message-ID: <1404Mn-0WxfTkC@fwd02.sul.t-online.com> "'there is a competitor in town,' he confided to her, 'pushing an inferior line, underselling us---it's unethical, don't you see?'" (89) "when i hear the word 'business ethics' i fumble for my car key ..." niklas luhmann From monroe at mpm.edu Sun Nov 26 10:55:19 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 10:55:19 -0600 Subject: Wanda Unveiled Message-ID: <3A214077.390EC2A9@mpm.edu> Have come across a couple of reviews of that Donald Foster book (Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous {New York: Henry Holt, 2000]) in the past week or so. Unfortunately, doesn't look like our public library system's ordered a copy yet, and I haven't had time to hunt it down (and is the rest of it worth shelling out for? let me know ...), but I thought this might be of interest, from the "official" Letters of Wanda Tinasky website: http://members.aol.com/tinasky/controversy.html Having not much read those letters myself, and, certainly, not with the care many have devoted to them, I've no strong, much less set, opinion on whether or not Pynchon wrote 'em, but I would note that, in regard to Foster's attribution, those "In days of old when night were bold ..." limericks are a subgenre perhaps second only to ones that begin to "There was a young man from Nantucket" or somesuch, i.e., not all that unusual (pace Tom Jones) ... Another article that I imagine you've all seen, but, just in case ... http://www.linguafranca.com/9509/pynchon.html Someone was kind enough, however, to forward me a copy of Charles Hollander's "Where's Wanda? The Case of the Bag Lady and Thomas Pynchon" (Critique, Vol. 23, No. 2 [Winter 1997]), which, apparently, if you have an account with the site in question (Northern Lights, and I don't), is available for a buck @ http://library.northernlight.com/LW19971231010000065.html ... actually, this looks as if it might be a pretty useful resource. Backing up a bit yields the Internet Public Library @ http://www.ipl.org/ref/litcrit/ ... Anyway, and, again, I imagine many of you are hip to this tip, but Hollander does some pretty close reading of his own, and along lines that Foster might not have pursued, adds a little legwork on who was where and when, and makes a preety convincing case for Pynchon's authorship, with some interesting ideas on just what the implications of said attribution might be for reading the rest of the Pynchonian oeuvre. But, hey, I'm still trying to do a little close rereading of V. myself, so ... From monroe at mpm.edu Sun Nov 26 10:55:52 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 10:55:52 -0600 Subject: Happy Birthday, Norbert Wiener! Message-ID: <3A214097.EE23D058@mpm.edu> ... not to mention Ferdinand de Saussure ... From awestrop at komarios.net Sun Nov 26 13:10:13 2000 From: awestrop at komarios.net (Alan Westrope) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 12:10:13 -0700 Subject: Wanda Unveiled In-Reply-To: <3A214077.390EC2A9@mpm.edu>; from monroe@mpm.edu on Sun, Nov 26, 2000 at 10:55:19AM -0600 References: <3A214077.390EC2A9@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <20001126121013.A3691@flatland.dimensional.com> >Have come across a couple of reviews of that Donald Foster book (Author >Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous {New York: Henry Holt, 2000]) in the >past week or so. Unfortunately, doesn't look like our public library >system's ordered a copy yet, and I haven't had time to hunt it down (and >is the rest of it worth shelling out for? No. And I should say that some of Foster's assertions and his overall scholarship seem questionable to me (e.g., he misspells John Krafft's surname...sigh). The book seems to have been hastily cranked out for the Oprahbrow market. >Having not much read those letters myself, and, certainly, not with the >care many have devoted to them, I've no strong, much less set, opinion >on whether or not Pynchon wrote 'em, but I would note that, in regard to >Foster's attribution, those "In days of old when night were bold ..." >limericks are a subgenre perhaps second only to ones that begin to >"There was a young man from Nantucket" or somesuch, i.e., not all that >unusual (pace Tom Jones) ... Agreed, although the Hawkins stuff sold *so* poorly and remained so obscure that it's a stretch to imagine even TRP being familiar with it. In any case, this quatrain (not a limerick, methinks) didn't carry much weight with me, either, but Wanda's 1987 "Open Letter to Gary Snyder" in the AVA did. Wanda quoted a poem she claimed to have sent Snyder when his son was born, some 18 years previously. Foster contacted Snyder at UC Davis, where he taught, and he confirmed that the poem in question was written by Hawkins. (There's more corroborative evidence which I'm too slothful to type.) >Anyway, and, again, I imagine many of you are hip to this tip, but >Hollander does some pretty close reading of his own, and along lines >that Foster might not have pursued, adds a little legwork on who was >where and when, and makes a preety convincing case for Pynchon's >authorship, with some interesting ideas on just what the implications of >said attribution might be for reading the rest of the Pynchonian >oeuvre. I continue to share Dr. Krafft's skepticism (he sent Foster portions of Pynchon's original typescript of _Vineland_ to aid his research). Others, of course, are free to send Mr. Hollander money for the privilege of reading his opinions to the effect that Pynchon, writing as Wanda, called Alice Walker "a purple-assed baboon." :-) For me, the strangest thing about this story was thinking about Steve Moore, who had quite an interesting relationship with jack green himself, perusing these letters while writing the Foreword, unaware that the "Wanda" had corresponded with green and written a book called _Eve, The Common Muse of Henry Miller & Lawrence Durrell_, which asserted that green and William Gaddis were the same person. Ah, irony...now where the hell is William Gass when we need him?!!? (Apologies for any missing characters...my keyboard seems to be dying!) -- Alan Westrope Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. From JBFRAME at aol.com Sun Nov 26 15:53:58 2000 From: JBFRAME at aol.com (JBFRAME at aol.com) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 16:53:58 EST Subject: vv (5): business ethics Message-ID: Business ethics? Isn't that an oxymoron? From jbor at bigpond.com Sun Nov 26 16:15:42 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 09:15:42 +1100 Subject: Wanda Unveiled Message-ID: <22050361602877@domain4.bigpond.com> O what a tangled web we weave ... I had marvelled at Steven Moore's involvement in the publication of those letters too. However, I must admit that on first reading jack green's fire the bastards! my gut reaction was that it was Gaddis purging spleen and vindicating himself (something about the timing, context and the invective tone therein). Never so with the Tinasky blather and Pynchon, however. There is a parenthetical remark on this site to the effect that Pynchon made a statement of denial to CNN about the letters, which I haven't heard corroborated elsewhere but which, if so, should have put the hoax to bed long ago: http://www.altculture.com/aentries/p/pynchon.html On a cursory reading the Tinasky letters seemed to me to have emanated from some self-proclaimed "genius" so bitter and twisted about its own lack of acclaim that it had taken the opportunity to run down everybody and anybody it could in a frenzy of churlishness, much of it directed against contemporary poets and poetry. While Hawkins certainly does fit that m.o., Pynchon obviously doesn't, and to accuse him of such feeble imposture seemed to me to be a kind of defamation in itself. In fact, it almost appears that those who wished (and still wish, apparently) to "unveil" TRP as Wanda bear some sort of resentment or jealousy towards him and his reputation, and which is all tied up with their motives for so doing. best ---------- >From: Alan Westrope >To: pynchon-l at waste.org >Subject: Re: Wanda Unveiled >Date: Mon, Nov 27, 2000, 6:10 AM snip > > For me, the strangest thing about this story was thinking about Steve > Moore, who had quite an interesting relationship with jack green himself, > perusing these letters while writing the Foreword, unaware that the "Wanda" > had corresponded with green and written a book called _Eve, The Common > Muse of Henry Miller & Lawrence Durrell_, which asserted that green > and William Gaddis were the same person. Ah, irony...now where the hell > is William Gass when we need him?!!? > From Ivan.Z.Cestero at Dartmouth.EDU Sun Nov 26 16:11:49 2000 From: Ivan.Z.Cestero at Dartmouth.EDU (Ivan Z. Cestero) Date: 26 Nov 2000 17:11:49 EST Subject: vv (5): business ethics Message-ID: <43410588@donner.Dartmouth.EDU> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 291 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jbor at bigpond.com Sun Nov 26 16:53:17 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 09:53:17 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary Message-ID: <22423395104402@domain6.bigpond.com> Just to clarify: i Day. In Alexandria (64.3). Narrated by P. Aeuil, a waiter. ii That evening. In Alexandria, at the Austrian consulate party. Narrated by Yuef the factotum. iii Later that evening. In Alexandria, after the consulate party. Narrated by "Maxwell Rowley-Bugge", a peregrine and fraud. iv Morning. Aboard the Alexandria-Cairo train. Narrated by Waldetar the conductor. v Afternoon. In Cairo. (83.11) Narrated by Gebrail the carriage driver. vi "Three in the morning." In Cairo. (85.2 up) Narrated by Girgis the mountebank. vii Afternoon. In Cairo. (92.22, 93.2) Narrated by Hanne the barmaid. viii That night. In Cairo at the opera. Narrated in the filmic present tense. best From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 26 17:38:13 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 18:38:13 -0500 Subject: VV(5) Notes p. 74-90 References: <3A20EC08.7E4B2B94@teleport.com> Message-ID: <3A219EE5.A38BF60B@earthlink.net> jill wrote: > > 75-Ptolemy Theos Philopator (the Ptolemy VIII, 63-47 BC) King of Egypt > (51-47) Ruling jointly with his sister and wife Cleopatra VII until he and > his advisor expelled her in 48. He murdered Pompey after his defeat by > Caesar, hoping for Caesar's favor, but when Caesar reinstated Cleopatra, > Ptolomy opposed him and was killed...This reminds me of the mixed > impressions of the relationship of Victoria Wren to Alastair, being > interpreted as both his wife, mistress and daugter. Also, there is a > Ptolemy IV (Ptolemy Philopator) (tol´umE filop´utur) king of ancient Egypt > (221-205 B.C.), of the Macedonian dynasty, son of Ptolemy III and Berenice > of Cyrene. He had his mother, his brother, his uncle, and possibly his wife > (who was his sister Arsinoë) killed. Antiochus III invaded the Egyptian > lands in Palestine, and Ptolemy managed to defeat him at Raphia in 217 (an > event mentioned in 2 Maccabees), but administration disintegrated in Egypt. > Ptolemy's main interest was building remarkable ships, each equipped with > 4,000 oars. Ptolemaic system is a universe in which spheres, containing the > orbits of Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn surround the earth > or something like that. I think this is a very important point, anyone know how to convert the Jewish year 3554? That should tell us, right? Pynchon likes to play with calendars. http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm#Months Anyway, I think I mentioned, maybe not, maybe it was Thomas E., hope Thomas will post more soon, chapter 86, the tail, of The Whale or Moby-Dick. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Sun Nov 26 21:20:49 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 22:20:49 -0500 Subject: V's and Quincunxes: Pynchon, Browne, Galton, etc. References: <200011172224.QAA11776@waste.org> <3A19AC8E.9B10A399@condor.depaul.edu> Message-ID: <3A21D311.1E817529@earthlink.net> David Simpson wrote: > > Not sure if this is the proper place to insert some different stuff into the V. discussion snip In this respect, "The Garden of Cyrus" is a typical, if extreme, contribution to the literature of Natural Theology and to the tradition of cosmic piety (the belief that universal order is the hallmark of a benevolent Creator). Of course, as P-listers are fully aware, such a belief is the exact opposite of the Gnostic (and > more Stencilian, and Pynchonian) view. To the Gnostic eye, such revelations of order and system are more terrifying than edifying for they betoken the presence not of a divine > Savior-Creator but of the sinister Archons, the ruler-creators of the cosmic Jail. Gnostics believed in a spiritual form of light, a preternatural Light, existing beyond the dualism of light and darkness, a light that has and casts no shadow, in fact it has no form, and it is immutable. Because of a cosmological drama, explained differently by various sects, the preternatural light became imprisoned, and for Gnostics, redemption is tantamount to collecting, salvaging, and carrying to heaven the sparks of this divine light. In GR Pynchon inverts the myth. Remember, the world in Pynchon's fiction is often inverted, so in GR the divine light of the Gnostics ("the pure light of the Zero" , "the light of "revelation", "the light of illumination") which emanates from the "Center" or the "the zero" is Not a Pleromatic light but a terrifying and destructive radiance, identified with the brightness of the Rocket. This is the light shining from "the Presence feared and wanted." This is the light that is "definitely not human" but of perfect whiteness and void of heat just like the "Poisonous Angel", this is the light in "all its bleaching and terror" that is totally indifferent to humanity. That Pynchon, he does like those books that Father Fagoe said we could only read as tales. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09495a.htm III Maccabees The Greek book called The Third Book of Maccabees itself has nothing to do with the Maccabean period. Its content is a legend, a miraculous story of deliverance, which is also independently told--in another historical context--by Josephus (Against Apion II, 5). In III Maccabees the story takes place during the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator (reigned 221-203 BCE). The central episode of the book is the oppression of Egyptian Jews, culminating with an anti-Jewish decree by the King. The Jews who were registered for execution were brought into the hippodrome outside of Alexandria; the King had ordered 500 elephants to be drugged with incense and wine for the purpose of crushing the Jews, but by God's intercession "the beasts turned round against the armed hosts [of the king] and began to tread them under foot and destroy them." The Jews fixed annual celebrations of this deliverance. The book was probably written at the end of the 1st century BCE by an Alexandrian Jew in a period of high anti-Jewish tension. Next, The Kirghiz Light and The Kalahari Light: The old aqyn and the "bodhisattva" Mondaugen. From dedalus204 at mediaone.net Sun Nov 26 22:48:01 2000 From: dedalus204 at mediaone.net (Dedalus) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 22:48:01 -0600 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <22423395104402@domain6.bigpond.com> Message-ID: <3A21E781.D6D44EE1@mediaone.net> Just to split hairs: None of these sections is actually "narrated" by these characters. Yes, the episodes focus on each respective character, and occasionally dip liberally into the thoughts of these characters, but there is a "typical" (if there CAN be a typical) Pynchonesque third-person narrator here who occasionally comments on the action taking place. The narrator is separate from each episode's "protagonist." We now return you to your regularly scheduled e-mail, already in progress. Dedalus jbor wrote: > Just to clarify: > > i Day. In Alexandria (64.3). Narrated by P. Aeuil, a waiter. > > ii That evening. In Alexandria, at the Austrian consulate party. Narrated by > Yuef the factotum. > > iii Later that evening. In Alexandria, after the consulate party. Narrated > by "Maxwell Rowley-Bugge", a peregrine and fraud. > > iv Morning. Aboard the Alexandria-Cairo train. Narrated by Waldetar the > conductor. > > v Afternoon. In Cairo. (83.11) Narrated by Gebrail the carriage driver. > > vi "Three in the morning." In Cairo. (85.2 up) Narrated by Girgis the > mountebank. > > vii Afternoon. In Cairo. (92.22, 93.2) Narrated by Hanne the barmaid. > > viii That night. In Cairo at the opera. Narrated in the filmic present > tense. > > best From pmackin at clark.net Mon Nov 27 07:22:03 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 08:22:03 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <22423395104402@domain6.bigpond.com> <3A21E781.D6D44EE1@mediaone.net> Message-ID: <004001c05875$09034100$5695fea9@pmackin> Just to further split infinitives I thought the chapter introduction led us to believe it was Herbert himself who is "narrating" these imagined events--forcible dislocation of personality being his narrational technique. But who can really say. P. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dedalus" To: "jbor" ; "Pynchon-L" Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2000 11:48 PM Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary > Just to split hairs: > > None of these sections is actually "narrated" by these characters. Yes, the > episodes focus on each respective character, and occasionally dip liberally into > the thoughts of these characters, but there is a "typical" (if there CAN be a > typical) Pynchonesque third-person narrator here who occasionally comments on > the action taking place. The narrator is separate from each episode's > "protagonist." > > We now return you to your regularly scheduled e-mail, already in progress. > > Dedalus > > jbor wrote: > > > Just to clarify: > > > > i Day. In Alexandria (64.3). Narrated by P. Aeuil, a waiter. > > > > ii That evening. In Alexandria, at the Austrian consulate party. Narrated by > > Yuef the factotum. > > > > iii Later that evening. In Alexandria, after the consulate party. Narrated > > by "Maxwell Rowley-Bugge", a peregrine and fraud. > > > > iv Morning. Aboard the Alexandria-Cairo train. Narrated by Waldetar the > > conductor. > > > > v Afternoon. In Cairo. (83.11) Narrated by Gebrail the carriage driver. > > > > vi "Three in the morning." In Cairo. (85.2 up) Narrated by Girgis the > > mountebank. > > > > vii Afternoon. In Cairo. (92.22, 93.2) Narrated by Hanne the barmaid. > > > > viii That night. In Cairo at the opera. Narrated in the filmic present > > tense. > > > > best > From grladams at teleport.com Mon Nov 27 08:15:16 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 06:15:16 -0800 Subject: Fwd: VV Lord Cromer/Hippodrome Message-ID: <3A226C74.3C91D150@teleport.com> The altruism that British versions of why the fuss in Egypt make it sound like they are stemming the slave trade. Well, here's an odd combination of things that make you wonder about that. It also shows you that perhaps, Lord Cromer had the right intentions with this matter, but was powerless to intervene. -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Jill Adams Subject: VV Lord Cromer/Hippodrome... Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 05:54:23 -0800 (PST) Size: 2840 URL: From grladams at teleport.com Mon Nov 27 08:15:51 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 06:15:51 -0800 Subject: Fwd: VV(5)Manon Lescaut Message-ID: <3A226C97.3A10584D@teleport.com> Here's the synopsis of this opera. -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Jill Adams Subject: VV(5)Manon Lescaut Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 06:00:18 -0800 (PST) Size: 6076 URL: From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Mon Nov 27 08:29:02 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 14:29:02 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pttolemy... In-Reply-To: <3A219EE5.A38BF60B@earthlink.net> Message-ID: Since I don't have V to hand, I apologise in advance in case any of the following is irrelevant... 1. Re. Ptlomey P. , This period is a major shift in the classical world, when the capital of greece (hello western civilisation!) moved to Alexandria. This opened up new doors for the Greeks, making their culture a lot less static. hellenistic Literatue begann in this period, under the strong influence of patronage (cf. Theocritus Idylls). also a time when greeks were uncertain about their nationality and felt need to reassert itself... 2. Ancient astrology: Ancient Messopotamia - - Mul anin text lists constellations in 3 broad bands (each of which is the path of a God). There are 17 constellations. - Zodiac split into codecatemories (Each zodiac sign has micro-Zodiac), built on a numeral (NOT geometric, that's Greece) relationship , with a sexagasimal place-value system. Ancient Egypt - no place value system. - clandar = 12 months of 30 days with 5 epagomenal (extra) days, (cf. game of Chess) Ptolemaic Egypt (I forget which one): Zodiac included the messopotamian constellations of the Balance and the scorpion. The balance was know also known as "The Horizon" (cf. horus imagery). -look out for thoth God of writing, change (equivalent of Hermes) - 36 constellations called 2baiku" or "decans" PRINCIPLES OF ANCIENT ASTRONOMY: - Sun centred - Jupiter/moon/Venus = Benefic influences Saturn/Mars = Malefic Influences Sun/Mercury = Mixed Influences (Mercury being more a transitional element).. - Notions of Astral influence: Ptolemy: 4 elements - hot + moist = benefic, fertile & active - dry & cold = destructive/passive forces - Moisture= feminine (Venus + Moon) - mercury= hermaphrodidic ie. dry & moist - Goddess ishtar = mother of universe but/ there are two views of her 1. Greece= goddess of voluptuous love 2. Egyptians = purity and Grace therefore i would suggest her to be a transition figure, correspondent to Mercury (the hermaphrodite) hope this helps, mark From scuffling at hotmail.com Mon Nov 27 09:19:20 2000 From: scuffling at hotmail.com (Musashi Miyamoto) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 10:19:20 -0500 Subject: Today in History: WW2 French Bravery Message-ID: 1942: French Navy Sank Its Own Ships During WWII, German armored forces entered the port of Toulon, on the Mediterranean coast of France, where most of the French fleet was anchored in the harbor. Their mission was to capture the ships, but the French were warned in time. On orders from Admiral Jean-Baptiste Laborde, they deliberately sank their own ships to prevent them from being used by the Germans. Altogether, the French navy scuttled 73 of their ships, including three battleships, seven cruisers, thirty destroyers, and sixteen submarines. Some French captains chose to go down with their ships. AsB4, Henry Mus From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 27 09:16:07 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 10:16:07 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <22423395104402@domain6.bigpond.com> <3A21E781.D6D44EE1@mediaone.net> <004001c05875$09034100$5695fea9@pmackin> Message-ID: <3A227AB7.CB2AE72B@earthlink.net> Paul Mackin wrote: > > Just to further split infinitives I thought the chapter introduction led us > to believe it was Herbert himself who is "narrating" these imagined > events--forcible dislocation of personality being his narrational technique. > > But who can really say. Yes, we can split it again and again, we can say, but we will no doubt be unsaid by another reading, perhaps our own, perhaps another's. Those two critics, M&M, or after 30 years a fine essay, Finding V., I think, undone too by the Mother of Stencil problem and the Phoenicians, the stuff that dissertations are made on, dreams and a forcible dislocation of the senses... but so what? Wanda this or Wanda that, Wanda about it, it's all fun and if it ain't why have you read The Game Players Of Titan yet? So in the margins of my V., to the last paragraphs of part IV of Chapter 3, I wrote, See Bertrand Russell's ABC of Relativity and Baedecker and I noted also that the Waldeter's have interesting names. Manoel, now I have a friend named Manoel, he's from the Bronx, and it's popular name in Catholic neighborhoods up town, in Portugal, in Puerto Rico, but that's a hebrew name here too, oh come, oh come, oh come Emmanuel, that's a nice song for a sailor's grave on Christmas Eve, god is with us, my Latin is getting mixed with my Spanish these days, some day that Portuguese, but...this will show up later in the novel: http://www.teatrumanoel.com.mt/ Antonia, the female Anthony is a Roman name. Pynchon needs a Roman and a Roman Catholic, that's Maria, the mother of Jesus. The wife is Nita or Hannah, or Grace, full of it Terrance, yes, full of something here, that Samuel's Mom, I think, and Nita is gunna have a boy, maybe a boy, and the other child here is not quite theirs, it's Mildred, tough English sister of Victoria, Victoria is a English Catholic, so I guess Mildred is a tough little Catholic kid too, with a rock held to her bosom. The train snorts and so does the conductor, the humans are steam engines and the steam engines are human--very Dickensian. The humans, products of the Benedictine's Profit and Loss Capitalism and Canonical Time, are scheduled, chartered like London, but the train has an internal clock no human can discern, tourists in a Baedeker city, in a two dimensional Catholic nightmare covering the world with Hard and fixed Times and Bleak Houses on the tracks where the ghosts of fellahin rise from the engineering exploits that are described and are incised in the Lost, the storms and the earthquakes, the sea, god, by accident or design, a god may keep from harm, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm, the little Blake boy like Slothrop cries (s) weeep, but elephants like men have souls, and men with elephants of steam may build a cataclysm and has god blessed the peasants with a son under the engines of fortune and virtue and time? From millison at online-journalist.com Mon Nov 27 10:00:46 2000 From: millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 09:00:46 -0700 Subject: NP odd book titles Message-ID: Voting has been taking place at for the _Bookseller_ magazine's annual contest to find the oddest book title of the year. Currently leading is _High-Performance Stiffened Structures_, followed by _Whose Bottom?: A Lift-the-Flap Book_. Now trailing are: _Psoriasis at Your Fingertips_, _The Sexual Male: Problems and Solutions_, _Did Lewis Carroll Visit Llandudno?_, and _Woodcarving with a Chainsaw_, which has been on the list in previous years. If you want to add your vote, there's just time! from: World Wide Words -- 25 Nov 00 From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Mon Nov 27 12:36:37 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Das Narren Schyff) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 13:36:37 -0500 Subject: Pttolemy... References: Message-ID: <3A22A9B5.BC161F6A@earthlink.net> Yes, all very helpful, thanks and thanks Jill, the essay I mentioned, is Kupsch, Kenneth, Finding V.. Vol. 44, Twentieth Century Literature, 12-22-1998, pp 428(1). Kupsch makes judicious use of Gibbon, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 7 vols. New York: Modern Library, It is hardly necessary to rehearse the specific emphasis that V. places on Roman Catholicism. What may not be so obvious to all readers is how the early Roman Church came to distinguish itself on a matter of important religions doctrine. Briefly stated, the early Christians were extremely fractious, and the chief theological question dividing them concerned the nature of Christ. Specifically, was Christ or was He not consubstantial with God the Father and thus Himself a deity? The powerful and growing faction known as Arianism held essentially that He was not. The first Council of Nicaea in 325, convened during the reign of Constantine, helped formally stem the tide of this religious heterodoxy. As Edward Gibbon put it: "The Consubstantialists, who by their success have deserved and obtained the title of Catholics, gloried in the simplicity and steadiness of the their own creed, and insulted the repeated variations of their adversaries, who were destitute of any certain rule of faith" (1: 687). Although this fundamental article of Christian faith would receive the unanimous consent of the later Greek, Oriental, and Protestant churches, it was the Latin church that, after adoption of the Nicene Creed, became most powerfully identified with establishing the doctrine that Christ was Himself a deity. Moreover, it is the Latin church that, through its nearly unbroken papal line, can be said to date directly back to the life of Christ. All of which brings us to the woman of the historical episodes. However, before entering upon that discussion, I should like to say a few words more about V.'s Roman Catholic phase. Because Pynchon rejects the more obvious choice of the Virgin Mary in favor of Christ, and in particular the story of Christ as advanced by the Roman Catholic Church, it may at first be thought that the idea of V. loses consistency after its first three phases. But it does not, if properly considered. I daresay that much of the dispute concerning the rightful genders of dieties has less to do with our gender bias than with our bias for gender - that is, with our human incapacity for imagining sentient beings other than ourselves without imposing upon them some notion of gender. Yet why should we do this? Again I cite Gibbon: The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings. (1: 382-83) Whether or not Pynchon had actually read Gibbon, it would be difficult to find a passage more saliently attuned to the novel he has written. For not only is the idea of "Religion as she" one that the novel unquestionably seeks to invoke, but so too is the notion of a deity in human form taking up residence among a race of inferiors. In V. this happens at the transitional moment between phases, and readers are given a second glimpse of the phenomenon in the person of Victoria Wren. If Pynchon hasn't read Gibbon, read all of Volume One, well looked in the index and or concordance and... I'll eat my hat, crunch, of course I thought he'd read Mumford, he does say to "read Mumford", crunch...but it's OK to be wrong, the correct answer is so over rated, it's a good way to learn, get it wong, have a friend, a teacher, a student, help you get it better, of course it's nice to have teacher-students that understand this, Pointsman's an asshole we don't need in the "classroom." And if Pynchon hasn't read Volume One of Gibbon, you all that know him so well know what to get him for whatever holiday(s) he's celebrating this season. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/arts/27WAGN.html From pmackin at clark.net Mon Nov 27 13:46:36 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 14:46:36 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <22423395104402@domain6.bigpond.com> <3A21E781.D6D44EE1@mediaone.net> <004001c05875$09034100$5695fea9@pmackin> <3A227AB7.CB2AE72B@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <001101c058aa$c1b7b2a0$5695fea9@pmackin> >From Terrance: > > But who can really say. > > Yes, we can split it again and again, we can say, but we > will no doubt be unsaid by another reading, perhaps our own, > perhaps another's. That's the thing I remember most about the book--that in the end it's so unresolvable. Things are over connected. Jill said something like this yesterday. Read chapter 3 yesterday just to know what people are talking about. Noticed there's still another V I'd forgotten about, namely Varkunian the pimp, an acquaintance of Hanne whom she overhears talking to Porpentine. A question: what's the significance of the smashing of Lepsius's blue glasses? Hanne WANTS to smash them and Porpentine actually does--in section viii. Does this indicate some mysterious link between Hanne and Porpentine. In addition of course to the one between Herbert and Porpentine. Or is Hanne just generally fed up with men and politics? Questions, questions . . . P. From richardromeo at hotmail.com Mon Nov 27 19:46:24 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 19:46:24 Subject: More Word on Agape Agape--NP Message-ID: Victoria Harding posted this on the gaddis list. enjoy "Peter Dempsey's essay, posted to this list on December 18, 1998, the day after Gaddis died, is on the annotations site as a general introduction. It will have an addendum on Agape Agape by Steven Moore added to the works section shortly. http://www.gaddisannotations.net/life&work.html" Rich _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From jbor at bigpond.com Mon Nov 27 15:06:08 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 08:06:08 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary Message-ID: <20550823301665@domain1.bigpond.com> Quite right, Paul. And to elicit the narration from what are only "veiled references" Herbert assumes the eight identities ("impersonation and dream" 63.22). So what we get is third person narration which is filtered through the point of view of the various characters Stencil has invented for the purpose, something which is quite different from a traditional detached and omniscient narrator. Otherwise the "story" would be much clearer. This narrative filtering through his characters' psyches is a typical Pynchonian technique. Except for section viii of course, where Stencil fancies himself as a camera lens (which is, of course, a further extension of the general method). best ---------- >From: "Paul Mackin" >To: "Pynchon-L" >Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary >Date: Tue, Nov 28, 2000, 12:22 AM > > Just to further split infinitives I thought the chapter introduction led us > to believe it was Herbert himself who is "narrating" these imagined > events--forcible dislocation of personality being his narrational technique. > > But who can really say. > > P. From jbor at bigpond.com Mon Nov 27 15:20:14 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 08:20:14 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary Message-ID: <21091326402004@domain1.bigpond.com> I love the V-image of the stain which finally "swam somewhere over the crowd, like a tongue on Pentecost" for poor harried Hanne in Section vii. The synaesthesia of the stain being "the color of her headache" (90.4 up) is something borrowed from one of Pynchon's mooted masters, V. Nabokov, perhaps the archetypal synaesthete. Other artistic figures thought to have been "afflicted" by synaesthesia include Beethoven, Rimbaud, Kandinsky, Joyce and David Hockney. See Richard E. Cytowic, _Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses_, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1989. best ---------- >From: "Paul Mackin" >To: "Pynchon-L" >Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary >Date: Tue, Nov 28, 2000, 6:46 AM > > A question: what's the significance of the smashing of Lepsius's blue > glasses? Hanne WANTS to smash them and Porpentine actually does--in section > viii. Does this indicate some mysterious link between Hanne and Porpentine. > In addition of course to the one between Herbert and Porpentine. Or is Hanne > just generally fed up with men and politics? Questions, questions . . . From pmackin at clark.net Mon Nov 27 16:27:47 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 17:27:47 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <21091326402004@domain1.bigpond.com> Message-ID: <001a01c058c1$45ca6b80$5695fea9@pmackin> Yes the stain makes Hanne special among the observers--more truly connected to the main story and V. Hers of the 7 (?) is the only emotional attachment with one of the principals--other than generalized hatred and resentment. I know that for her love must be but a word--but a word she still likes. She is not the only European even, because there is the sephardic. But anyway, yes, the synaesthesia is an important and satisfying enhancement to what might have worn a bit repetitive. P. ----- Original Message ----- From: "jbor" To: "Paul Mackin" Cc: Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 4:20 PM Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary > > I love the V-image of the stain which finally "swam somewhere over the > crowd, like a tongue on Pentecost" for poor harried Hanne in Section vii. > The synaesthesia of the stain being "the color of her headache" (90.4 up) is > something borrowed from one of Pynchon's mooted masters, V. Nabokov, perhaps > the archetypal synaesthete. Other artistic figures thought to have been > "afflicted" by synaesthesia include Beethoven, Rimbaud, Kandinsky, Joyce and > David Hockney. > > See Richard E. Cytowic, _Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses_, > Springer-Verlag, New York, 1989. > > best > > ---------- > >From: "Paul Mackin" > >To: "Pynchon-L" > >Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary > >Date: Tue, Nov 28, 2000, 6:46 AM > > > > > A question: