VLVL In ways more and less literal (1)

[jbor]

Part 1 of this post still seems blocked from the list for some reason, but
it basically noted that it's a plot point that Ralph and the Sisters and the
feds and various other govt departments do keep expansive data files, and
that there is crossover between them in accessing the information. Much of
the computer stuff is recycled from _The Crying of Lot 49_ ("If patterns of
ones and zeros were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything
about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long
string of ones and zeros ... " on p. 90, Cf. "She had heard all about
excluded middles; they were bad shit, to be avoided; and how had it ever
happened here, with the chances once so good for diversity? For it was now
like walking among matrices of a giant digital computer, the zeroes and ones
twinned above, hanging like balanced mobiles right and left, ahead, thick,
maybe endless. Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a
transcendent meaning, or only the earth." _Lot 49_, p. 125.)

on 18/12/03 8:31 AM, jbor wrote:

> (cont.)
> 
> I'm not sure about the Christian references and the symbolism which attach
> to Frenesi in the text: is her belief in "the hacker we call God" and her
> obsession with "the light" meant to be a good thing or a bad thing?
> 
> Anyway, after Prairie goes to bed on page 115, the data "in the computer
> library, in storage" becomes the source of narrative agency in the text. In
> other words, it's a narratological device used by Pynchon. I'm not sure that
> Prairie ever does access this information. She wants to find out about, and
> find, her mom. As most of what is recounted from page 115 to page 128
> relates to DL, I don't think Prairie would have been actively searching for
> it on the computer. I'm not sure why the Sisters keep a file on Frenesi,
> apart from the obvious reason: her connection with DL.
> 
> It's interesting that the basic puzzle of _Pale Fire_ (what is the "real"
> story, and who's telling the story?) has been deliberately constructed by
> Nabokov so that there can be no definitive answer. In _Vineland_, by
> contrast, the narrative sources are always clearly demarcated by Pynchon.
> 
> best (resending this after quite a few unsuccessful attempts)