AD

[rich]

p.s. should've added that AtD may follow Vineland and M&D in that look back
visio

rich


On 8/10/06, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  that is a very interesting passage
>
> it would appear to those who study history that it's easy to add up the
> "subtle symptoms"--nationalism, technology, colonialism, capital flow, and
> conclude with an easy equal sign world war and devastation.
>
> But then that diagnosis, that V-irus, as we know, was never eradicated.
> fascism was only the inevitable end-point, pointing up the fears, hatreds,
> and petty lusts of average intellects.
>
> the upshot for us, the reader, the author, the historian, is profound
> melancholy, all we can do is gently touching up old memories (flesh photos)
> to enhance the magical, now long gone.
>
> Post GR, Vineland and M&D are both novels that thematically look back in
> sadness (and some anger) on younger days. Pynchon thankfully, pbly to the
> regret of the revolutionaries, gives us a bit of sweet with our broccoli,
> homer simpsons who won't change the world, or build cities, but are
> endearingly human in an inhuman environment.
>
> rich
>  On 8/10/06, Dustin Iler <osirx277 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Sidney Stencil on the period in which AD is said to be set . . .
> >
> >
> > " 'Which way does it go? As a youth I believed in social progress
> > because I
> > saw chances for personal progress of my own. Today, at age sixty, having
> > gone as far as I'm about to, I see nothing but a dead end for myself,
> > and if
> > you're right, for my society as well. But then: suppose Sidney Stencil
> > has
> > remained constant after all--suppose instead sometime between 1859 and
> > 1919,
> > the world contracted a disease which no one ever took the trouble to
> > diagnose because the symptoms were too subtle-- blending in with the
> > events
> > of history, no different one by one but altogether--fatal. This is how
> > the
> > public, you know, see the late war. As a new and rare disease which has
> > now
> > been curred (sic) and conquered for ever.' "
> >
> > V. (Perrenial Classics) pg. 498
> >
> >
> > Against the Day, being set in this period and leading up to that
> > cataclysmic
> > event, promises to be the diagnosis.
> >
> > I can't help but imagine Pycnhon rereading this passage and seeing
> > himself
> > as Sidney Stencil.
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
> > (And apologies if this has already been brought up)
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
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