what's the significance of the smashing of Lepsius's blue > > glasses? Hanne WANTS to smash them and Porpentine actually does--in section > > viii. Does this indicate some mysterious link between Hanne and Porpentine. > > In addition of course to the one between Herbert and Porpentine. Or is Hanne > > just generally fed up with men and politics? Questions, questions . . . From richardromeo at hotmail.com Mon Nov 27 22:28:19 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 22:28:19 Subject: NP--Book Request Message-ID: Hi all-- I'm trying to track down a fairly recent book about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa called "From Biko to Basson" by Wendy Orr. I believe the publisher is either Contra or Venture, might be a South African publisher, but I'm not sure. Thx Much. Rich _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From jeremy at xyris.com Mon Nov 27 21:56:33 2000 From: jeremy at xyris.com (Jeremy Osner) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 22:56:33 -0500 Subject: [Fwd: Quantum Election Theory] Message-ID: <3A232CF1.56E0D453@xyris.com> From: "Maddux, William" http://www.unionrecord.com/opinion/display.php?ID=231 Looks like the numbers add up to Jesse Ventura in 2004 Bill From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Tue Nov 28 02:22:52 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 08:22:52 +0000 (GMT) Subject: A rather too damn obvious pun! Message-ID: Boticelli's: The Birth of V-ness... ark From jedpolak at mac.com Tue Nov 28 03:40:48 2000 From: jedpolak at mac.com (Jedrzej Polak) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 10:40:48 +0100 Subject: long live the queen In-Reply-To: <0689D3A236E75C39*/c=us/admd=attmail/prmd=disney/o=CCORL2/s=Jaworowski/g=Mariusz/@MHS> Message-ID: > NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE > > To the citizens of the United States of America, > > > > In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby > give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. > > Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, > commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime > minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that > there is a world outside your borders) > will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate > will be disbanded. > > A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. > > To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with > immediate effect: > > 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. > Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly > you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. > Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as > "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up > "interspersed". > > 2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. > > 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. > > 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. > > > 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully > carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through. > > > 6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to > as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a > world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will > no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. > > Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough > will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve > stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are > hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005. > > 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any > maird. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should > count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Maird" is French for you > know what. > > > > 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in > England. It will be called "Indecisive Day". > > > > 9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we > show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. > > > 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy. > > Thank you for your cooperation. HRH QE2 From monroe at mpm.edu Tue Nov 28 05:12:19 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 05:12:19 -0600 Subject: Eddins, "Depraved New World" Message-ID: <3A239311.A76D33C1@mpm.edu> >From Dwight Eddins, The Gnostic Pynchon (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000), Chapter Three, "Depraved New World: Gnostic History in V.," pp. 50-88: ... we find V. in Florence, that center of Machiavellian virtu, i.e., of political machination at its most cynical and cunning. It is significan that her nascent political convictions include a detestation of socialists and anarchists. The latter will come to symbolize, in Gravity's Rainbow, a love of freedom and natural process at odds with gnostic designs of control; and V. herself, within the next twenty years, will be in the service of fascistic plots designed to suppress freedom through the cynical and extremist exercise of virtu. Fascism is singled out by Voegelin as an example of the modern gnosticism that preaches order while ultimately bringing chaos. Virtu is a tool for limited political objectives is not incompatable with metaxic order; carried to hubristic extremnes, however, it results in the collapse of this order and becomes the ally, often inadvertent, of entropy and death. (63) [In an endnote to the second-to-last sentence there, Eddins writes, "See especially Chapter IV of The New Science of Politics ... where Voegelin singles out National Socialism as an exmaple of 'Gnostic politics' ..."; The Gnostic Pynchon, p. 159, n. 14. To continue ...] This development in V.'s politics is an outgrowth of the imperialistic brand of Catholicism that she had embraced as a child and that lends itself to a process which conflates politics and religion into an increasingly gnosticized whole. Within the few months since her "deflowering" by Goodfellow, this ex-virgin has slept with three other men for payment, episodes taht she regards in her "outre brand" of Catholicism as "outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace belonging to Victoria alone" ([V.,] p. 167) and as a surrogate consummation with Christ himself. This peculiar sort of hubris, which allows her to invert the normative values of the church for her benefit in the name of a private and unique relationship to deity, is gnostic in nature, as is the air of metaphysical aggressiveness implied by "a nunlike temperament pushed to its most dangerous extreme." By pointing out that "in Paris similarly-mindewd ladies were attending Black Masses," pynchon suggests V.'s association with the systematic descration of sacred symbols and the reconsecration of them in the service of demonic forces. In the case of V.'s increasingly perverted sacrality, such transvaluation will finally amount to the elevating of teh entropic vortex over a vital spiritual order and of inhuman stasis over human development. (63-4) ... hm, maybe it's time to petition Indiana University Press to put Eddins' book back into print--by far one of the most interesting and useful pieces of Pynchoniana around. Anyway, "Victoria is a Catholic," indeed, but hardly, er, orthodox ... From pmackin at clark.net Tue Nov 28 05:50:21 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 06:50:21 -0500 Subject: Eddins, "Depraved New World" References: <3A239311.A76D33C1@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <007101c05931$63c81360$5695fea9@pmackin> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Monroe" > ... hm, maybe it's time to petition Indiana University Press to put > Eddins' book back into print--by far one of the most interesting and > useful pieces of Pynchoniana around. Anyway, "Victoria is a Catholic," > indeed, but hardly, er, orthodox ... A cafeteria Catholic they used to say--goes through the line and takes what appeals. Hope someday to read The Gnostic Pynchon. P. From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Tue Nov 28 07:38:14 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 13:38:14 +0000 (GMT) Subject: sigh... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: look I've already had this email about 15 times over the past week. Anyone wishing to send me another can not if he/she doesn't mind. Mark On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Jedrzej Polak wrote: > > NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE > > > > To the citizens of the United States of America, > > > > > > > > In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to > govern yourselves, we hereby > > give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. > > > > Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over > all states, > > commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. > Your new prime > > minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until > now been unaware that > > there is a world outside your borders) > > will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. > Congress and the Senate > > will be disbanded. > > > > A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you > noticed. > > > > To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules > are introduced with > > immediate effect: > > > > 1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. > > Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at > just how wrongly > > you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to > acceptable levels. > > Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with > filler noises such as > > "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of > communication. Look up > > "interspersed". > > > > 2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your > behalf. > > > > 3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It > really isn't that hard. > > > > 4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good > guys. > > > > > > 5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but > only after fully > > carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half > way through. > > > > > > 6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of > football. What you refer to > > as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware > that there is a > > world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" > football. You will > > no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. > > > > Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult > game. Those of you brave enough > > will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American > "football", but does not involve > > stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour > like nancies). We are > > hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005. > > > > 7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they > give you any > > maird. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your > borders should > > count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Maird" is > French for you > > know what. > > > > > > > > 8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national > holiday, but only in > > England. It will be called "Indecisive Day". > > > > > > > > 9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own > good. When we > > show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. > > > > > > 10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy. > > > > Thank you for your cooperation. HRH QE2 > > From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 28 08:18:30 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Das Narren Schyff) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 09:18:30 -0500 Subject: Eddins, "Depraved New World" References: <3A239311.A76D33C1@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <3A23BEB6.94FF6F5B@earthlink.net> Dave Monroe wrote: > > ... hm, maybe it's time to petition Indiana University Press to put > Eddins' book back into print--by far one of the most interesting and > useful pieces of Pynchoniana around. Anyway, "Victoria is a Catholic," > indeed, but hardly, er, orthodox ... She leaves the convent after only a few weeks because she wants to be THE (Eddins calls this desire "symptomatic of the usurping temperament of gnosticism" GP.60,) Bride of Christ. Victoria is a Catholic, this is the most important fact about her. Again, See http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/140615.htm With a heart no longer stony, thou canst see in these stone tablets a suitableness to that hard-hearted people; and at the same time thou canst find even there the stone, thy Bridegroom, described by Peter as "a living stone, rejected by men, but chosen of God, and precious." The gnosticizing of History--the plastic, pornographic, white, colonial Imperial History, (A Colonial God destroying the Aboriginal during the CATHOLIC MASS, Victoria is a Catholic, and she is also English) usurps the place of Humanity (the true Bride of the True Christ) and in the process the dispensation: The act of dispensing. b. Something dispensed. c. A specific arrangement or system by which something is dispensed. 2. An exemption or a release from an obligation or a rule, granted by or as if by an authority. 3.a. An exemption from a church law, a vow, or another similar obligation granted in a particular case by an ecclesiastical authority. b. The document containing this exemption. 4. Theology. a. The divine ordering of worldly affairs. b. A religious system or code of commands considered to have been divinely revealed or appointed. Prayed in the ghetto with my face in the cement, Heard the last moan of a good Priest seen the massacre of the innocent Felt his palms, arm and the switch, became nauseated. She's walking the streets while the Mass is desecrated. East of the Jordan, hard as the Rock of Gibraltar, I see the burning of the page, Curtain risin' on a new age, See the groom still waitin' at the altar. From kuznet at earthlink.net Mon Nov 27 17:57:22 2000 From: kuznet at earthlink.net (Kuznetsov Sergey) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 02:57:22 +0300 Subject: long live the queen References: Message-ID: <001301c058cd$d4fc0500$b58b273f@kuznetss> > > NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE > > > > To the citizens of the United States of America, I think, everybody know the joke. But I have a special one from Russia: After a few weeks of uncertanness the Americans ask Russia for help - I mean in the election things. The head of Russian Election Office arrives in the USA and next day announces that everything is ok. After the final count of bullots the new president of the States became Vladimir Putin. Sergey Kuznetsov Moscow, Russia now Bay-area, CA (unfortunatly the second Russian joke is ubtranslateble... it's the pun about names of Gore and Bush. Because bush is the Australian dessert (in English too), but "gore" is the form of noun "gory", the mountains) From keith at pfmentum.com Tue Nov 28 12:00:11 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 10:00:11 -0800 Subject: Quote For Today Message-ID: <002401c05965$1038c9e0$ad3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Query: Why is it that people today don't pay attention to ideas in art, while in other respects they demonstrate an absolutely ridiculous interest in "doctrines"? --Robert Musil From richardromeo at hotmail.com Tue Nov 28 18:08:35 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 18:08:35 Subject: Quote For Today Message-ID: not related man, but listening to John Prine last night: "If heartaches were commercials, we'd all be on TV" Rich >From: "s~Z" >Reply-To: "s~Z" >To: "Pynchlist" >Subject: Quote For Today >Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 10:00:11 -0800 > >Query: Why is it that people today don't pay attention >to ideas in art, while in other respects they demonstrate >an absolutely ridiculous interest in "doctrines"? > > --Robert Musil > > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Tue Nov 28 12:42:45 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Das Narren Schyff) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 13:42:45 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <22423395104402@domain6.bigpond.com> <3A21E781.D6D44EE1@mediaone.net> <004001c05875$09034100$5695fea9@pmackin> <3A227AB7.CB2AE72B@earthlink.net> <001101c058aa$c1b7b2a0$5695fea9@pmackin> Message-ID: <3A23FCA5.9EF1771D@earthlink.net> Paul Mackin wrote: > > That's the thing I remember most about the book--that in the end it's so > unresolvable. Things are over connected. Jill said something like this > yesterday. Read chapter 3 yesterday just to know what people are talking > about. Noticed there's still another V I'd forgotten about, namely Varkunian > the pimp, an acquaintance of Hanne whom she overhears talking to > Porpentine. > A question: what's the significance of the smashing of Lepsius's blue > glasses? Hanne WANTS to smash them and Porpentine actually does--in section > viii. Does this indicate some mysterious link between Hanne and Porpentine. > In addition of course to the one between Herbert and Porpentine. Or is Hanne > just generally fed up with men and politics? Questions, questions . . . > P. Parody, Comedy, Fantasy: Yes, over connected and thus unresolvable, questions and more questions, see Tim Ware's HyperArt, V Mysteries, that's Pynchon's parody, the V stain Pentecost is comedy, the shamrock wearing (what does the Baedeker say to wear) is a joke I'm sure Richard Farina would have gotten but few others) and of course we get the Fantastic, the blue eyes removed, the flames. All for the camera, but we also get, here and later on, the Pentecostal and Political, and these are not simply toys that Pynchon spins about to amuse us or to delight. When we read the novel not as postmodern politics would dictate, to discredit old notions, critical notions by the way, about satire and narrative, not as subversive indeterminacy, not as subversive fables, not as broken estates, not as critical projects determined not to teach clear moral precepts, determined to divide generatives like Twain and Wolfe from degeneratives like Hawkes and Pynchon, but as they are written, as paradoxical and "diological", where various modes of discourse are, in Pynchon now, agonistic and paradoxical, or strategically juxtaposed in order to effectuate or provoke a sustained ethical inquiry, not a hard fixed line between "good and evil" but a line nevertheless, we don't have to explain away what has been written by discrediting everything we read as subverted by how it is written and read, So for example, when Pynchon compares the genocide of the Herero with the Genocide of the Jews, not the blackest humor will erase that line. The moral norm may be ambiguous to a point, in doubt to a point, inconsistent and even duplicitous to a point, but even Pynchon's Irony and all his so called postmodern technique, not completely unlike Swift's, Melville's, but Perhaps problamatized further by the the disintegration of a supernatural order and authority, do not undermine the moral norm of his satires. As Eddins demonstrates, in Pynchon's fiction he begins with an existential Wasteland but quickly develops a cosmic chaos for a decadent culture where a malevolent inanimate force works to dehumanize and annihilate humanity and the earth. What Eddins discovers, and as VL and M&D confirm, what he calls Pynchon's "Orphic Naturalism", and that special Modernist Nostalgia is the Norm of Pynchon's satires. The Eye becomes a Rocket, NYC folk can go to Queens and check out shutters, sprockets and tubes, http://www.ammi.org/index2.html http://www.xs4all.nl/~jikje/indexns4.html From keith at pfmentum.com Tue Nov 28 13:58:41 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 11:58:41 -0800 Subject: Quote For Today Message-ID: <002501c05975$9cd4a080$983771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> not related man, but listening to John Prine last night: "If heartaches were commercials, we'd all be on TV" Rich The rest of that song is a good one for V. Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard ©John Prine The last time that I saw her She was standing in the rain With her overcoat under her arm Leaning on a horsehead cane She said "Carl, take all the money" She called everybody Carl "My spirit's broke" "My mind's a joke," "And getting up's real hard" Chorus Don't you know her When you see her? She grew up In your back yard Come back to us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard Selling bibles at the airports Buying quayludes on the phone Hey, you talk about A paper route She's a shut in without a home God save her, please She's nailed her knees To some drugstore parking lot Hey, Mr. Brown Turn the volume down I believe this evening's shot Repeat Chorus Can't you picture her next Thursday? Can you picture her at all? In the Hotel Boulderado At the dark end of the hall I gotta shake myself and wonder Why she even bothers me For if heartaches were commercials We'd all be on T.V. Repeat Chorus From jbor at bigpond.com Tue Nov 28 15:22:37 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 08:22:37 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary Message-ID: <21104937302046@domain3.bigpond.com> ---------- >From: "Paul Mackin" >To: "Pynchon-L" >Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary >Date: Tue, Nov 28, 2000, 6:46 AM > snip > A question: what's the significance of the smashing of Lepsius's blue > glasses? Hanne WANTS to smash them and Porpentine actually does--in section > viii. Does this indicate some mysterious link between Hanne and Porpentine. > In addition of course to the one between Herbert and Porpentine. Or is Hanne > just generally fed up with men and politics? Questions, questions . . . I think that Hanne is simply frustrated that Lepsius seems to be hiding behind those blue lenses. I guess that she can sense that he isn't being wholly straight with her; it is this intimation which has spurred her melancholy mood of the day. The blue eyeglasses are an outward manifestation or focus of this unease in her, a neurotic fixation. If she can smash the eyeglasses then all will be well, Lepsius will be true. It occurs to me that her tryst with him is only a very recent one; and from his point of view it is a totally opportunistic one of course, for he is using Hanne to spy for him. This is what she senses but is refusing to admit to herself. Hanne is clinging to a hope for honest love. In this respect it is quite a poignant cameo. Hanne isn't so young or beautiful that she will have many opportunities for happiness left; her boss keeps her on only because she is a stereotypical blonde and lusty wench of Bavarian bierehalle ilk. I think it's quite easy and much more interesting to try to engage with the characters at a human level rather than seeking after complicated symbologies all the time. The texture of the narrative is so much richer that way; and it's always more than likely that it's the ostensible symbolism which is in the eye of the beholder, far more so than character or plot(s) are. Imo anyway. best From grladams at teleport.com Tue Nov 28 23:14:23 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 21:14:23 -0800 Subject: VV(5) Porpentine--embarassed, bashful Message-ID: <3A2490AF.61E9EC19@teleport.com> Why is it that twice (or maybe more) we hear Porpentine described in a way that he seems to be pulling back, in retreat? Is this a kind of crablike walking that Pynchon is fond of? Once p. 65 when Mildred thrusts the rock out toward Porpentine and Goodfellow and Victoria says that she loves rocks and fossils. He retreats, embarrassed. Could he be feeling humour from a joke that she is playing, that the listener is to associate the age difference between Victoria and the men surrounding her at this time? Why embarrassment? Once when on the train p.79 when B-S is being mean to Mildred, Porpentine tells B-S to quit. B-S says "Why Porpentine." Vicious "Why. For her? Touched by her fright, are you. Or is it for yourself." Porpentine seemed to retreat bashfully. "One doesn't frighten a child, sir." -jill -jill From tsakabe at dohto.ac.jp Wed Nov 29 01:56:21 2000 From: tsakabe at dohto.ac.jp (Toshiyuki Sakabe) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 16:56:21 +0900 Subject: A Wild Sheep Chase Message-ID: <200011291656.EGI37530.BCLUFBT@dohto.ac.jp> Howdy! Something's happenning to world leaders. Presidential election in the states, Impeachment of Philipine president, a flight of Peruvian president Fujimori to Japan, nonconfidence of Japanese priminister Mori, etc. Anyway there is a phrase in English "A wild goose chase" Of course everybody knows what it is. There is a postmodern Japanese book by Haruki Murakami which is translated in English with the title called "A wild sheep chase". I think nobody has read it before. What I like to ask you all is what your impression is or what you think when you hear the title or the phrase "A wild sheep chase". I hope to get many feedback. Tosh From monroe at mpm.edu Wed Nov 29 02:38:31 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 02:38:31 -0600 Subject: long live the queen Message-ID: <3A24C086.CDCEBA32@mpm.edu> My favorite comment on the election came some time ago, from David Letterman, something to the effect of, "Gore vs. Bush? That's the same choice I face on cable television every night" ... From monroe at mpm.edu Wed Nov 29 02:46:34 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 02:46:34 -0600 Subject: Eddins, "Depraved New World" Message-ID: <3A24C26A.C96461DB@mpm.edu> ... as I like to say, Paul, I'm Catholic, practicing, but never seeming to get any better at it ... From monroe at mpm.edu Wed Nov 29 03:47:53 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 03:47:53 -0600 Subject: Hanafi, The Monster in the Machine Message-ID: <3A24D0C8.2E995AA6@mpm.edu> ... this just in, from Zakiya Hanafi, The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific revolution (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000), Chapter Three, "Monstrous Machines," pp. 53-96: What happened to sacred monsters during the rise of the materialist paradigm? did they really undergo accelerated secularization and lose their ancient association with divine forces, thus succumbing to teh widespread extermination of supernatural beings that took place during the century that gave rise to the Scientific Revolution? (53) ... an association with the sacred cannot always be characterized as a religious one. Angels and demons are supernatural and infranatural beings, but they also serve as what we would call natural forces: gravity and magnetism, for example, can be coherently described according to the precepts of natural magic as interactions between various kinds of spirits. Furthermore, although some monsters are figured as diabolical beings, not all demons are monstrous. Nor do "religious" thinkers necessarily perceive bodily deformation as a metaphysically meaningful sign. (53) ... there is at least one continuity in what constitutes monstrosity throughout Western culture. From the earliest written records to the present day, a necessary condition for defining a sacred monster is that which is inanimate yet moves of its own accord. Or, in the terms I have proposed: whenever spirit is called into or forcibly inhabits formed matter, there is a danger of monstrosity arising. (53-4) But what makes an automaton monstrous is not the arrangement of its parts (although the automaton is often form,ed to represnt a monster, a highly significant convergence). That is to say, the disposition of its limbs is not what makes it rare and extraordinary; that is not what makes it a monstrum. Rather, it is the fact that matter formed by artificial means and moving of its own volition would seem to be endowed with spirit. (54) According to my cognitive schema, then, the sacred monster did not die out; it transmuted and migrated into mechanical contrivances. The horror and fear provoked by appearances in nature of monstrous births moved over into the horror and fear provoked by our own artificial creations, where these affects have remianed lodged to this day. (54) ... an association with sacred retribution is strong: for example, the (well-founded) fears of ecological catastrophe that are projected onto apocalyptic visions of teh earth taking revenge; Philip K. dick's cybernetic nightmares, in which human and robotic consciousness disturbingly mingle and lose their distinctiveness; and the intersection of horror films with science fiction scenarios ... (55) In the seventeenth century this fear was expressed in terms of licit versus illicit magic: good magic operated by applying natural forces to one another, whereas bad magic obtained infranatural or diabolical aid. This distinction was never more crucial than in teh art of amking monsters, both organically produced hybrids and mechanical simulacra. (55) My interest is clear: to show that monstrosity and technical virtuosity tend to appear in the same discursive contexts ... Why do they appear together so often? (55) Perhaps the best way to approach this chapter is to understand it as an extended meditation on a comment Augustine made in regard to egyptian prcatices of creating false gods by calling demons into statues: "as if there were any unhappier situation than that of a man under the domination of his own inventions." (55) ... the Augustinian quote there is from the Penguin ed. of The City of God, p. 332, if anyone needs to know. The first endnote to this chapter is interesting as well: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has suggested in conversation that perception of form in general, and especially perception of monstrous form, is precisely what makes a monster not terrifying, since form allows the possibility of "hetero-reference." (the term comes from Luhmann.) Self and other depend on the establishment of difference and distance. Only when something is formless does it adhere mysteriously to and within the self, and this incapacity for heterogeneous reference is the most truly horrifying phenomenon: the unlocatable and seemingly unregulatable presence .... Monsters, in this view, actually become a comforting apparition: being able to identify them, define them, and perhaps even dissect them, renders them harmless. (226, n. 1) ... and note that ... A monstrum (from monere, to warn or threaten) was by definition a terrible prodigy, not for what it was in actuality--a piteously deformed infant destined to die quickly either by natural causes or by ritual scarifice--but for what it foretold. A sign of coming calamity, the monster was first and primarily a messenger from the other world. So if the barbarian was distinguished by making no sense, or nonsense, the monster, on the contrary, was distinguished by making several senses: by providing an oppositional corporeal limit to human definition; by eroding the strong conceptual differentiation between man and beast, man and demon, or man and god, pointing to pollution, transgression, a breakdown in social order; and by bearing a sign of warning from teh forces of the sacred. (3) ... the sacred, the profane, religion, technology, the angelic, the demonic, omens, monsters, automata, V., The Rocket, you name it ... From lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de Wed Nov 29 04:28:53 2000 From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:28:53 +0100 Subject: Quote For Today References: <002401c05965$1038c9e0$ad3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: <1414Tt-1sbHm4C@fwd05.sul.t-online.com> s~Z schrieb: > Query: Why is it that people today don't pay attention > to ideas in art, while in other respects they demonstrate > an absolutely ridiculous interest in "doctrines"? > > --Robert Musil that's because they want things to be structured like that: there's the serious every day life with its works and doctrines, and then there is the world of "art & leisure" which is to entertain & calm you down ... kai "möglichkeitssinn" lorentzen From mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk Wed Nov 29 05:31:05 2000 From: mdtb at st-andrews.ac.uk (Mark David Tristan Brenchley) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:31:05 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Quote For Today In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Richard Romeo wrote: > not related man, but listening to John Prine last night: > > "If heartaches were commercials, we'd all be on TV" > > Rich > > > >From: "s~Z" > >Reply-To: "s~Z" > >To: "Pynchlist" > >Subject: Quote For Today > >Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 10:00:11 -0800 > > > >Query: Why is it that people today don't pay attention > >to ideas in art, while in other respects they demonstrate > >an absolutely ridiculous interest in "doctrines"? > > > > --Robert Musil Actually, you could argue that people talk about nothing but ideas in art. The question is are the ideas either of any interest or value. This year's Turner PRize answers: No. As for the doctrines in Modern Art: Have you forgotten Young British Art, Neo-Dada, Stuckism... I hope so. regards Mark ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com > > From o.sell at telda.net Wed Nov 29 05:09:15 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:09:15 +0100 Subject: Quote For Today References: <002401c05965$1038c9e0$ad3771cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> <1414Tt-1sbHm4C@fwd05.sul.t-online.com> Message-ID: <00fb01c059f4$d0e90bc0$394b06d5@selltelda.net> The Sedative Aspect of Arts Reading this makes me think of the nazis' idea/doctrine of art, putting everything that we (here) call art in the thrash can of "Entartete Kunst" because it refused to fullfill the "entertain & calm you down"- function. best Otto ----- Original Message ----- From: Lorentzen / Nicklaus To: Cc: Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 11:28 AM Subject: Re: Quote For Today s~Z schrieb: > Query: Why is it that people today don't pay attention > to ideas in art, while in other respects they demonstrate > an absolutely ridiculous interest in "doctrines"? > > --Robert Musil that's because they want things to be structured like that: there's the serious every day life with its works and doctrines, and then there is the world of "art & leisure" which is to entertain & calm you down ... kai "möglichkeitssinn" lorentzen From pmackin at clark.net Wed Nov 29 06:27:54 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 07:27:54 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <21104937302046@domain3.bigpond.com> Message-ID: <002401c059ff$ccf33f80$64f1fea9@pmackin> Am in agreement with Rob that the STORY is what holds interest. Would it be too much of an exxageration (probably but what the heck) to say that, if anything, we sometimes need to PROTECT our author from his symbolizing rather that overly to draw attention to it? On a related matter P is criticized in some quarters for his allegorization. Am thinking of Wood. P CAN using jokey symbols to good effect perhaps--Jill's pointing out this morning the case of fossil and rock standing in for old geezer. Haven't really thought any of this through. As usual. But that's the fun of the p-list. P. ----- Original Message ----- From: "jbor" To: "Paul Mackin" Cc: Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2000 4:22 PM Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary > > > ---------- > >From: "Paul Mackin" > >To: "Pynchon-L" > >Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary > >Date: Tue, Nov 28, 2000, 6:46 AM > > > snip > > A question: what's the significance of the smashing of Lepsius's blue > > glasses? Hanne WANTS to smash them and Porpentine actually does--in section > > viii. Does this indicate some mysterious link between Hanne and Porpentine. > > In addition of course to the one between Herbert and Porpentine. Or is Hanne > > just generally fed up with men and politics? Questions, questions . . . > > I think that Hanne is simply frustrated that Lepsius seems to be hiding > behind those blue lenses. I guess that she can sense that he isn't being > wholly straight with her; it is this intimation which has spurred her > melancholy mood of the day. The blue eyeglasses are an outward manifestation > or focus of this unease in her, a neurotic fixation. If she can smash the > eyeglasses then all will be well, Lepsius will be true. It occurs to me that > her tryst with him is only a very recent one; and from his point of view it > is a totally opportunistic one of course, for he is using Hanne to spy for > him. This is what she senses but is refusing to admit to herself. Hanne is > clinging to a hope for honest love. In this respect it is quite a poignant > cameo. Hanne isn't so young or beautiful that she will have many > opportunities for happiness left; her boss keeps her on only because she is > a stereotypical blonde and lusty wench of Bavarian bierehalle ilk. > > I think it's quite easy and much more interesting to try to engage with the > characters at a human level rather than seeking after complicated > symbologies all the time. The texture of the narrative is