NPPF--TV then and later

[jbor]

on 2/8/03 1:57 AM, Paul Mackin wrote:

> 
> Someone who's reading or rereading both Vineland and Pale Fire might
> want to compare the TV John and Sybil watch in the 50s (golden age) and
> what the Vineland people view thity years later.
> 
> Is there much difference.

        TV's huge paperclip now shines instead
        Of the stiff vane so often visited
        By the naive, the gauzy mockingbird
        Retelling all the programs she had heard;
        Switching from *chippo-chippo* to a clear
        *Too-wee*, *too-wee*; then rasping out: *come here* ...
                                        (61-66)

Cf. _Vineland_:

    Up and down that street, she remembered, television screens had
    flickered silent blue in the darkness. Strange loud birds, not of
    the neighbourhood, were attracted, some content to perch in the
    palm trees, keeping silence and an eye out for the rats who lived
    in the fronds, others flying by close to windows, seeking an angle
    to sit and view the picture from. When the commercials came on, the
    birds, with voices otherworldly pure, would sing back at them,
    sometimes even when none were on.  (82.17; see also 285.15)

best