V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc

[Dave Monroe]

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 ....