so much richer > that way; and it's always more than likely that it's the ostensible > symbolism which is in the eye of the beholder, far more so than character or > plot(s) are. Imo anyway. > > best > > > From pmackin at clark.net Wed Nov 29 07:42:27 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 08:42:27 -0500 Subject: Eddins, "Depraved New World" References: <3A24C26A.C96461DB@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <005001c05a0a$375712c0$64f1fea9@pmackin> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Monroe" > ... as I like to say, Paul, I'm Catholic, practicing, but never seeming > to get any better at it ... You probably practice it a good deal more assiduously than did Victoria Wren. It's been said Catholicism is a religion for sinners, not the righteous. Evelyn Waugh was asked what good his being a Catholic did anyone since he was such a thoroghgoing unchristian misanthrope. His reply was that he would be even worse if its were not for the religious faith. P. From grladams at teleport.com Wed Nov 29 09:32:26 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 07:32:26 -0800 Subject: VV(5) Q: I'm taking Victoria to the Opera Message-ID: <3A25218A.534670D5@teleport.com> In http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/mystery.html#murder Who is the I'm? Is it Bongo Shaftsbury? -jill From monroe at mpm.edu Wed Nov 29 09:20:38 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 09:20:38 -0600 Subject: Miller Frank, The Mechanical Song Message-ID: <3A251EC5.50B040A4@mpm.edu> ... from Felicia Miller Frank, The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice, and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1995), Chapter 5, "Baudelaire and the Painted Woman," pp. 118-42): This taste [in Italian opera for the "unearthly" voices of the castrati] for the artificial appaers to run counter to the mainstream of romantic valuation of nature and, where it bears on the representation of women, the deeply inscribed cultural assimilation of woman to nature. At the same time, however, both the artificial woman and teh woman as nature are equally reified, or, in Heideggerian terms, seen as physis, as opposed to techne. We have seen how [Jean-Joesph] Goux [in Symbolic Economies: After Marx and Freud] has suggested that Western metaphysics distributes gender throughout these categories, linking the feminine with the former as matter, the macsuline with the latter as spirit. Within the context of romanticism, a definite shift nevertheless takes place.... (118) I suggest that this apparent contradiction in fact articulates the shift to modernity and modernism. The new phantasmal projection of woman as artifice, as simulacrum, appears in french letters through the writing of Baudelaire ... (119) The preferred rendition of the woman as statue, of artifice as the desirable woman's most important fashion accessory, is adumbrated already in Baudelaire's praise of makeup in Le Peintre de la vie moderne. In these essays, he intervenes in the tradition dating to antiquity that censures women's use of "paint," affirming instead the value of artificiality and linking it specifically with ideas of modernity. While the painted woman has long been a metaphor for teh seductions of representation, I will argue that the artificial woman enacts a etafiguration of the technologies of the mechanical reproduction (to borrow Benjamin's phrase) of human presence that transformed the culture of the late nineteenth century: the brilliance of electricity, the instantaneity of telegraphy, the capture of the warmth of the human voice in the phonograph, the advent of cinema. (119) My argument is parallel in this regard, once again, with certain points of [Friedrich] Kittler's discussion of teh transition from romanticism, his shift from the "discourse network" 1800 to that of 1900. Kittler argues that in 1800, the woman was idnetified with nature, in 1900, no longer: "If the phantasm of woman arose in teh distribution of form and matter, spirit and nature, writing and reading, production and consumption, to the two sexes, a new discourse network canceled the polarity." [Kittler, Discouse Networks 1800/1900, p. 348] (119) The inhuman woman carries forward the ancient topos of teh automaton so prevalent in German literature of teh period at the same time she expresses one aspect of the dominant image of the fatal woman as [Mario] Praz has described it [in his The Romantic Agony], and the icy, expressionless symbolist woman [Frank] Kermode isolates in his discussion of the dance figure in romantic imagery [in his Romantic Image]. (120) ... the kind of nineteenth-century fantasy of the femme fatale that Praz shows to be pervasive in romantic writing and that Bram Dijkstra [in his Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture] finds typical in the visual representations of women in the late nineteenth century: a vision of the woman as seductive, perverse, and infinitely dangerous. (121) Baudeliare begins the first of these pieces, "la Femme," with what resembles an invocation of the woman as muse .... "as terrible and incommunicable as the Deity." ... Baudelaire rather perversely misquotes Joseph de Maistre, attributing to him the statement taht the woman is a "garceful animal whose beauty enlivened and made easier the serious game of politics; for whom, and through whom, fortunes were made and unamde, for whom, but above all, through whom poets and artists create their most exquisite jewels" ([Baudeliare,] Painter, 30). (121) ... she is a kind of idol, stupid perhaps, but dazzling and bewitching, who holds wills and destinies suspended on her glance. ([Baudelaire,] Painter, 30). (122) Baudelaire finally discloses to his reader the source of the woman's charm: its secret lies in the magical luxury of her adornments. All the touches that enhance and ornament her beauty are part of her, and one must make no effort to think of her as separate from them ... (122) Everything that adorns woman, everything that serves to show off her beauty, is part of herself.... No doubt Woman is sometimes a light, a glance, an invitation to happiness, sometimes just a word ... in the metal and the mineral which twist and turn around her arms and neck, adding to the fire of her glance ... ([Baudelaire,] Painter, 30) (122, though I edited a much longer quote here) Despite teh charming style of this passage, there is no doubt of the misogyny of the underlying message: where women are concerned, it is better not to look too closely. (123) Baudelaire's sense that the woman lacks "something essential" is not surprising, given the weight of themetaphysical tradition dating back to Plato that identifies the woman as lacking, in fact, an essence. (124) In this piece, Baudelaire attacks the association of beauty and virtue with nature in order to relocate them in the realm of art and artifice. (127) Rather, Baudelaire excoriates nature as the source of crude constraint and evil (he himself preferred evil in a more refined form). (127) Baudelaire thus places virtue and good on the side not simply of religion and philosophy but of what is specifically artificial. (127) This paradoxical logic allows Baudelaire to strike one of teh essential themes of Le Peintre de la vie moderne: the revelation of teh transcnedent in the transitory. (127-8) Speaking of fashion leads Baudelaire metonymically to the subject of women and makeup, the heart of "Eloge du maquillage." If virtue is "surnaturel," then it becomes the woman's duty to make herself up, not to imitate natural beauty or to "heigheten" her good features, but to make them appear as artificial as possible.... For Baudelaire, tehn, the woman is at her best by making herself appear "supernatural" ... (128) From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 29 09:16:32 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:16:32 -0500 Subject: A Wild Sheep Chase References: <200011291656.EGI37530.BCLUFBT@dohto.ac.jp> Message-ID: <3A251DD0.9243EBFD@earthlink.net> Toshiyuki Sakabe wrote: What I like to ask you all is what your impression is or what you think when you hear the title or the phrase "A wild sheep chase". > > I hope to get many feedback. > > Tosh When Theocritus guarded his flock He Piped in the Shade of Eliot's Rock. While he guarded also his Catholic V-ewes One Chased Sheep became his Muse. He piped and piped on his penny whistle And chased his Muse o'er shamrock & thistle. From pmackin at clark.net Wed Nov 29 09:26:18 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:26:18 -0500 Subject: VV(5) Porpentine--embarassed, bashful References: <3A2490AF.61E9EC19@teleport.com> Message-ID: <010701c05a18$b91749c0$64f1fea9@pmackin> ----- Original Message ----- From: "jill" > Why is it that twice (or maybe more) we hear Porpentine described in a way > that he seems to be pulling back, in retreat? Is this a kind of crablike > walking that Pynchon is fond of? > > Once p. 65 when Mildred thrusts the rock out toward Porpentine and > Goodfellow and Victoria says that she loves rocks and fossils. He retreats, > embarrassed. Could he be feeling humour from a joke that she is playing, > that the listener is to associate the age difference between Victoria and > the men surrounding her at this time? Why embarrassment? The rock may also have something of the Petrine sense for Victoria, may it not? More dwelling on that Catholicism of hers.. Yes, Porpentine seems above average hesitant and scrupulous for a participant in the great game. An international operator with morals--nice touch. Old Max himself is full or allusion and word play. Alice and her caroling--wrong spelling no matter. It's well--read Pynchon who is THE allusionist of course. The fellow just can't help it. And we certainly don't mind a bit. This is related to the whole idea of symbolizing mentioned by jbor I think. P. From pmackin at clark.net Wed Nov 29 10:04:56 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:04:56 -0500 Subject: VV(5) Q: I'm taking Victoria to the Opera References: <3A25218A.534670D5@teleport.com> Message-ID: <013c01c05a1e$1e93df20$64f1fea9@pmackin> ----- Original Message ----- From: "jill" To: Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 10:32 AM Subject: VV(5) Q: I'm taking Victoria to the Opera > In http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/mystery.html#murder > > Who is the I'm? Is it Bongo Shaftsbury? Wasn't it Goodfellow? Part of the seduction plan. P. From kuznet at earthlink.net Tue Nov 28 17:02:11 2000 From: kuznet at earthlink.net (Kuznetsov Sergey) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 02:02:11 +0300 Subject: A Wild Sheep Chase References: <200011291656.EGI37530.BCLUFBT@dohto.ac.jp> Message-ID: <008b01c05990$713d9d80$bc8b273f@kuznetss> > > Anyway there is a phrase in English "A wild goose chase" Of > course everybody knows what it is. There is a postmodern > Japanese book by Haruki Murakami which is translated in English > with the title called "A wild sheep chase". I think nobody has > read it before. Ha! Murakami novel has been intelectual bestseller in Russia 3 years ago. In Russian it's called "Okhota na Ovec" -"The Sheep Chase" or "Hunt for a Sheeps". And more: as I remember the novel has been discussed a year ago on the Pynchon list!! Hence, somebody read it before. Sergey Kuznetsov Moscow, CA Sunnyvale, Russia From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 29 10:53:17 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:53:17 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <21104937302046@domain3.bigpond.com> <002401c059ff$ccf33f80$64f1fea9@pmackin> Message-ID: <3A25347D.7D8C36C5@earthlink.net> Paul Mackin wrote: > > Am in agreement with Rob that the STORY is what holds interest. Would it be > too much of an exxageration (probably but what the heck) to say that, if > anything, we sometimes need to PROTECT our author from his symbolizing > rather that overly to draw attention to it? On a related matter P is > criticized in some quarters for his allegorization. Am thinking of Wood. P > CAN using jokey symbols to good effect perhaps--Jill's pointing out this > morning the case of fossil and rock standing in for old geezer. Haven't > really thought any of this through. As usual. But that's the fun of the > p-list. Fun, fun, fun, I'm not quite sure what you mean by the STORY holding the interest, not sure that's the point is all, but I think "Under the Rose" (and of course the Musical allusions there), were mentioned as holding this fragmented story together, not sure about that. I think Chapter One of M&D is Pynchon's own comment on this, but WC did have to hold their interest or be out in the cold, note how he is Stencil Matured. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 29 10:58:44 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:58:44 -0500 Subject: A Wild Sheep Chase References: <200011291656.EGI37530.BCLUFBT@dohto.ac.jp> <3A251DD0.9243EBFD@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3A2535C4.126EDE41@earthlink.net> > When Theocritus guarded his flock S/B, has to be, McTheocritus From richardromeo at hotmail.com Wed Nov 29 17:23:55 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 17:23:55 Subject: Astronomy Message-ID: A friend fwd this to me. Rich A few times per year the ballet of celestial objects, with orbits choreographed by the forces of gravity, create a spectacular "conjunction" in the sky. Solar eclipses, where the Moon passes in front of the Sun, are the best known class of conjunctions. Tonight, just after sunset, there will be a photogenic conjunction of the crescent moon with the bright planet Venus. The two will be so close together on the sky (less than 1.6 degrees) that your thumbnail held at arm's length would cover both of them completely. Apart from being beautiful, a conjunction of the crescent moon and a bright star has religious significance in the Muslim community and appears on many flags of Islamic nations. If it's clear this evening, look low in the southwest between 4:45PM and 7:00PM, the time interval in which most of you will be heading home. The Sun will have set at around 4:30PM. No telescope necessary, just your eyes and a sense of cosmic romance. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From grladams at teleport.com Wed Nov 29 11:35:16 2000 From: grladams at teleport.com (jill) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 09:35:16 -0800 Subject: VV(5) Q: I'm taking Victoria to the Opera References: <3A25218A.534670D5@teleport.com> <013c01c05a1e$1e93df20$64f1fea9@pmackin> Message-ID: <3A253E54.A5E86B41@teleport.com> That's what I thought, but from the hyperarts link, I couldn't tell. It links you to B-S. Good. Thank you. Paul Mackin wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "jill" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 10:32 AM > Subject: VV(5) Q: I'm taking Victoria to the Opera > > > In http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/mystery.html#murder > > > > Who is the I'm? Is it Bongo Shaftsbury? > > Wasn't it Goodfellow? Part of the seduction plan. > > P. From pmackin at clark.net Wed Nov 29 14:21:45 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 15:21:45 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <21104937302046@domain3.bigpond.com> <002401c059ff$ccf33f80$64f1fea9@pmackin> <3A25347D.7D8C36C5@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <017d01c05a41$ff767020$64f1fea9@pmackin> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terrance" > Fun, fun, fun, I'm not quite sure what you mean by the STORY > holding the interest, not sure that's the point is all, but > I think "Under the Rose" (and of course the Musical > allusions there), were mentioned as holding this fragmented > story together, not sure about that. I think Chapter One of > M&D is Pynchon's own comment on this, but WC did have to > hold their interest or be out in the cold, note how he is > Stencil Matured. Think I was only expressing a preference for the literal in discussing p-text. Something jbor had said got me off on it. Not to shortchange the symbolic--nonreligious symbolism--which of course is everywhere in our secular existences and inescapable. And Pynchon talks about much that is symbolic (symbolistic)--like Kabbala or such type things--but this is mention not use as I prefer to read it. I like to read Pynchon mainly as characters interacting with each other--even imaginary characters such as Stencil's personifications. I do get rather uneasy when the discussion gets off on what is being said to us--as opposed to what is being said to Porpentine or Bongo-Shaftsbury. As if something mysterious and hidden needs to be expressed. We live in an age, or in a society, in which simple rational ideas can be simply expressed. No one needs to talk in allegories and metaphors. Don't want to overstate this or put too fine a point on it. It's not an exact science. P. From jbor at bigpond.com Wed Nov 29 16:04:32 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 09:04:32 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3 iii) 'Queen' Victoria/Max's disgrace Message-ID: <21532892601991@domain0.bigpond.com> That's another striking moment in the narrative, when Victoria turns impatiently and says: "Mr Porpentine, ... Do finish with your cripple. Give him his shilling and come. It's late." 76.25 And poor Max defies the "code" of the shyster and turns and walks away without accepting the five quid which Porpentine has actually held out to him. It's all the more excruciating because I don't think he has even managed to save face by refusing the money either, because no-one else (not even Stency, nor indeed the reader) seems to care about him for an instant after his departure. Victoria's remark is callous rather than funny, or 'gay', and I think it is also interesting in that it reinforces the hierchachy between Victoria (and Goodfellow) and Porpentine which will result in Porpy's sacrifice for his partner. She commands him, and he obeys. Also there is enormous irony in the fact that Max has spent the entire evening with them and still hasn't figured out what's going on between this group of masqueraders, and that Victoria, who he had pegged as simply a "green" girl, has been able to spot him coming from a mile off and here dismisses him with such disdain. Her acuity in terms of the situation which has developed around her is hinted at like this a couple of times, and her gaucheness is perhaps simply a mask too. Max is dismissed as a "cripple", dumped into the same class as a mere Arab beggar-boy, marked as 'preterite' to Victoria's own