Pornography, calculus, cinema, metaphor

[Monte Davis]

David Morris:

 > I don't think Pynchon wants you to "buy" anything
 > (there is no solution), just to contemplate it all...

Agreed. "I'm not buying" referred not to the basic conceit or to the 
metaphor's uses within GR, but to a tendency I see in quite a bit of 
Pynchon criticism: the effort to *enlist* him in the critic's own 
characterization, explicit or implied, of Everything Wrong With The 
Modern World -- especially where science and technology are concerned.

I don't see this from critics who know some science and technology. But 
among those who are ignorant of it and/or hate and fear it, I often 
sense a tacit linkage: "I got bewildered in high-school physics or Math 
101 in college, haven't touched the stuff since -- and see, I was right! 
Pynchon sez there's *something dodgy* about calculus! And since calculus 
sparked so much Enlightenment hubris, and is built into every machine 
and system around me (that I also don't grok)... this 'pornography of 
flight' stuff *proves* that P agrees with me that science = technology = 
Soulless Fascist Hegemonic Modernity!"


  .