VLVL II: Techno-Transcendence in Kafka & Pynchon

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

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 ° ... from David Porush: 'Purring into Transcendence': Pynchon's Puncutron Machine, pp. 31-45 
 (here 41f), in: The Vineland Papers. Critical Takes on Pynchon's Novel --

 
 " ... if we take the analogy seriously, 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./ in his story 'in the penal colony,' franz kafka describes an elaborate torture device meant to inflict on the subject a religious cognizance of his own crimes, as if the message were signaled from another world. this 'sentencing machine' uses sharp needles and the victim's own blood to inscribe, in an extremely ornate, elaborate (and therefore even more excruciating) script, the victim's 'sentence' on his skin. indeed, the sentence itself is written only on a narrow band across the torso; the rest of the body is tortured by culicues and flourishes and embellishments, we are told. kafka, in a rare moment of authorial intrusion, invites us to 'look beyond the harrow' to where the true significance of the machine, as it inscribes the law on the body of its victim, lies. for kafka, this sentence machine also enables a dark transcendence./ by contrast with this grim fable of a writing machine, and finally as relief for our curiosity, on nearly the last page of the novel, we get a glimpse of the workings of the puncutron machine itself as it operates on takeshi. it seems clearly pynchon's answer to kafka. (...) here the machine is a means to a happier transcendence, as the text of takeshi's body gets puctuated with a chart of chi nodes in preperations for acupuncture. however, sister rochelle, 'as so often in the past, now socked takeshi with another one of her allegories, this time about Hell.' [382] (...) pynchon uses the machinery of his narrative - takeshi endures sister rochelle's sermon while undergoing therapy on the machine that leads to transcendent manipulations - to deliver his own version. somehow, machinery and metaphor collaborate to transcend, though whether in service of darkness or light remains in doubt." 


"Der Reisende hatte wenig Sinn für den Apparat und ging hinter dem Verurteilten fast unsichtbar unbeteiligt auf und ab, während der Offizier die letzten Vorbereitungen besorgte, bald unter den tief in die Erde eingebauten Apparat kroch, bald auf eine Leiter stieg, um die oberen Teile zu untersuchen. Das waren Arbeiten, die man eigentlich einem Maschinisten hätte überlassen können, aber der Offizier führte sie mit einem großen Eifer aus, sei es, dass er ein besondere Anhänger dieses Apparates war, sei es, dass man aus anderen Gründen die Arbeit sonst niemand anvertrauen konnte. (...) Es war, wie es im Leben gewesen war; kein Zeichen der versprochenen Erlösung war zu entdecken [!! so here, not in vineland, no one gets saved! kfl]; was alle anderen in der Maschine gefunden hatten, der Offizier fand es nicht; die Lippen waren fest zusammengedrückt, die Augen waren offen, hatten den Ausdruck des Lebens, der Blick war ruhig und überzeugt, durch die Stirn ging die Spitze des großen eisernen Stachels."
(In der Strafkolonie)      


"As for Takeshi, the Head Ninjette had managed to corner him while he was on the Puncutron Machine, all hooked up with no escape, and while an inkjet printer moved along the meridians of his naked skin, laying down trigger-point labels in different colors, adding reference numbers and Chinese ideograms, and a Senior Ninjette Puncutech stood by with an ..." 
(Haribo Weinland)


KFL + 

he's just like a penguin in bondage -

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