sense of being 'Elect'. Victoria by this one comment is portrayed as queen of the Baedeker-world: it is she, the consummate tourist and self-centred voluptuary, rather than the political agents who court her, who is most antipathetic to the 'cause' of the natives and residents of Alexandria and Cairo, and who by her shallow self-centredness and thoughtless irresponsibility will do the most to damage the people and situations she comes into contact with. Max's self-respect is thoroughly shattered. And, by the end of the section, Porpy will be dead: his tragic demise also the result of cast-off remarks made by Victoria. For if Victoria does indeed comprehend what the political intrigue is all about, what's at stake for the four men who have become her consorts on this Grand Tour (Gf & Porpy, B-S & Lepsius), she cares less about that and their fates than she does about her own selfish lust for Goodfellow's goodfellow. Like Hanne and some of the others, Max has been able to sense that something is not quite as it seems with these people, and it is these vague intuitions which are conveyed to the reader (thru' Stencil), and which sets up the "mystery" of V for Stencil and so for us. best ---------- >From: "Paul Mackin" >To: >Subject: Re: VV(5) Porpentine--embarassed, bashful >Date: Thu, Nov 30, 2000, 2:26 AM > > Old Max himself is full > or allusion and word play. From keith at pfmentum.com Wed Nov 29 16:53:07 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 14:53:07 -0800 Subject: Official Pynchon List Quote Of The Year 2000 Message-ID: <001801c05a57$25235120$d13e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> "We live in an age, or in a society, in which simple rational ideas can be simply expressed. No one needs to talk in allegories and metaphors." From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Wed Nov 29 20:55:54 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 21:55:54 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <21104937302046@domain3.bigpond.com> <002401c059ff$ccf33f80$64f1fea9@pmackin> <3A25347D.7D8C36C5@earthlink.net> <017d01c05a41$ff767020$64f1fea9@pmackin> Message-ID: <3A25C1BA.AA38849B@earthlink.net> Paul Mackin wrote: We live in an age, or in a society, in which simple > rational ideas can be simply expressed. No one needs to talk in allegories > and metaphors. Don't want to overstate this or put too fine a point on it. > It's not an exact science. > > P. Well, thank god Melville didn't live in it and if you ask me, I'll take allegory and metaphor over simple rational ideas simply expressed thank you. God is not dead he's allegory's metaphor. From jbor at bigpond.com Thu Nov 30 02:00:16 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:00:16 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Max's (other) disgrace/Alice Message-ID: <07491378918035@domain6.bigpond.com> Your comments prompted another thought, Paul. Max joins an array of Pynchonian adult male characters who have engaged in carnal relations with sexually-aware, if not until then sexually-active, juveniles. And, as with Slothrop and Lt Weissmann in _GR_, it is the younger partner who has been portrayed as the instigator of the seduction. It is not as conclusive as in _GR_, as Alice's perspective is barely represented in the narrative, much less so than either Enzian's or Bianca's there. But the argument that Max is a manipulative child abuser merely justifying his actions after the event is somewhat diminished by the presence of the framing narrative here. Why would Pynchon depict Stencil impersonating Maxwell Rowley-Bugge deceiving himself about his feelings and perceptions in his tryst with "dry-eyed" (70.29) Alice? It simply doesn't follow. For mine, this does seem to be a distinct theme running through all four novels (not forgetting Metzger and his nymphette in _Lot49_; and I suppose Paranoid Miles' come-on to Oedipa -- "I have a smooth young body ... I thought you older chicks went for that" CL 17.25 -- serves as a variation on the same general theme). In each instance the adult is represented as, at the very least, NOT-evil, and more often than not the object of pity or even empathy. best ---------- >From: "Paul Mackin" >To: >Subject: Re: VV(5) Porpentine--embarassed, bashful >Date: Thu, Nov 30, 2000, 2:26 AM > > The rock may also have something of the Petrine sense for Victoria, may it > not? More dwelling on that Catholicism of hers.. Yes, Porpentine seems > above average hesitant and scrupulous for a participant in the great game. > An international operator with morals--nice touch. Old Max himself is full > or allusion and word play. Alice and her caroling--wrong spelling no matter. > It's well--read Pynchon who is THE allusionist of course. The fellow just > can't help it. And we certainly don't mind a bit. > > This is related to the whole idea of symbolizing mentioned by jbor I think. From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 30 03:14:38 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 03:14:38 -0600 Subject: Quote For Today Message-ID: <3A261A7E.72971168@mpm.edu> ... speaking of Nazi aesthetics, "degenerate" art (and someone was kind enough to give me a ticket to the reconstruction of that Nazi "Degenerate Art" show that made it to The Art Institute of Chicago several years back), and, er, Philip K. Dick, reminds me of one of my favorite moments in my favorite PKD novel, The Man in the High Castle, where the Swedish businessman, Baynes (an undercover Jew posing as a Nazi official posing as a Swedish businessman, right? And note that Baynes' real name is Wegener. One Peter Wegener was, of all things, a Nazi rocket scientist, see his The Peenemude Wind Tunnels: A Memoir. Peter's father, Alfred, was, interestingly, also the father of plate tectonics) discusses aesthetics with the Nazi next to him on the intercontinental rocket: "Afraid I do not care for modern art," Mr. Baynes said. "I like the old prewar cubists and abstractionists. I like a picture to mean something, not merely to represent the ideal." He turned away. "But that's the task of art, over the sensual. Your abstract art represented a period of spiritual decadence, of spiritual chaos, due to the disintegration of society, the old plutocracy. The Jewish and capitalist millionaires, the international set that supported the decadent art. Those times are over; art has to go on--it can't stay still." ... er, p. 32 of whatever ed. the guy who put this online used. Got lucky there ... But reminds me, speaking of V. as well, Mafia Winsome, and, thus, gasp, Ayn Rand, if you ever have to deal with any of those so-called, self-styled "objectivists" (who've ruined the word "objectivism" for fans of William Carlos Williams and/or the Neue Sachlichkeit), do point out how that perfectly characteristic Nazi response sounds an awful lot like Rand's own aesthetics. Anyway, a few interesting sites that came up as well whilst I was searching for that passage: http://www.msu.edu/user/carterca/dick.htm http://jamiro.mtx.net/pkd/reality.html http://www.philipkdick.com/articles/chapter-three.html ... the last is apparently a chapter from ... http://www.philipkdick.com/articles/barlow.htm But now I notice that I accidentally posted my notes from Felicia Miller Frank's The Mechanical Song both before I'd completed them and before I'd broken them up into a couple of more manageable units, so ... From gkoll at mland.gr Thu Nov 30 03:20:45 2000 From: gkoll at mland.gr (George Kolliopoulos) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 11:20:45 +0200 Subject: Official Pynchon List Quote Of The Year 2000 In-Reply-To: <001801c05a57$25235120$d13e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: >No one needs to talk in allegories >and metaphors." I tend to believe that the reality represented on the TV is a metaphor of its own, followed by thousands of others in everyday life. So, not only we accept that but we all also - willingly or unwillingly - participate to a real life metaphor. gkoll From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 30 03:52:26 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 03:52:26 -0600 Subject: Miller Frank, The Mechanical Song Message-ID: <3A26235A.41B7A6F4@mpm.edu> ... well, accidentally sent of my notes from Felicia Miller Frank's The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice, and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1995) whilst saving them as a "draft" this morning, I see. Had not only a bit further to go, but had also wanted to edit a bit, then break them up into two more manageable (length, theme) posts, but ... But was, more relevantly, hoping to suggest something not only of the lineage and function of "female" (or, at any rate, gendered as such) automata in history and fiction, but was also hoping to suggest the possible resonance/influence of Charles Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life with/on Thomas Pynchon's V., particularly in that (not so?) peculiar nexus of the feminine, the artificial, and modernity ... Which reminds me, Terrence, et al., Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1982), which (ass-backwardly? back-asswardly? retrospectively, at any rate ...) led me to Herman Melville's very wonderful The Confidence Man in the first place. Anyway, to continue, from Felicia Miller frank, The Mechanical Song, Chapter 5, "Baudelaire and the Painted Women" ... Karen Halttunen, From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 30 05:10:50 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 05:10:50 -0600 Subject: Miller Frank, The Mechanical Song (Baudelaire) Message-ID: <3A2635B9.5A3646C4@mpm.edu> ... okay, I see what I'm doing now. Clicking on "send" out of habit before shutting down. Hence yet another incomplete post, but ... Anyway, to continue, from p. 128, from Felicia Miller Frank, The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice, and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1995), Chapter 5, "Baudelaire and the Painted Woman," pp. 118-119, on that nexus of the feminine, the artificial, and modernity, with an eye towards the resonance, possible influence of Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life with/on V. (the book, the figure ...): For Baudelaire, then, the woman is at her best by making herself appear "supernatural" .... In this way, Baudelair puts a spin not only on teh discourse of art and representation ... (by promoting art as artifice against art as truthful representation) but on Christian values as well. Recall ... [Joseph] de Maistre [who] states that the gospel exalts woman ... to a "supernatural" state by raising her from her fallen nature. Baudelaire follows de Maistre in accepting woman as carrying forward Eve's original sin but rewrites him by propsoing taht what raises woman to a supernatural state is her ability to transform her appearance through the illusory magis of dress and makeup. She rises above nature by looking unnatural. Clearly one can correlate this somewhat revisionist version of Christian doctrine (of the redemption of Eve's fallen nature through teh arts of Jezebel) with teh image of Villiers's future Eve, the ideal supernatural woman, fabricated by a scientific wizard and makeup artist supreme. (128) [There's a nice chapter on "Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism" in Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity (New York: Knopf, 1991). Villiers de L'Isle-Adam's L'Eve future, pub. 1886, is the--fictional--story of a female automata, Hadaly, invented by a (still living!) Thomas Edison. The English trans., Tomorrow's Eve, from teh U of Illinois Press, is now out of print, but it's currently included under the title The Future Eve in Zone Books' The Decadent Reader. Much critical literature thereupon, but I'll get to that when Miller Frank does in her next chapter ...] In Baudelaire's very particular lexicon, the notion of the supernatural associates the spiritual not only with the artificial, with art in the broad sense, but with modernity as well. (128-9) ... the artist as a man of the crow, who becomes drunk from his contact with "the fascinating union of the strange and the real" at the heart of the most mundane modernity. (129) [Henri] Lemaitre contnues, "For Baudelaire's modernity is poetic only because curisoty 'spiritualizes' itself as passion and fascination: through the multiple play of fgascination, modernity--far from contradicting it--becomes merged with supernaturalism." (129) [Henri Lemaitre, "Modernite et surnaturalisme," from "his introduction to the Garnier Freres edition of the Spleen de Paris," apparently (ibid.) ...] Jean-Paul Sartre proposes as the source of Baudelaire's spiritualistic antinaturalism--of such decisive influence on the symbolists and decadents, as well as on Villiers--not the Christian writings of Joseph de Maistre but the influence of the utopian Saint-Simonian movement .... He points out the invention of the expression "anti-nature" by Comte and the incidence of the term antiphysis in the Marx-Engels correspondence. Thus, while thier systems may have differed, both looked to a similar ideal: the creation of a human order that would correct the blind forces and ills endemic to the natural order ... (129) [... reminds me, the recent mention of synaesthesia, Joris-Karl Huysman's A rebours, "Against Nature" in some translations. For Sartre, see his Baudelaire, apparently. And note that this "anti-nature" resonates with Dwight Eddins' characterization of gnosticism in his The Gnostic Pynchon as well ...] ... it is undeniable that Baudelaire too felt the disturbing and transforming groundswell of change created in teh wake of the Industrial Revolution and that he expressed its influence in his own fashion. (130) For Baudelaire, an important element of modernist decor was feminine beauty enhanced by artifice.... In fact, he prefers the woman to look as unreal as possible. (130) ... anyone can see that the use of rice-powder ... create[s] and abstract unity in the colour and texture of the skin, a unity, which .... immediately approximates the human being to the statue, that is to something superior and divine. ([Baudelaire,] Painter, 33) (130) [... recall Michael Berube, in Marginal Forces/Cultural Centers, on Pynchon's "pornographies" as, perhaps, "abstract unities" ...] The appeal Baudelaire affirms in the "abstract unity" that makes a woman appear like a statue is charactersitic of his predilection for the cold, teh barren, the artificial in all realms. Sartre points out Baudelaire's frequent recourse to "hard, sterile forms of minerals" in his poetry, his preference for the metallic: "For him metal and, in a general way, minerals reflecte the image of the mind.... Thus Baudelaire's horror of life led him to choose materialization in its purest form as a symbol of the immaterial" (Sartre, [Baudelaire,] 105) (131) Associated with Baudelaire's affinity for the inorganic is his preferenjce for cold or unconscious women, what Sartre calls Baudelaire's projection of frigidity into the other .... Sartre notes his dream of the "frigid angel" evoked in the poem "Une nuit que j'etais pres d'une affreuse Juive." (131) Baudelaire's preference for icy indifference in women does not stop short of necrophilia ... (132) The icy absence of teh statue or dad woman is realted to Baudelaire's project of dandyism (a dandy is, after all, chilled out, a cool guy) and evokes the atmosphere of stasis and death toward which it tends ... (132) ... "Keep cool, but care" ... hm ... Terrence? ... anyway, after this, Miller Frank takes up more generally automata, the feminine, Cartesianism and Romanticism, and then more specifically Villiers' L'Eve future, so I'll save that for a future eve as well, hopefully, this eve(ning) ... From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 30 05:16:33 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 05:16:33 -0600 Subject: Happy Birthday ... Message-ID: <3A26370F.41C7071B@mpm.edu> ... Abbie Hoffmann, G. Gordon Liddy, Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens, Jonathan Swift, Sir Philip Sidney, Andrea Palladio, Andrea Doria and St. Gregory of Tours, among, I'm sure, many others ... From pmackin at clark.net Thu Nov 30 06:07:35 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 07:07:35 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Itinerary References: <21104937302046@domain3.bigpond.com> <002401c059ff$ccf33f80$64f1fea9@pmackin> <3A25347D.7D8C36C5@earthlink.net> <017d01c05a41$ff767020$64f1fea9@pmackin> <3A25C1BA.AA38849B@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <003401c05ac6$20bdada0$f666fea9@pmackin> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terrance" > Paul Mackin wrote: > We live in an age, or in a society, in which simple > > rational ideas can be simply expressed. No one needs to talk in allegories > > and metaphors. Don't want to overstate this or put too fine a point on it. > > It's not an exact science. > > > > P. > > > Well, thank god Melville didn't live in it and if you ask > me, I'll take allegory and metaphor over simple rational > ideas simply expressed thank you. > > God is not dead he's allegory's metaphor. Quite right. I wasn't objecting at all to RELIGIOUS and EXISTENTIAL truths being expressed in metaphor. Or scientific ones either of course.. Polilitical truths and preferences are a different matter, however, aren't they?. There, I prefer the allegory to be toned down. Also, I'm not saying P doesn't do a bit of the latter on occasion. I just personally would rather not dwell on it. Just my crochet I guess. P. From pmackin at clark.net Thu Nov 30 06:08:35 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 07:08:35 -0500 Subject: Official Pynchon List Quote Of The Year 2000 References: <001801c05a57$25235120$d13e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: <003e01c05ac6$44b7e220$f666fea9@pmackin> ----- Original Message ----- From: "s~Z" To: Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 5:53 PM Subject: Official Pynchon List Quote Of The Year 2000 > "We live in an age, or in a society, in which simple rational ideas can be > simply expressed. No one needs to talk in allegories > and metaphors." > Heh, heh. All the more remarkable in a world devoid of honest (authentic) waiters, punch boys, railway conductors, child molesters, montebanks, second story men, barmaids, pimps, sub debs, and even of tourists. In short, in a V-world, as opposed to a B-world. B for you know what . . . . P. From pmackin at clark.net Thu Nov 30 06:09:52 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 07:09:52 