pynchon-l-digest V2 #1831

[Doug Millison]

"jbor":
>Are you saying that human language(s) and culture(s) preceded human
>history???!


See Lascaux and other prehistoric paintings, please. Obviously human 
language development comes before writing, the watershed event that 
marks the beginning of history. Song, dance, painting, sculpture all 
predate written history. A number of credible researchers and 
thinkers also suggest that language and culture begin to evolve prior 
to the emergence of the human being.

The familiar-sounding Mr. Hammerswing might stop and think for a 
minute about how much serious attention Mr. Pynchon gives to such 
matters as language and culture and the limits of perception and how 
our philosophical constructs might or might not warp our experience 
of the world before dismissing this particular thread out of hand 
(even as he/she participates in same).

Given the view of the Earth as a living being that emerges from 
Pynchon's novels, where sentience and some sort of spiritual 
existence appear to permeate all and where human existence continues 
across the life/death interface, it's hard to see how Pynchon could 
be shoe-horned into a worldview as limited, spirit- and soulless, 
self-cancelling, and one-size-fits-all as social constructionism, 
that box just isn't big enough to contain Pynchon no matter how hard 
you shove and squeeze.
-- 
d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>