Cognitive Fictions

[Dave Monroe]

>From Joseph Tabbi, Cognitive Fictions (Mpls: U of
Minnesota P, 2002), Ch. 2, "Mapping the Cor(e)tex(t):
Thomas Pynchon," pp. 25-53 ...

"Over coffee and croissants ... a French chef and his
recent duelling adversary , the 'Quarrelsome Fop'
Philip Dimdown, reach a kind of truce by comparing the
techniques of their respective professions.  The
working of carbon-dust into steel in the Fop's
Damascus sword, the chef notes, is 'not much different
from how one must work the Butter into the Croissant
Dough....'  The technique--'Lamination,' as Mason
notes--is quickly recognized by others in the company
....

[...]

"... the very ease with which examples multiply among
these lively minds ... convince the discussants that
something else is emergent, something inexplicable and
powerful as the political revolution that will only
later be seen to have concentrated male energies
otherwise squandered in drinking and duels.... 
Topography in Pynchon is never unpolitical,
particularly in this novel that reiterates in
encyclopedic detail the material projection of
earthly, astronomical, and mental spheres onto flat
surfaces marked by surveyors' lines." (pp. 25-26)

Et soforthiam ...

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/T/tabbi_cognitive.html

Wish this'd been published a year or so earlier ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=65196&sort=date

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