Foreword, Churchill, Orwell, old hat and all that

[jbor]

on 28/4/03 9:14 AM, Otto wrote:

> I see the difference between the novels regarding the temporal direction.
> "1984" is clearly dystopian SF while "GR" tries to show the "roots" of the
> post-WWII world order under the nuclear threat. In both novels there's no
> political "good side" -- which is interesting because I bet that the
> (Western) Allies of WW II saw themselves as the "good guys" (and of course I
> tend to do that too) and not just as the other side of the same coin.
> 
> I too believe that "1984" is very relevant today, especially because of
> contemporary technical possibilities which make Orwell's ficticious future
> more likely than ever before. Maybe Pynchon wrote the new foreword to
> "1984" because he wanted to emphasize this relevance for the digital era.
> 
> "The question had only begun to arise of how to avoid, or, preferably,
> escape altogether, the threat, indeed promise, of control without mercy that
> lay in wait down the comely vistas of freedom that computer-folk were
> imagining then--a question we are still asking. (...) what is left of us
> that is not in some way tainted, coopted and colonized, by the forces of
> Control, usually digital in nature."
> (TRP, foreword to Jim Dodge's "Stone Junction," 1997, p. xii)
> 
> This he says about the year 1989, "toward the end of an era still innocent,
> in its way, of the cyberworld just ahead about to exponentially explode upon
> it." (ibid)

Hey Otto

It's great to be in total agreement with someone for once! I'm betting that
this theme of computers/digital Control &c is going to figure prominently in
the new novel. And I think that the 1984 Foreword will provide lots to think
about and discuss in terms of Pynchon's own work as well.

best