VLVL2 (9): The Puncutron Machine

[Tim Strzechowski]

149.14:  "[Prairie]'d finally got to meet Takeshi, who'd showed up in the dead of night talking a mile a minute and demanding to be put on the Puncutron Machine, a device he apparently believed had brought him back to life once."


Cf.  David Poush, "Purring into Transcendence: Pynchon's Puncutron Machine."  The Vineland Papers (pp. 31 - 45).


Also: 

Dwight Eddins, and David Porush in "'Purring into Transcendence': Pynchon's Puncutron Machine," have pointed to the paradoxical nature of Pynchon's texts.  Eddins argues
that "in a coup de grace of reflexivity" _Gravity's Rainbow_ becomes a Real Text, like the one that can lead the Hereros back to the Holy Center, "a Torah of Orphic
naturalism, revealing the nature of gnostic evil at the same time that it reveals the Way Back to communion with Earth" (150).  But this reflexivity, as the logic of Pynchon's
narrative indicates, leads to paradox:

          The positing of _Gravity's Rainbow_ as the Real Text
          involves us, of course, in the paradoxical notion of an
          Orphic Word.  If preverbal Earth represents in some
          sense a transcendental unity, the mere existence of an
          immanentizing Word--however normative--violates that
          unity.  The paradox is, in its most literal sense,
          unresolvable, and is the principal source of the stress
          that cracks the novel into fragments of narrative
          . . . .  (151)

Similarly, Porush argues regarding _Vineland_ that "Pynchon often makes us feel as if we are caught in a servo-mechanical loop of interpretation with the text" (102). Consider this description of the Puncutron Machine, for example:

          It was clear that electricity in unknown amounts was
          meant to be routed from one of its glittering parts to
          another until it arrived at any or all of a number of
          decorative-looking terminals, "or actually," purred the
          Ninjette Puncutron Technician who would be using it on
          Takeshi, "as we like to call them, electrodes."  And
          what, or rather who, was supposed to complete the
          circuit?  "Oh, no, "Tekeshi demurred, "I think not!"
          (164)

As Porush concludes, "the machinery of Pynchon's plot aids the reader in crossing between worlds, just as the Puncutron aids the reader's avatar, Takeshi, in striking a karmic balance" (102).  This paradoxical reflexivity splits the ecosystem of Pynchon's text only to reconstitute it at a more complex and resilient level: that of the Orphic god
reconstituted.

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.991/white-2.991

 
And also see:

Joseph Tabbi.  "Thomas Pynchon: Schizophrenia and Social Control. Papers >From the Warwick Conference" (Pynchon Notes 34-35, Spring-Fall 1994)
 
http://www.altx.com/ebr/reviews/rev5/tabbi.htm
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