airships and mellow technologies and fictional ideas (silly ramblings, really)

[Mark Kohut]

David,
 
Well, as one who has stated often the 'anti-railway' observation, I want to defend it
while also agreeing with your larger near-essay below.
 
I think that all of the anti-railroad remarks in AtD show that TRP does feel---as an
abstraction, as a larger theme---the way the wilderness is bridled, carved up and enslaved.
 
But I would argue he sees almost nothing good in railroads in AtD and makes that clear as an
embodiment of lots of larger themes/abstractions.....
1) owned by the powerful. Takes lots of capital to do so. 
2) Used largely for commercial/military reasons
3) Iron and steel---the 'revolution' [industrial revolution] he dislikes massively
4) yes, despoiling, carving up our 'free ranges"
Of course, there are some good things we can say about rairoads...some lives have surely been sayve with them
bringing food, goods, medicine.......giving some of the powerless (known as hoboes once) a change to get somewhere
else where they might survive, etc. etc.........

But that kind of nitpicking qualification is NOT what he is about in his fiction, is it? He embodies whole ranges
of meaning in things, situations, ideas.....

He directly jabs at steel,, rairoads in AtD (and elsewhere).....it means something
 
Yes, power relationships are a deeper "abstract" theme in his works, but I 
might argue that, as AtD is about historical forces, the railroad---less intensely
than the Rocket but echoingly---embodies much that TRP feels went wrong, is wrong,
with the "modern world". 
 
P.S. No, I don't think he likes cars---remember Rachel's "love for a thing--her MG in V.?; admittedly not on cars per se--- as we know he doesn't like photography----and embodies his deep abstract ideas about photography, in his fiction.
 
Among other things, his fiction is those incredible embodied metaphors within to-the-limit over the top scenes that
all mean more than most parsing of them, no?  if her were just setting down even vectors of abstract ideas, he would
be writing essays, or non-fictional books, no?

My 2 c.

Mark
 


 
----- Original Message ----
From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
To: Michael Bailey <bonhommie-man at live.com>
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Thursday, November 8, 2007 9:03:13 AM
Subject: Re: airships and mellow technologies and fictional ideas (silly ramblings, really)

On Nov 7, 2007 8:40 PM, Michael Bailey <bonhommie-man at live.com> wrote:
>
> If (which I'm not totally sure in the kishkas, but there is textual evidence) if Pynchon is anti-railway, it's certainly not without justification: noisy, polluting, laying steel tracks across ley lines, scaring wildlife...
>

Saying that Pynchon is "anti-railway" makes me cringe a little.
This is way too simplistic an equation.  Pynchon's novels examine
power relationships, and these relationships are constantly shifting.
As a part of his examinations of power structures he idealizes the
untamed/unregulated "wilderness," and sees how it is bridled, carved
up, and enslaved.  Railways are only a component of this dynamic.  Not
inherently "bad" (Really, do you think he likes cars better? Maybe
horses?),  but a potential force used to control and take possession
of what was formerly free.  See this quote from GR (courtesy of
Quail's "Modern Word") to see what he's really getting at.  Remember,
Pynchon loves abstractions, and taking anything literally is usually a
disservice to the intended depths of consideration:

"In the days of the gauchos, my country was a blank piece of paper.
The pampas stretched as far as men could imagine, inexhaustible,
fenceless. Wherever the gaucho could ride, that place belonged to him.
But Buenos Aires sought hegemony over the provinces. All those
neuroses about property gathered strength, and began to infect the
countryside. Fences went up, and the gaucho became less free. It is
our national tragedy. We are obsessed by labyrinths, where before
there was the open plain and sky. To draw ever more complex patterns
on the blank sheet. We cannot abide the openness: it is terror to us.
Look at Borges. Look at the suburbs of Buenos Aires. The tyrant Rosas
has been dead a century, but his cult flourishes. Beneath the city
streets, the warrens of rooms and corridors, the fences and the
networks of steel track, the Argentine heart, in its perversity and
guilt, longs for a return to that first unscribbled serenity . . .
that anarchic oneness of pampas and sky. . . . "
--Gravity's Rainbow V264/B307


David Morris

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20071108/314d5848/attachment-0001.html>