NN Friedman V. Pynchon

[pynchonoid]

--- Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> I think his point is that the internet
> can work
> both ways. It can be potentially liberating or
> controlling.

I may be overlooking something but I don't recall
Pynchon writing anywhere specifically about positive
aspects of the internet. In the presentation I cited
the other day, for example, Brian Stonehill started
off focusing on the fact that Pynchon had been so
negative about computers and the Internet -- that
presented an obstacle to the argument that he wanted
to make about Pynchon and cyberspace:  

"ON THE FACE OF THINGS, it would seem paradoxical if
not plainly contradictory to claim Thomas Pynchon for
the pantheon of cyberspace prophets. For one thing,
the most challenging and most rewarding novelist of
our period would seem to have a pronounced aversion to
anything binary. How can cybernauts and cyberpunks
have the nerve to claim Pynchon as a literary
ancestor, when the implied author of Gravity's Rainbow
so clearly thinks of the digital domain as fodder for
fascism and as hospitable only to the forces of
dehumanization?" ("Pynchon's Prophecies of
Cyberspace",  Brian Stonehill,
<http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/gr/bsto.html>)



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