1945

[jbor]

>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> 

Step two is off the table. No problem.

> Step one:

Yes, it is a *very* interesting passage. Those verb tenses and moods and
modalities are crucial, aren't they? -- "tends to favor", "this is", "was
widely believed ... lay", "if ... could", "should be", "should proceed".

Is it possible that the text is entertaining Rószavölgyi's intimation of the
imminent end of the war, and what he perceives will be the necessary changes
in the mindset of the peacetime bureaucracy, in order to ensure the
maintenance of his own field of enterprise in the "who knows how many years
of Postwar" to come?

best

> 1. the date
> a. "Maybe because this is 1945." This is the date we want,
> the year, "By 1945, the factory system - which, more than
> any piece of machinery, was the real and major    result of
> the Industrial Revolution..." OKL
> 2. War
> a. "It was widely believed in those days that behind the War
> (P's Capitalization)--all the death, savagery, and
> destruction--lay the Fuher-principle."
> b. "that there should be no room for a terrible disease like
> charisma..." ( charisma here is Weber's sociological term,
> it refers to the quality of leadership that appeals to
> non-rational motives)
> 3. Postwar hopes (note that these are postwar (lower case
> U.S. president-elect) and not postWar (buried under the Big
> W)
> a. "But if personalities could be replaced by abstractions
> of power"
> b. "if techniques developed by the corporations could be
> brought to bear"
> c. "might not nations live rationally?"
> d. rationalization should proceed while we had the time and
> resources...." (P's leipein)
> e. Slothrop's past and future


~~~
    "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. ... "
                                 (T. Pynchon, 1984)
                                                    ~~~