VLVL2 (9): The Puncutron Machine

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
Does the Puncutron remind anyone else of the Harrow of K's _In The
Penal Colony_? That marvelous, wicked engine was what first came to
mind as I was reading VL, and I was disappointed when I discovered that
the electrodes don't seem to actually pierce the skin as acupuncture
needles do. (Aww, that's no fun..)

Mark

--- Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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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