re Amerikaka (NP?)

[Jasper Fidget]

On historical relevance, I think that after catastrophic events, formerly
relevant history tends to get boxed up and stored in the attic, not because
it's necessarily *less relevant*, just that its context suddenly belongs to
a place prior to the catastrophic dividing line (in this case, obviously,
Sept 11).  History has a way of segmenting itself in this manner
(prelapsarian, ante and post diluvian, pre and post Holocaust, etc)
especially to the culture-society-zeitgeist to which it's occurred.  "That
was then, this is now."

I've posted before that Sept. 11 is a dividing point for contemporary
American history, blowing the past out of context, revectoring the future.
I've since recalled through discussion that Pynchon talks about this in the
context of the lightning flare that highlights a single moment and divides
past from future: "the ones who do get hit experience a singular point, a
discontinuity in the curve of life" (664).  And Slothrop: "Do you know what
the time rate of change _is_ at a cusp?  _Infinity_, that's what!  A-and
right across the point, it's _minus_ infinity!  How's _that_ for sudden
change, eh?" (664).

Sudden change indeed and oh-boy.

Jasper Fidget

----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry Musikar" <scuffling at hotmail.com>
To: "Pynchon List" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 11:04 AM
Subject: Re: re Amerikaka (NP?)


> MalignD -
>
> It seems that we are destined to clash, you and I, not so much over means
> and ends, but rather over knowledge itself. Either everything is
connected,
> and therefore relevant, to various degrees, or nothing is (GR explanation
of
> paranoia, except for the important addition of "various degrees"). If
> fiction makes sense, then it why can't it be relevant? If the past can't
be
> relevant, then what can be?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <MalignD at aol.com>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 1:23 PM
> Subject: Re: re Amerikaka (NP?)
>
>
> > <<...  it becomes easier to imagine the sort of drift that must have
taken
> > over right-thinking and even intelligent people in Nazi Germany.  What
> they
> > were doing must have seemed right and obvious every step along the way.
> > Pokler couldn't see it coming, let himself get entangled, he never
really
> had
> > a chance the way the movies hooked him in of course, realized too late
> what
> > crimes he helped commit. >>
> >
> > And this is especially relevant to the goings-on in Afghanistan, since
it
> > happened to a made-up German in a thirty-year-old novel, set some
> twenty-five
> > years earlier.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>