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Max's (other) disgrace/Alice References: <07491378918035@domain6.bigpond.com> Message-ID: <004201c05ac6$72431fc0$f666fea9@pmackin> Yes, as Rob says, we seem to have in Max's (Ralph's) Alice only yet another in an army of Pynchonean tykes who can never qualify as poster child in a Mothers Against Child Abuse campaign. P. ----- Original Message ----- From: "jbor" To: "Paul Mackin" Cc: Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2000 3:00 AM Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Max's (other) disgrace/Alice > > Your comments prompted another thought, Paul. Max joins an array of > Pynchonian adult male characters who have engaged in carnal relations with > sexually-aware, if not until then sexually-active, juveniles. And, as with > Slothrop and Lt Weissmann in _GR_, it is the younger partner who has been > portrayed as the instigator of the seduction. It is not as conclusive as in > _GR_, as Alice's perspective is barely represented in the narrative, much > less so than either Enzian's or Bianca's there. But the argument that Max is > a manipulative child abuser merely justifying his actions after the event is > somewhat diminished by the presence of the framing narrative here. Why would > Pynchon depict Stencil impersonating Maxwell Rowley-Bugge deceiving himself > about his feelings and perceptions in his tryst with "dry-eyed" (70.29) > Alice? It simply doesn't follow. > > For mine, this does seem to be a distinct theme running through all four > novels (not forgetting Metzger and his nymphette in _Lot49_; and I suppose > Paranoid Miles' come-on to Oedipa -- "I have a smooth young body ... I > thought you older chicks went for that" CL 17.25 -- serves as a variation on > the same general theme). In each instance the adult is represented as, at > the very least, NOT-evil, and more often than not the object of pity or even > empathy. > > best > > > ---------- > >From: "Paul Mackin" > >To: > >Subject: Re: VV(5) Porpentine--embarassed, bashful > >Date: Thu, Nov 30, 2000, 2:26 AM > > > > > The rock may also have something of the Petrine sense for Victoria, may it > > not? More dwelling on that Catholicism of hers.. Yes, Porpentine seems > > above average hesitant and scrupulous for a participant in the great game. > > An international operator with morals--nice touch. Old Max himself is full > > or allusion and word play. Alice and her caroling--wrong spelling no matter. > > It's well--read Pynchon who is THE allusionist of course. The fellow just > > can't help it. And we certainly don't mind a bit. > > > > This is related to the whole idea of symbolizing mentioned by jbor I think. > > From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 30 06:47:30 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 06:47:30 -0600 Subject: Official Pynchon List Quote Of The Year 2000 Message-ID: <3A264C62.123B854B@mpm.edu> Mr. Mackin, meet Messrs. Habermas and Purdy. Paul, Jurgen, Jedediah ... recommended (well, not so much the Purdy, if at all, but ...) reading for you, Paul ... Habermas, Jurgen. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon, 1985. Purdy, Jedediah. For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today. New York: Knopf, 1999. To quote a coworker, mackin', snackin' a-and packin' ... let me know ... From pmackin at clark.net Thu Nov 30 08:18:31 2000 From: pmackin at clark.net (Paul Mackin) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 09:18:31 -0500 Subject: Official Pynchon List Quote Of The Year 2000 References: <3A264C62.123B854B@mpm.edu> Message-ID: <006b01c05ad8$6b6830c0$f666fea9@pmackin> Thanks, Dave. Haven't read Purdy but have heard of him. He was reviewed in NYRB at about the same time as the Eggers book was--the two in contrast to each other as I recall. Am familiar with a short article by Habermas about the modernism/postmodernism controversy. Think Terrance might, probably does, agree with Jurgen's viewpoint. By the way I hope nothing I've said might lead to the conclusion I'm against irony. Couldn't exist without it actually. Or that I have any dreams of Consensus. No, that would fly directly in the face of a strongly held devotion to the doctrine of Original Sin. Anyway, thanks for the recommendations. P. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Monroe" To: Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2000 7:47 AM Subject: Re: Official Pynchon List Quote Of The Year 2000 > Mr. Mackin, meet Messrs. Habermas and Purdy. Paul, Jurgen, Jedediah ... > recommended (well, not so much the Purdy, if at all, but ...) reading > for you, Paul ... > > Habermas, Jurgen. The Theory of Communicative Action, > Volume I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. > Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon, 1985. > > Purdy, Jedediah. For Common Things: Irony, Trust and > Commitment in America Today. New York: Knopf, 1999. > > To quote a coworker, mackin', snackin' a-and packin' ... let me know ... > From richardromeo at hotmail.com Thu Nov 30 15:42:29 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:42:29 Subject: Official Pynchon List Quote Of The Year 2000 Message-ID: Am familiar with a short article by Habermas about >the modernism/postmodernism controversy. ----------- In terms of literary style, one of the best articles I've read is "From Black Magic to White Noise" which I believe is in the "A Darkness that Murmured" collection of essays on Malcolm Lowry. I forget the name of the lady who wrote it. It compares Lowry and DeLillo from such a vantage point. fwiw... Rich _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 30 11:10:05 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 12:10:05 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Max's (other) disgrace/Alice References: <07491378918035@domain6.bigpond.com> <004201c05ac6$72431fc0$f666fea9@pmackin> Message-ID: <3A2689ED.5E4955DF@earthlink.net> Mac B or Max is not the devil and dry eyed Alice does not qualify as poster child. Pynchon mocks such extremes. But Mac is one of the Imperialists, one of the Colonial narrators. If we did an an old compare and contrast, mostly literal, no, not really, just can't help it, with, say, one non-colonial narrator-- Waldetar, and considered the children, we might see that Pynchon, as he will in all his fictions, [remember that V like Slothrop is a Don Giovani, in fact Pynchon lists the sexual exploits of Don G./Slothrop and V., Slothrop also "becomes English" and eventually, on that Colonial Ship of Love/Death he has sexual relations with Bianca, Weissmann and Enzian, also colonial S&M.] Why has Stencil or why has Pynchon created Mac? Who is Mac? It seems that he was once MAC Burgess, maybe some one else before that, but now here's a little Irish trivia, why is it an insult to call an Irishman MAC? Not Mic, now that's a different insult altogether? Anyway, Mac is from Scotland and I won't go into the history that Pynchon is developing here, not yet, but a certain colonial historical pattern is at work here and now Scotland has been brought into it, but anyway, here we have an impersonation of a British expatriate in Baedeker Alex. MAC was a young Lochinvar come down to the then wide enough horizons of the Vaudeville business. Lochinvar? Yes he's a Scot all right. Maybe his name is some conglomeration of MacLean & Burgess; big names in the long & shady history of English spookdom, Trailerman says, "MacLean, indeed, did much of his spying while at the British Embassy in Cairo, between 1948 and his speedy departure to Moscow along with Burgess who had warned him that his cover was blown," and maybe his name suggests that he's Burgess from MAC or Scotland, but in any event, why does Stencil or Pynchon (and you can get or not get the allusion to Lewis Carroll here) introduce the aggressive, sexually precocious child? I don't think it's because Pynchon is sympathetic to Mac, that he condones Mac's actions. In fact, I think he he denounces them, mocks Mac's colonial exploits and his sexual ones at the same time. Pynchon's most cherished preterite are children, very Dickensian. B-S wants to destroy humanity, he goes after Mildred. Mildred, the child Mac may look over, young enough, but she is stocky and myopic, not long and lean like Alice and she is only the sister of the RC Victoria and she seems to be sticking with that rock and will later part company with her not so Orthodox sister. Victoria wants to have the Groom, Christ all to herself, she leaves the convent, plays colonial god and aboriginal satan Especially during Mass. Sorry, but Wood is wrong, Pynchon's allegory is not the problem, Wood seems to be confused about how allegory has and does function in satire. Some may read it differently, my answer is, as Alice said to Humpty Dumpty, so sure of himself was he, you have the book upside-down ;-). I could explain this by explaining Pynchon's allegory, his metaphors at play, his allusions, even if they are broken, but we can take a very literal look, put the looking glass aside for a moment and look at the the literal text. This is a good idea, I don't have any problem with the literal reading, how the characters stand on are their own, engage, act, speak...I'll come to the same reading. Victoria, in fact the Vs are sexually aggressive, the men they seduce passive for the most part, when we get to V in Love, where another child, abused by her own father, will be involved, it will be clear that Pynchon's sexually precocious, aggressive, sexually active children, are in fact victims. http://www.northrim.net/thompson/poem_lochinvar.htm PS Habermas, yeah, I like him, good balance to Lyotard, but you know I'm a student of Richard McKeon and Dewey. From keith at pfmentum.com Thu Nov 30 11:46:05 2000 From: keith at pfmentum.com (s~Z) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 09:46:05 -0800 Subject: NP Ante Up Message-ID: <001b01c05af5$6ef967a0$e23e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> http://espn.go.com/page2/s/thompson/ From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 30 12:53:56 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 13:53:56 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Mac's small problem [Literally] References: <07491378918035@domain6.bigpond.com> <004201c05ac6$72431fc0$f666fea9@pmackin> Message-ID: <3A26A244.6DB844B0@earthlink.net> If Mac was literally a "young Lochinvar" before his "problem", "being daft for small girls", sent him south to Yorkshire where he got in trouble a second time it seems, he would have been a Lord. So a Lord, a "young Lochinvar", seems to be following an historical pattern, down from Scotland to Yorkshire where he can only get in with the V-audville crowd, and where he can only dance a bit, sing a bit, and tell a few "passable barnyard jokes," (now every daft Scotsman I've ever met could trade barnyard jokes for Irish Limericks about the Clergy till the cows came home), so maybe Mac Burgess is none of your V-audville stock, except for his Small problem. Why is Max or Ralph trying to convince himself, "Max told himself" that the small ones know what they are doing? Sounds like a problem to me. And he draws the line at sixteen OR SO--so as not to ruin a pure pas de deux. "That's Glory for you," said Alice. And, "Lardwick- in- the- fen"? Sounds like another Pig. Why does he try not to forget the "tableau"? "Romantic tragedy"? Now that's an allusion we can't ignore isn't it? The eyes are dry, so what? "She wanted it", he says, sure, but then he says, "who knew what any of them wanted?" That's probably why a riot of hating faces ran him out of town, if we can't know what the small ones want, isn't it possible that they don't know either, in which case, their being small and all, we should give the benefit of growing big and deciding? He is now in Alex, and the narrator suggests that he's going to have to leave there too, since he has this Small problem, but the Tourist don't care that there is a Mac with a Small problem, he's as much (oh the IRONY here) a feature of the topography as the all the other peasants that the Tourists use as automata and take for granted. Small problem is that Irony, that these Tourists, in this Part they are English and German, don't see the "Short Eye" that is going to rape one of their children because he is simply just one more vagrant who exists, though unwillingly. What's Cook's machinery? From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 30 13:37:14 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 14:37:14 -0500 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Mac's small problem [Literally] References: <07491378918035@domain6.bigpond.com> <004201c05ac6$72431fc0$f666fea9@pmackin> <3A26A244.6DB844B0@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3A26AC6A.C0A039E5@earthlink.net> Oh, Mac has been in Baedeker land for eight years, so even if he has been getting a Little, no one seems to have noticed, Alice would be 18 now, that's how old Mac figures Victoria to be, so she was 10, "sixteen or so" my foot. Could Alice be V? That would explain here sexual appetite, in part, I think. Mac decides on the group, all English, he likes them, and they have a small girl in their group. "He also had an eye," Pynchon looked in that Slang dictionary for this one, "an eye", and Mac, subject to visions and he does have that intestinal shit thing going and he is getting a bit paranoid now, a V-audville, a horrible osmosis, the wind is going to get the word out, and not to the tourist who could care less, but to the every beggar, vagrant, exile-by-choice and peregrine-at-large, the beggars will be gathering at the Fink. Alice was C of E, and it was "her" Clergyman, this seems to be and allusion to Lewis Carroll, but on the literal level, this is why Pynchon is so fun, "her" clergyman would be the one Alice confessed to or told or...and on this literal level Alice, who is C of E, can't be Victoria because Victoria is RC. But of course we can read it both/and. The wine, a White wine is V-oslaur and it brings forth the ghost of Alice from Victoria Wren, her unilateral confession and Mac, guilty, thinking of how he can get out of this, he sure picked the wrong (for us the correct) group, how can he return, be forgiven, has the world forgotten, will they forgive him after eight years, but he is drawn to Victoria and oh how cruel she is. Mac is no devil. And don't we feel for him too, Pynchon is very careful not make devils and angels and what a paradox, he does it by playing with devils and angels. From richardromeo at hotmail.com Thu Nov 30 19:53:34 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:53:34 Subject: Nazi Archeology Message-ID: Hey all-- Michael Wood narrated a BBC program this week on PBS about Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail (really should have been called Himmler's search...). interviews w/ a few old Nazi crones, footage from expeditions to tibet, nuremberg trials, etc. Made Raiders of the Lost Ark seem close to reality. Rich _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From richardromeo at hotmail.com Thu Nov 30 19:55:02 2000 From: richardromeo at hotmail.com (Richard Romeo) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:55:02 Subject: Invitation Message-ID: Chris the K has notified me that she's like to have another New York Pynchon gathering next week on the 8th--at her place. Let me know if you're interested. Rich _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From jbor at bigpond.com Thu Nov 30 15:14:14 2000 From: jbor at bigpond.com (jbor) Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 08:14:14 +1100 Subject: V. (Ch 3) Max's (other) disgrace/Alice, Mildred and Victoria Message-ID: <21025133500863@domain3.bigpond.com> Yes, the juxtapositions of the young women in the text -- Alice-Victoria and Alice-Mildred, each of them virgins -- reinforces the sexual paradigm Pynchon is attempting to construct imo. "Myopic and stocky" (71.33), pre-pubescent Mildred's interests lie with her trilobite fossil; she is not sexually-aware, and so advances made towards her are not 'fair play', either for Max, or as Porpy intuits when Bongo-Shaftsbury accosts her on the south-bound train. But both Alice and Victoria "know what it is, what they're doing" (70.16), and this changes all the odds (and this would be particularly so in the Arab/Muslim world/s, I would imagine). best > we seem to have in Max's (Ralph's) Alice only yet another > in an army of Pynchonean tykes who can never qualify as poster child in a > Mothers Against Child Abuse campaign. > > P. From grladams at mail.teleport.com Thu Nov 30 09:00:41 2000 From: grladams at mail.teleport.com (grladams at mail.teleport.com) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:00:41 +0000 Subject: OED: Lochinvar Message-ID: <200011302300.RAA03448@waste.org> The name of the hero of a ballad in Sir Walter Scott's Marmion, used allusively for a young male eloper; also transf. (see also quot. 1951). 1879 C. M. YONGE Magnum Bonum I. xii. 233 His bride..had had a young Lochinvar, and even in her wedding dress, favoured by sympathising servants, had escaped down the back stairs of a London hotel, and been married at the nearest Church. 1890 �R. BOLDREWOOD� Colonial Reformer III. xxviii. 129 Much he marvelled at this Australian edition of �Young Lochinvar�. 1906 �O. HENRY� Four Million (1916) 125 He..received the hearty thanks of the backyard Lochinvar. 1936 J. BUCHAN Island of Sheep ix. 170 The young Lochinvar business was rather out of my usual line. 1951 E. HILL Territory 311 Lochinvars sold the women to the drovers and the stations at �10 a head. Ibid. 444 Lochinvar, the, old time term for catching lubras to work cattle, etc. 1966 [see EXTRAMURAL a. b]. 1970 New Yorker 3 Oct. 83/1 The majority of young artistic Lochinvars..have turned..to the tools and processes of modern industrial technology. 1972 �J. & E. BONETT� No Time to Kill iv. 45 She looked..expectant, waiting..for the return of her young Lochinvar. But young Lochinvar..had found another bride, and she had married Eldred. -from the OED. -jill From grladams at mail.teleport.com Thu Nov 30 09:19:23 2000 From: grladams at mail.teleport.com (grladams at mail.teleport.com) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:19:23 +0000 Subject: OED: Mahdi (see the word, impostor...) Message-ID: <200011302319.RAA06316@waste.org> Hence Mahdiship, the dignity or position of a Mahdi; Mahdism, Mahdi-ism, the rebel movements in the Sudan about 1880-1885, and subsequently, under leaders claiming to be the Mahdi; Mahdian, Mahdist, Mahdi-ist, an adherent of a pretended Mahdi. 