V.V.3--McClintic McClintoc

[O']

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