Happy Birthday, Rudolf Clausius!

[Dave Monroe]

,,, from as if you all didn't know, Thoams Pynchon, "Is it O.K. to be a
Luddite?," New York Times Book Review, October 28th, 1984, pp. 1, 40-1
...

"By 1945, the factory system--which, more than any piece of machinery,
was the real and major result of the Industrial Revolution--had been
extended to include the Manhattan Project, the German long-range rocket
program and the death camps, such as Auschwitz.  It has taken no major
gift of prophecy to see how these three curves of development might
plausibly converge, and before too long. Since
Hiroshima, we have watched nuclear weapons multiply out of control, and
delivery systems acquire, for global purposes, unlimited range and
accuracy. An unblinking acceptance of a holocaust running to seven- and
eight-figure body counts has become--among those who, particularly since
1980, have been guiding our military policies--conventional wisdom."

... it also takes no great gift of hermeneutics to note that, in
Gravity's Rainbow, those "three curves of development"--"the Manhattan
Project, the German long-range rocket program and the death camps, such
as Auschwitz"--are not only touched upon but are fundamentally important
to the novel in ways well beyond--and I'm thinking here of the Manhattan
Project, which, whilst not much mentioned specifically (and a-bomb
references being even more elliptical, though nonetheless pointed)
certainly among the various wartime efforts parodied in the novels's
proliferation of arcane military-scientific agencies and projects--any
specific references to them, but are further "prophesied" by the novel
to "plausibly converge, and before too long," after that "final delta-t"
@ The Orpheus Theater, in "global" "nuclear" "holocaust."  Insofar as
any text might have its themes summarized, and insofar as any author
might be granted the authority to do so for his/her own (or anyone
else's, for that matter) texts, "Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?" serves as
an invaluable reader's guide to Gravity's Rainbow ...

...