MDDM Chapter 44 Notes & Musings

[Terrance]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> >From Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The
> Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth
> Century (Berkeley: U of California P, 1986) ...
> 
> "'Annihilation of time and space' was the topos which
> the early nineteenth century used to describe the new
> situation into which the railroad placed natural space
> after depriving it of its hitherto absolute powers.
> Motion was no longer dependent on the conditions of
> natural space, but on mechanical power that created
> its own new spatiality." (p.10)

The extension of bureaucratic control over
time continued in the 19th century with the
imposition of a unified global scheme of time
measurement, a change necessitated by the
revolutions in industry and transportation, and
specifically the schedules and timetables of the
railroads. In order to avoid massive inefficiency
and spoilage, goods and people needed to arrive
and depart at predictable times.

http://wwics.si.edu/OUTREACH/WQ/WQSELECT/AVENI.HTM

Mumford is always worth looking at on this subject. 
Also, I mentioned  Chandler's Visible Hand. 


Always worth keeping one eye on the living earth while reading P. 
The Geological Revolution in American Time
http://epsilon3.georgetown.edu/~coventrm/asa2001/panel9/allen.html

(Hollander has some interesting comments on
Pynchon and railroad lines).

All reminds me of another Hollander essay and flying. Flying lessons. 

Johnson, Samuel. Rasselas, Poems, and Selected Prose. Ed.
Bertrand H. Branson. New York: Holt, 1958. 

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. 1726. Ed. Herbert
Davis. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962. 

Voltaire. Candide. 1759. Trans. Lowel Bair. New York:
Bantam, 1959. 


Cowart, David, "More Advanced the Deeper We Dig": Ratner's Star 
Modern Fiction Studies 45.3 (1999) 600-620 

And Toni Morrison because of flying and cannibalism and midwifery and
Corinthians. 

Mona Lisa did tell me
Not to cross the picket line.
She said that all the railroad men
Would Drink my blood like wine.
A worried man with a worried mind 
One foot on the platform and one foot behind 
There's a woman just come in off the sea 
Got white skin, got double agent eyes 
I'm looking up into the rocketless skies 
I'm dressed in British duds, waiting on the last train 
Standin' on the gallows with my head in the noose 
Any minute now I'm expectin' all hell to break loose 
People are crazy and times are strange 
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range 
I used to keep cool but - things have changed.