McCintic McClintoc

[Dave Monroe]

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 ...