PYNCHON NAME

[Dave Monroe]

I'm assuming some of you, esp. the German-speaking somes of you, are
aware of the following, but ...

http://sophie7.culture.hu-berlin.de/aesthetic/liste.htm

Found it whilst I was hunting around for info on ...

Siegert, Bernhard.  Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal
    System.  Trans. Kevin Repp.  Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999.

... which I've been picking at since I signed on this list, first
published as ...

Siegert, Bernhard.  Relais: Geschicke der Literatur als Epoche
    der Poste, 1751-1913.  Berlin: Verlag Brinkmann & Bose, 1993.

... one might think that The Crying of Lot 49 would be an obvious topic
of discussion here.  However: "Someone who knew that America is a
legacy, something to be passed along,m has wriiten this all down much
better than the writer of these pages might have done; hence, The Crying
of Lot 49 could not possibly become the object of this study." (p. 2)

So not so much on Pynchon's novella, but all sorts of interesting stuff
on postal systems, the history, politics and theory thereof, as well as
texts like Heinrich von Kleist's delightful little "Project for a
Cannonball Postal System" and Franz Kafka's obsessive, extensive Letters
to Felice.  But I understand that Siegert teaches a seminar on Gravity's
Rainbow and is a cohort of Friedrich Kittler's (who's written on GR as
well).  Do see his website ...

http://sophie7.culture.hu-berlin.de/aesthetic/bsiegert.htm

... and note the muted posthorn in the upper left-hand (of course)
corner ...