Venery by reason of the wind

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/5/02 4:25:45 PM, cathyramirez69 at yahoo.com writes:

>>I agree. Is the machine connection that Mason
suggests, of the named and charted (taking Blake's
term for the poem London etc) above and the boundry
lines below, madness? And I wonder about Tim's madness
too. 
Is Tim mad at this point? Or is he a dead satirist,
now Brannigan's ghost? A dithyrambic from the forest
mixing the living and the dead with desire?<<

I think that the Luddite essay spells it out
fairly clearly. Tox seems allied with the Luddites
reaching for a Golem/Badass in times of trouble and
uncertainty, to stand up to the evil forces
of technological change that threaten to
overwhelm his people. But I don't think Pynchon,
although sympathetic, goes over entirely to
the Luddite side of the Snovian disjunction.

Mason, on the other hand, is certainly not a
Luddite, but being human can't help but hope
for transcendence. He's trying to embrace
Deism but I don't think it quite fills his needs.
Sci Fi hasn't been invented yet, and the Gothic
Novel is still in diapers. Mason, in his pride, would 
probably label it as "escapist fare" anyway- if
not guilty of "insufficient hatred" than, as the
essay suggests- "insuffiecient seriousness."

I think his "great single Engine, the size of a
Continent" is his tortured mind's reponse to
the need for a "countercritter Bad and big
enough" to deal with what he senses the future
holds. It may be his version of "Oboy." Mason 
may be another "unintentional luddite" like Ike.

regards