MDDM Ch. 70 Higher Assembly

Dave Monroe davidmmonroe at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 16 01:02:58 CDT 2002


"Here are the last Cadre, out in the uniterrupted
Visto,-- from a certain Height, oddly verminous upon
the pale Riband unfolding,-- [...] tho' if it takes
them much longer to get over the Ridge, even if they
escape freezing solid, they may yet have journey'd
further into Terrestrial Knowledge, than will allow
them to re-emerge without bargaining away for merely
another Return following another Excursion, in a Cycle
belonging to some Engine whose higher Assembly and
indeed Purpose, they are never, except from infrequent
Glimpses, quite able to make out." (M&D, Ch. 70, p.
683)

"oddly verminous upon the pale Riband unfolding"

Main Entry: ver·min·ous 
Pronunciation: 'v&r-m&-n&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin verminosus infested with maggots,
from (assumed) Latin vermin-, vermen worm; akin to
Latin vermis worm -- more at WORM
Date: circa 1616
1 : consisting of or being vermin : NOXIOUS
2 : forming a breeding place for or infested by vermin
: FILTHY <verminous garbage>
3 : caused by vermin <verminous disease>

Main Entry: rib·and 
Pronunciation: 'ri-b&nd
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, alteration of riban
Date: 15th century
: a ribbon used especially as a decoration

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

Cf. ...

"'... this great invisible Thing that comes crawling
Straight over their Lands, devouring all in its Path.'
   "'Well! of course it's a living creature, 'tis all
of us, temporarily collected into an Entity, whose
Labors none could do alone.'
   "'A tree-slaughtering Animal, with no purpose but
to continue creating forever a perfect Corridor over
the Land.  Its teeth of Steel,-- its Jaws, Axmen,--
its Life's Blood, Disbursement.  And what of its
intentions, beyond killing ev'rything due west of it?
do you know? I don't either.'" (M&D, Ch. 70, p. 678)

As well as, again ...

The Lambton Worm (M&D, Ch. 60, p. 588-9)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0208&msg=69530&sort=date

And cf. as well that "next higher assembly" @ GR p.
252 (Viking/Penguin ed.) ...  

>From Nicholas Spencer, "The 'Law' of Simulated War in
Gravity's Rainbow."  Oklahoma City University Law
Review, Vol. 24, No. 3  (1999): 681-703 ...

"As Slothrop dimly realizes as he investigates the
technological bases of IG Farben, the Rocket
represents technology's drive to become cybernetically
self-enclosed as the 'Next Higher Assembly' 'Slothrop
finds he has paused in front of the blue parts list
that started all this. How high does it go ... ahhhh.
The treacherous question is not meant to apply to
people after all, but to the hardware!'  At the
novel's conclusion, where Gottfried is enshrouded in
the S- Gerat and is launched in the post-war Rocket
00000, we realize that the ultimate goal of this Next
Higher Assembly is to appropriate and merge with the
human. However, as this Rocket traces an arc of time
from its Ascent in the post-war Zone to its Descent
upon the moviegoers in the Orpheus Theatre in 1970s
Los Angeles, the reader also realizes that the purpose
of the post-war Rocket is to be a deterrence machine,
a virtual threat that never reaches its target. In
accordance with an earlier statement on the
mathematical foundation of the V-2, Rocket 00000
remains an 'unmeasurable gap above the roof of this
old theatre, the last delta-t.' 'The moving vehicle is
frozen, in space, to become architecture, and
timeless. It was never launched. It will never fall.'
(pp. 697-8)

http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/spencer24.htm

And cf. here Stuart Moulthorp, "The Pink Automaton of
the Panapocalypse" ...

"That last phrase 'It will never fall' is equally
pertinent to Pökler's predicament at the target point,
to 'your' position in the Orpheus Theatre, and perhaps
also to our perplexity in reading the end of Gravity's
Rainbow. The phrase asks us to believe (in mythic or
paranoiac terms) that the rocket at apogee passes
through a temporal singularity, an equipoise or still
point exempt from the normal laws of time and motion.
Because they spend that uncomputable instant outside
the linear embrace of analysis, all rockets may be
regarded under the aspect of a timeless, even
transcendental allegory. So that every rocket fired
does become the 'Perfect Rocket' of Franz Pökler's
reflections and perhaps also the 'absolute missile' of
Derrida's. Each rocket participates in that finned
signifier with everyone's name on it, that which hangs
perpetually over our heads, suspended by chance or by
the next higher assembly (in)to which chance
integrates, namely history."

http://www.pd.org/topos/perforations/perf18/pink-ont-2.html

http://www.pd.org/topos/perforations/perf18/pink-title.html

Citing ...

Derrida, Jacques.  'No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full
   Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives),'
   Diacritics 14:2 (1984): 20-31.

And, speaking of those Deleuzoguattarian machines, do
see as well here ...

Moulthrop, Stuart.  "No War Machine."  Reading
   Matters: Narrative in the New Ecology of Media.
   Ed. Joseph Tabbi and Michael Wutz.  Ithaca, NY:
   Cornell UP, 1997.  269-92.

http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/essays/war_machine.html

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