MDDM that Chicken 666.20

[Doug Millison]

I've just recently re-read the Illiad, in which the Greek gods move the
Acheans and Trojans about like pawns on a chess board, a fact which is
noted not only by the storyteller (narrator) but also by the characters in
the story, and, I imagine, in its oral performance settings, did not go
unnoticed by its listeners.  "The Devil made me do it" is an old cop-out,
obviously, but very useful.  (I expect that even at the ancient times the
Illiad was performed, it was recognized as a cop-out, too -- the same poem
shows the gods to be as foolish and willful and subject to bein duped as
any human).  The Book of Job takes this kind of awareness in a different
direction, in a dramatic and emotional confrontation of created with
Creator.  I think Pynchon's Luddite essay, written as he was nearing the
end of M&D, it seems, helps establish the Duck even more firmly in the
Frankenstein's monster tradition.


At 10:47 PM -0400 8/9/02, Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
>[...] Might be a veiled commentary on certain apocryphal
>versions of our own original relationship with the forces
>responsible for our creation.
>