More Against the Days

[pynchonoid]

Thanks, Dave, for taking the time to dig these up.

Those so-called "shitty" old essays do come in handy,
don't they.

Either Pynchon's circled back to where he began or
he's been working on this stuff every since, and I
tend to believe the latter. I think we're in for a
treat.

Haven't heard any rumors of reviewers hating Against
the Day (although of course one or more of them will
have to piss on it a little, just to mark turf) or
letting any snide comments leak yet either.


--- Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:

> "My reading at the time also included many
> Victorians,
> allowing World War I in my imagination to assume the
> shape of that attractive nuisance so dear to
> adolescent minds, the apocalyptic showdown." (SL,
> "Intro," p. 18)
> 
> "A pose I found congenial in those days--fairly
> common, I hope, among pre-adults--was that of somber
> glee at any idea of mass destuction or decline.  Th
> modern political thriller genre, in fact, has been
> known to cash in on such visions of death made
> large-scale or glamorous." (SL, "Intro," p. 130)
> 
> Clarke, I.F. Voices Prophesying War:
>    Future Wars 1763-3749. 2nd ed.  NY: OUP, 1992.
> 
> "Why does the device of the imaginary war spread
> throughout Europe from 1871 onwards?  Although it is
> apparent that the starting-point for this new type
> of
> fiction is an urgent sense of anxiety over some
> problem of the day ....  Behind the European
> reception
> and imitation of The Battle of Dorking stand the
> varied and often concealed influences of the new
> sciences and the even newer technologies: first, in
> the facilities that the electric telegraph offered
> for
> teh rapid dissemination of news; second, and more
> profoundly, in the general expectation of change
> engendered both by the fact of technological
> development and by theories of progress and
> evolutionary development.... the world had become a
> much smaller place ...." (p. 45)
> 
>    "The new literature of the future was the
> imaginative and adaptive response of a society that
> had learnt to think in terms of origins, growth, and
> evolutionary advances...." (p. 48)
> 
>    "The sudden emergence of tales about the future,
> which were based on Darwinism and on the idea of
> progress, followed on the [Franco-Prussian] war of
> 1870; and in that war two great nations had
> demonstrated the fact of technological progress in a
> savage struggle to survive." (p. 49)
> 
> "The war of 1870 had altered the power system in
> Europe, and in a more general way it was considered
> to
> have revealed the working of the Darwinian mechanism
> for the rise and decline of species." (p. 51)
> 
>    "Already in 1871 the First World War was being
> prepared in fact and in fiction.... the nations took
> note that if they were to survive they would have to
> have the biggest armies and the most murderous
> weapons
> possible...." (p. 51)
> 
> "... in 1887 ... the anonymous Plus d'Angleterre
> ....
> translated into English as Down with England .... an
> apocalyptic vision of triumph and revenge ....
>    "As with all these tales, the plot of Plus
> d'Angelterre satrted from a recognized fact in
> history.  On this occasion the point of origin was
> the
> ill feeling between the French and British over the
> occupation of Egypt in 1882...." (p. 53)
> 
> http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/birs/bir61.htm
> 
>
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19930901fabook5411/i-f-clarke/voices-prophesying-war-future-wars-1763-3749-second-edition.html
> 
> 
> Chesney, George.  The Battle of Dorking:
>    Reminiscences of a Volunteer (1871)
> 
> http://www.blackmask.com/books63c/dorking.htm
> 
> After the Battle of Dorking: The Battle of Dorking
>    Controversy.  Ed. Anonymous.  London: Cornmarket
>    Reprints, 1972.
> 
> Childers, Erskine.  The Riddle of the Sands (1903)
> 
> http://www.bluemoment.com/riddle.html
> 
> http://www.rtpnet.org/robroy/books/rec/rs.html
> 
> Fashoda
> 85; town (now Kodok) in southeast Sudan, 400 miles
> south of Khartoum on the White Nile river, "Far up
> the
> Bahr-el-Abyad, in the heathen jungle"; it was
> founded
> by the Egyptian government in 1867; In July 1898,
> French General Marchand, coming from the West Coast
> of
> Africa, occupied Fashoda in an attempt to control
> the
> Upper Nile. Britain, which controlled the area,
> threatened war and the French withdrew. The next
> year,
> the Sudan became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium;
> 89-93;
> 106; 166; 189; 386
> 
> http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/f.html
> 
> Suez Canal
> 79; In 1956, Egyptian president Nasser seized the
> Suez
> Canal, which was under British-French control.
> Anglo-French forces intervened, but differences of
> opinion in Britain, the United States and elsewhere,
> combined with veiled Russian threats, caused the
> British and French to back down; 186; 428; "We [the
> U.S.] voted in the Security Council with Russia and
> against England and France on this Suez business."
> 431, 448
> 
> http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/s.html
> 
> See also ...
> 
> Ramsden, John.  Don’t Mention the War:
>    The British and the Germans Since 1890.
>    London: Little, Brown, 2006.
> 
> http://www.johnramsden-dmtw.co.uk/
> 
>
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23111-2162759,00.html
> 
>
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,,1779626,00.html
> 
>
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/bookshelf/story/0,,1858431,00.html
> 
> And see as well ...
> 
>
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72984
> 

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