1884 19th Cent. May 816 The impostor who has..laid claim to the Mahdiship. 1884 Times (weekly ed.) 29 Aug. 1 M�hdism is essentially a Shiya doctrine. 1885 Pall Mall G. 10 June 3/1 Mahdi-ism is in his eyes a real danger. 1885 Daily Tel. 19 Feb. 5/2 A demonstration..was..made against Metemneh, in order to draw the Mahdists off. 1885 Ibid. 21 Mar. 5/1 No hardy Mahdian got nearer than twenty yards. 1891 Daily News 18 Dec. 6/1 The invasion of Egypt by the Mahdiists in August, 1889. 1897 Ibid. 22 Sept. 6/4 Gordon, and Sir Samuel Baker..were even more responsible for the rise of Soudanese Mahdism than the Mahdi himself. -from the OED. I like the particularly interesting aspect that one of England's own, and one with varying levels of respect and admiration, would be responsible for its uprising. These and other dualities and flip flops are what are interesting about this time period in history. I have been reading the Mahdist state in the Sudan / P.M. Holt 2nd ed 1970. What strikes me particularly about this period in history there in Egypt is how confusing it is, how hard communication was. Instructions from Britain were misunderstood by Gordon, and relayed to the Egyptians and Sudanese leaders with particularly poor tact. Gordon's goals were not clear and he seemed to make flip flops in decision making. He seems particularly tragic, as if the ones still in Britain leave him to squirm in a difficult situation. By the way, Gordon was considered a pederast and a drinker. The parallels with the action in V are that there is some changeability, some codes being broken, flip flopping going on, the idea of impostors around, or people whose sympathies are changeable. -jill From mwaia at yahoo.com Thu Nov 30 18:09:24 2000 From: mwaia at yahoo.com (Mark Wright AIA) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 16:09:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: a place in the middle for adverts Message-ID: <20001201000924.9026.qmail@web111.yahoomail.com> Howdy Ad slogan seen on a bus this evening: ---"You can do anything with a Black Rocket." And just when I thought I was free... Mark __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/ From tsakabe at dohto.ac.jp Thu Nov 30 19:05:07 2000 From: tsakabe at dohto.ac.jp (Toshiyuki Sakabe) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 10:05:07 +0900 Subject: Arigatou to all Message-ID: <200012011005.EFI38978.TFCUBLB@dohto.ac.jp> Thank you for all your feedback to my mail about "A Wild Sheep Chase" All are very helpful. It looks like that novels by Haruki Murakami were discussed here before, doesn't it? In "A Wild Sheep Chase" I vaguely undersatood what the SHEEP, the EAR and nameless characters represents there. But I can't express in writing. Is there anybody out there to help me understand the novel? Tosh PS Have you started Christmas shopping yet? It's the first day of December here. The decoration in the city is totally for Christmas. From lycidas2 at earthlink.net Thu Nov 30 19:08:04 2000 From: lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 20:08:04 -0500 Subject: "children at a certain stage" Message-ID: <3A26F9F4.E31D4097@earthlink.net> "Herbert Stencil, like small children at a certain stage and Henry Adams in the Education...always referred to himself in the third person." Freudian derived Stage Theory, maybe even Anna Freud's? or theories of discontinuity, some "historical" others "biological" were very popular during the late 50s and early 60s. For example, stage theorists argued that the major thrust of development in social cognition for children is the decline of egocentrism and the development of role-taking skills. Egocentrism is the lack of ability to take another person's perspective into account. Children move through distinct stages of role-taking abilities. The lower boundary of these stages is egocentric perspective taking, when children confuse their perspective on objects and events with others' perspectives. This is characteristic of children below age six. Children gradually become aware that other people may have motivations different from their own point that the child is able to assume a third-person point of view, such as when the child can say "Mac wants me to play doctor, but I want to play house." Mutual perspective-taking (age ten through adult) is developed when children understand that just as they can look at others' perspectives, so can others mutually examine their perspective. Nobody loves you like a Mother can, but... Stencil was born the year Queen Victoria died, 1901. Her reign was almost free of war, with an Irish uprising (1848), the Boer Wars in South Africa (1881, 1899-1902) and an Indian rebellion (1857) being the only exceptions. Victoria was named Empress of India in 1878. England avoided continental conflict from 1815 through 1914,the lone exception being the Crimean War (1853-56). Just a little Irish uprising is all, oh and an Indian Rebellion, oh Africa, and.... I think there are a few other nasty little wars not mentioned here. http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon58.html Was Disraeli Sephardic before he was baptized? He was, wasn't he? http://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/egypt.htm From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 30 19:31:30 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:31:30 -0600 Subject: Miller Frank, The Mechanical Song (automata, femmes fatale) Message-ID: <3A26FF71.3D342E6D@mpm.edu> ... continuing on in Felicia Miller Frank, The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice, and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1995), Chapter 5, "Baudelaire and the Painted Woman," pp. 118-42 ... Baudelaire's preoccupation with the woman as frigid statue can be enrolled in the catalog of masochistic fantasies of the fatal woman [Mario] Praz [in his The Romantic Agony] finds typical of a certain strain of romantic erotic pathology, anticipating or suggesting the symbolist's privilieged image of the "cold majesty of the sterile woman." (132) The topos of the artificial woman belongs, in a broad sense [no pun intended, I'm sure ...], to the tradition of the automaton. (132) [Jean-Claude] Beaune, who calls the automaton a "metaphysical machine" that occupies the "center of frictions between logical categories" (Beaune, [L'Automate et ses mobiles,] 10), writes that the history of automata took a new turn with teh rationalism of Descartes and Leibniz.... Informing all these philosophical uses of the model of the machine is the prestige of the clockwork-mechanism metaphor of the universe that lay close to the surface in this period and affected ideas of social and even political function, as Otto Mayr has demonstrated in Authority, Liberty and Automatic Machines in Early Modern Europe [q.v.]. (133) For Descartes ... automata can resemble human beings, while humans may seem like automata. Elsewhere, Descartes remarks that the people he sees "pssing in the street might, under their cloaks and hats, be nothing more than automata" (quoted in Beaune, 10). (135) [Anyone know just what Cartesian text this quote is from? And do see as well, of course, Julien Offroy de la Mettrie, L'Homme-Machine ...] Advances in the watchmaker's art paved the way for a number of mechanical musical instruments of all kinds. These were sometimes adorned with human heads whose movements could be regulated with the expulsion of air ... (135) There was also the hope of making automata that would imitate speech.... Marin Mersenne .... [Wolfgang von] Kempelen's Talking Head, a machine that perfectly pronounced the word "exploitation." (136) The artificial woman has had a long history of her own. Classicists are familiar with the tradition of the false Helen sent to Troy, the real Helen to Egypt. In her article "Le Fantome de la Sexualite," [Nouvelle Revue de la Psychanalyse: La Chose Sexuelle 29 (Spring 1984): 11-31] speaking of Helen's slippery status as object of desire, of Helen as lack or mirage, Nicole Loraux evokes the references to Helen doubled by an eidolon in the poetry of Stesichorus and in Euripides' Helen, where she is called a mimema, imitation, and an agalma, a jeweled terasure in the form of a statue. The familiar tale of Pygmalion ... (137) ... Jean Paul, Simple, yet well-intended biography of a new and pleasing woman of pure wood, whom I long ago fashioned an married.... [E.T.A.] Hoffmann's wind-up doll Olympia [in "The Sandman"] ... the artificial woman conceived by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam [in L'Eve future].... a series of talking dolls in whose manufacture Edison was induced to participate. (137) Images of automata have been shown by Lieselotte Sauer [Marionetten, Maschinen, Automaten: Der Kunstliche Mensch in Der Deutschen Und Englishchem Romantik] to be central to the problems of german romanticism. Sauer demonstrates how the essentially optimistic metaphor of the machine widespread among post-Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophical writers undergoes a shift in romantic literature to become a negative literary image.... Jean Paul, Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, Hoffmann ... Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ... Ambrose Bierce, Edwrad Bulwer-Lytton, Samuel Butler, and others. Sauer argues that these texts show an ambivalent response to the Industrial Revolution and that in them "the central problems and questions of romanticism are touched uopn in the context of metaphors and motifs connected with artificial man" (138) [Here, Miller Frank is quoting from Theodore Ziolkowski's review of Sauer's text in Comparative Literature 38, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 302-4. Hope somebody translates that Sauer book but soon ...] The image of teh artificial woman taht emerges in French writing may be seen in part as reflecting teh influence of German romantic imagery, or perhaps more accurately, as expressing some of the same uneasy responses to teh technological transformations taking place during teh period. At teh same time, this image fuses with the motif of the fatal woman that [Mario] Praz argues to eb a major topos of romantic erotic pathology in his chapter "La Belle Dame sans Merci" in The Romantic Agony. Praz shows that while teh romantic imagery of teh first decades of teh epriod was dominated largely by passive, suffering women and their cruel persecutors, latter-day sons of "the Divine Marquis," a shift took place taht reversed these roles toward the middle of the century ... (138) It is curious to follow the parabola of teh sexes during the nineteenth century: the obsession for the androgyne type towards the end of the century is a clear indication of a turbid confusion of function and ideal. The amle, who at first tends toward sadism, inclines, at the end of the century, towards masochism. ([Mario] Praz, [The Roamntic Agony,] 216) (138) ... Cleopatra ... Helen ... the frequent use of Salome as a figure of the cruel "lynx-eyed" enchantress in numerous texts ... (139) If these women are cast as feral, demonic, or vampiristic, demanding the submission of hapless young lovers to their insatiable and bloody passions, they are also called cold, statuelike in their pallor and cruel indifference in a way that recalls Helen, the jeweled agalma, or the female automaton ... [Theophile Gautier's] Nyssia ... "the fingers of a bronze statue animated by some marvel" ... Prosper Merimee's Venus d-Ille ... "her arms of bronze" ... Swinburne's Faustine, who, like his ghostly Venus (Laus Veneris), is eternal, a frighetning "love-machine with clockwork joints of supple gold" made for the destruction of her lovers (Praz, 240). Other charcterizations of teh fatal woman portray her as frighteningly pallid, like a statue (like Balzac's Jane la Pale), or beautiful and dead (like Very, seven years dead, in Heinrich Heine's "Florentine Night" (Salon, iii). The attraction of necrophilic amours closes the circle back to Baudelaire. (139) [Frank] Kermode treats some related material in Romantic Image where he discusses the motif of the masklioke dead face of teh dancer. (139) ... he calls the concept of the dead face and the dancer the cenbtral icon of Yeats and of the whole romantic tradition ... (141) It may be useful to remember that dance during the nineteenth centurt had devloped into a highly artificial, stylized form .... The topos of teh fatal woman, icy, cruel, and statuelike .... and of teh remote dancer ... are both affiliated with the new valualtion of artificiality as a defining term of modernity first given form by Baudelaire ... (141) The inhumn woman of the romantics is thus a hypostasis of self-reflective images of masochistic romantic sexual pathology, of it's aesthetic theory with its newly valued art for art's sake, and finally, of teh ancient dream--or nightmare--of an uncanny artificial being: Helen as jeweled statue. (142) ... okay, so we've got modernity, femininity, artificiality, romanticism, symbolism, coldness, cruelty, masochism, automata, jewels, Egypt ... see as well ... Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty. Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture. __________, Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood. Mary Ann Doane, Femmes Fatale. Marie Lathers, The Aesthetic of Artifice: Villiers' Futue Eve. Michelle A. Masse, In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism, and the Gothic. Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs. Suzanne R. Stewart, Sublime Surrender: Male Masochism at the Fin-de-Siecle. Gaylyn Studlar, In the Realm of Pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich, and the Masochistic Aesthetic. ... and, on that SF S&M cybergoth tip, Richard Calder, Dead Girls. ... that one has it all going on ... From monroe at mpm.edu Thu Nov 30 19:51:15 2000 From: monroe at mpm.edu (Dave Monroe) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:51:15 -0600 Subject: Eddins, "Depraved New World" Message-ID: <3A270413.2DF69766@mpm.edu> ... from Dwight Eddins, The Gnostic Pynchon (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990), Chapter Three, "Depraved New World," pp. 50-88. Warning: contains spoilers ... In the Western Rose Window of Chartres, [Henry] Adams had seen "a confused effect of opals, in a delirium of color and light, with a result like a cluster of stones in jewelry" [Henry Adams, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres]. This epiphany of transcendental hope in the name of the Queen of Heaven stands in parodic contrast to the brutal end of V. on Malta. Transformed by this point into the Queen of the Inanimate, the spokeswoman of death, she has literally become artificial gaudiness and bedizenment. Her dismemberment by children who remove a clockwork eye, jeweled teeth, and a star sapphire navel--this last with the point of a bayonet--symbolizes the sterile crucifixion of a false god, a violent death without hope of resurrection: and is, in that very lack, an ironic testament to the preeminence of violence and daeth in the gnostic religion that she serves with increasing awareness as she approaches her end. (61) ... cf. Felicia Miller Frank on "Baudelaire and the Painted Woman" .... From o.sell at telda.net Thu Nov 30 22:21:56 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 05:21:56 +0100 Subject: NP Ante Up References: <001b01c05af5$6ef967a0$e23e71cf@keithmar.jetlink.net> Message-ID: <009d01c05b4e$3eed7520$e15406d5@selltelda.net> "Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness. Get familiar with Cannibalism." http://espn.go.com/page2/s/thompson/001120.html ----- Original Message ----- From: s~Z To: Pynchlist Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2000 6:46 PM Subject: NP Ante Up > http://espn.go.com/page2/s/thompson/ > > From o.sell at telda.net Thu Nov 30 22:24:13 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 05:24:13 +0100 Subject: The Great American Dictionary References: <3A1FB9FD.9882304E@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <00ab01c05b4e$912b88e0$e15406d5@selltelda.net> Is this distinctively American? "Nothing is absolutely correct; nothing is ever incorrect. It is just a matter of who uses a word and why." from: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/arts/25SHEL.html Otto ----- Original Message ----- From: Terrance To: Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2000 2:09 PM Subject: Re: The Great American Dictionary The main ambition is to create something distinctively American: a democratic dictionary that describes, not prescribes. Of course the debate over whether dictionaries should be prescriptive - asserting that a word has relatively determined meanings and a proper usage; or descriptive, asserting that a word has shifting meanings determined by its popular use - has been raging for several decades. The best dictionaries maintain a precarious balance. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/arts/25SHEL.html From o.sell at telda.net Thu Nov 30 22:24:24 2000 From: o.sell at telda.net (Otto Sell) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 05:24:24 +0100 Subject: pomo Message-ID: <00b101c05b4e$96813240$e15406d5@selltelda.net> Postmodernism "Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins. (...)" from: http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html Dr. Mary Klages, Associate Professor, English Department, University of Colorado, Boulder From jp4321 at IDT.NET Thu Nov 30 22:23:47 2000 From: jp4321 at IDT.NET (jporter) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 23:23:47 -0500 Subject: Invitation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: If I can pry myself away from various and sundry inanimacies- often posing, or otherwise disguised, as the opposite- I'd love to re-join "The Crew." jody p.s.: If Chris, et. al, would rather meet at (or retire to) her choice of any of the best jazz clubs in town- to acknowledge and celebrate: The Advent (at least of V.) I'd be honored to sponsor such a fete (i.e., pick up the tab). Either way, already with thee... And let us know. > From: "Richard Romeo" > Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:55:02 > To: pynchon-l at waste.org > Subject: Invitation > > Chris the K has notified me that she's like to have another New York Pynchon > gathering next week on the 8th--at her place. > > Let me know if you're interested. > > Rich > ______________________________________________________________________________ > _______ > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com > >