Kaballah and Pynchon Criticism

[jporter]

> From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus)

> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: Kaballah and Pynchon Criticism
> 
> 
> 
> Martin E. Rosenberg schrieb:
> 
>> If you notice, the most prominent passages on kabbalah in GR are linked
>> to a
>> character named Marcel the robot chessplayer.
> 
> 
> do you suggest that trp met the kabbalah while dealing with artificial
> intelligence? if so: could this have happened because of the obvious
> correspondences between the computer and the golem, who is also present in
> m&d? 
> 
> really interested: kai f. lorentzen
  
Even if trp "met" the kabbalah at another time, the "obvious correspondences
between the computer and the golem" are unavoidable. It was just a matter of
time. It also seems to be one of the main underlying themes of the luddite
essay, but there he takes, if you will, Marx & Engle's  "spectre" that "is
haunting Europe" and sneaks it into *Oboy*, and with that into the whole
process of cultural evolution leading to the Badass. That dialectical
materialism should culminate in the animation of a Golem seems to me
profoundly ironic. That the Golem might turn out to be as uncontrollable and
willful as a teenager, uncanny.

Compare this with the portrayal of Mason panicked by the product of his
father's labor- fearing the metaphorical implications of the bread, its
spiritual dimension, lest a door be left open for any "lesser" spirits to
gain access.

And what about the products of Pynchon's own labor- those intricate
metaphor's that seem to assemble by themselves, and leave an eager king lud
scratching his head with no loom in sight? What should we make of the bread
Pynchon offers us, fresh from that yawning oven? Should we fear communion
with a less than sacred spirit when we accept it? As with the creation of
any golem, control might be a nostalgic pipe dream.

[cf., Turing's 9th example of possible objections to his proposed test for
machine consciousness in his classic paper: *Computing Machinery and
Intelligence* in _Mind_, October, 1950: "These disturbing phenomena seem to
deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them!
... It is very difficult to rearrange one's idea so as to fit these new
facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to
believe in ghosts and bogies."  http://www.abelard.org/turpap/turpap.htm]

jody

"Prarie went along watchfully, at her own tempo, making a point of
inspecting a few assembled casseroles as well as checking the baloney spin
rate..."