Against The Day

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

robinlandseadel
> 
> There's Blavatsky's "Voice of the Silence",

picked up a hitchhiker back in the 70s who recommended her -
I'd read bits & pieces already, and chuckled when he mentioned
the name, but he said "seriously, she really helped me"...

> a copy of "The Princess Casamassima", 

... back in the W.A.S.T.E. archives, there's also a
link to the free crazy-Guggenheim project
text file for that that I'm going to utilize real soon now...
does seem very on topic for AtD

>"Murdered By Capitalism" by John Ross (invaluable)

wouldn't that be more for Vineland?  (or not, I wouldn't know,
not having yet read it...)
Lipstick Traces was good, btw...kind of scary tho' (the
stuff about that city in the Middle Ages)
 
> 
> we are moving through a massive Paradigm shift in AtD,
> where the models for describing the Universe are going through
> a thorough overhaul.

suppose that's the "Day" against which the characters stand

> 
> There's also a considerable number of magickal workings in 
> progress and (as we find so often in Pynchon) working at cross-
> purposes (with all that "cross-purposes" implies). We find ourselves 
> cheering for these family-friendly characters who seek the light---
> a light that will, eventually, engulf and annihilate them.
> 

if nobody can prove that in as black and white a statement
as Tantivy's obit, I'm not agreeing to think that that's the outcome...

> And then there's Nicky Nookshaft, ....OBA was reluctant to utter the name 
> of this most Voldemortian of historical figures

Quelle villain!  Where were his family values? (Nookshaft, not Pynchon) 
"after his move to Boleskine House overlooking Loch Ness, Crowley had written to the local Vigilance Society complaining that "prostitution is most unpleasantly conspicuous'' in the area. The society sent round an observer who found no evidence. Crowley wrote back: "Conspicuous by its absence, you fools!''"   (http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/Article825.phtml)

> These stories were published under 
> pseuodnyms, such as “Roscoe Stein,” “Bose,” or no 
> name at all.
>

...hmm, then could other pseudonymous Pynchon oeuvre also be out
there besides http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html

> 
>  massive thesis waiting out there for someone willing
> to track down and tie up all of Our Beloved Author's thoughts on
> Psychotropic Drugs (and all that implies), and the magical rituals
> associated with the states of mind that Psychotropic Drugs are 
> supposed to induce. 
> 

It'd require some field work, too!

> Meanwhile, there's all these links of Vibes and Walkers to Bushes
> and Walkers, thousands of threads to tie up concerning the massive
> accumulations of capital in the First Gilded Age and the massive
> accumulations of capital in this Second Gilded Age and how all that
> capital turned into the Military Industrial/Centralized Intelligence 
> Complex we now all know and loath.

so --- scientific paradigm shifts, magic(k), altered states, and
poly-sci commentary -- yes, "quite rightly"

but, how about Paul Nightingale's suggestion that the
difference between difference and repetition is also being
frolicked with?  
Before frequenting the list, I had kind of lumped Deleuze and
Guattari in with Crabtree & Evelyn, and Dolce & Gabbana;

but maybe there is a philosophical strand in the Pynchon narrative
commenting on the other strands (and being commented upon by them)

> Thanks
> and Kudos to Paul Nightingale, Keith and Mark Kohut 

Yes!
 
> I'm not about to stop

Good!