photography

[John BAILEY]

V. very literally turns herself into an object.

Profane and SHROUD:

"What do you mean, we'll be like you... some day? You mean dead?"
Am I dead? If I am then that's what I mean.
"If you aren't, then what are you?"
Nearly what you are. None of you have very far to go. 

I see P's first novel playing with the idea that the project of modernity (or maybe just the 20th C) doesn't just require humans to treat one another as objects, it also needs humans to learn to see themselves as objects, to sacrifice their subjectivity. His novels play with the pleasures to be found in giving up agency, while also reminding us of the losses this entails. 

I can see photography working with this angle - another aid in learning to see yourself from the outside, as a thing, the self-as-other. 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Tore Rye Andersen
Sent: Saturday, 3 March 2007 7:31 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Cc: markekohut at yahoo.com
Subject: RE: photography

Mark Kohut wrote:

>I think Pynchon thinks photography IS soul-sucking, is a stealing of 
>one's natural self....part of the beginning of technology's wrong 
>uses....

I think you're right, and I'll even substantiate it with a quote: In David Hajdu's book "Positively 4th Street" (the one about Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez and Richard Fariña, where Pynchon contributed via interview by fax), Hajdu quotes from a letter Pynchon wrote to Mimi Baez:

"I know it's dumb to have an anti-photograph Thing, but it's how I am. Dick used to kid me about it - what's the matter, you afraid people are going to stick pins, pour aqua regia? So how could I tell him yeah, yeah, right, you got it." (p. 178)

So there you have it....

_________________________________________________________________
Opret en personlig blog og del dine billeder på MSN Spaces:  
http://spaces.msn.com/