Atatda22: [42.2ii] More codes, 614

[Mark Kohut]

Dear Paul,
 
Holy Reading!
 
Is there more right-on commentary than the paragraph
on the detective and modernity ???  Lew is the detective 
caught in all of the "deceptions of modernity"..my god.....
TRP puts the biggest themes into even these small scenes, verbally---
as we know he always does (as we figure it all out)
 
A-and Simmel's "direct substance of things and values in practical life".
What phrasing from Simmel (and his translator).....!
It is what I have been calling, perhaps lamely,  "the natural" ...
 
We have whole months, papers and books of insights here in two great
quotes.....IMHO.
 
Thanks Much,
Mark
 


 
----- Original Message ----
From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 11:12:37 AM
Subject: Atatda22: [42.2ii] More codes, 614

[614.6] "In Lew's experience of English English, this usually meant he was
about to overstay his welcome."

Cf. Yashmeen on 324:

"'On this island,' she went on, 'as you will have begun to notice, no one
ever speaks plainly.'"

Or even "the real 'Inspector Sands'" on 445:

"Appearing these days in the infant science of counter-terrorism as an
all-purpose code name, the bloke you sent out a discreet summons for to
alert your own security staff to a crisis ..."

One might go back to Kelly's take on the detective:

Modernity poses a problem of meaningfulness for individuals and groups
alike, growing out of its characteristic features of pluralism and
secularism. Under the conditions of modernity, the more or less unified
"life-world" of the premodern individual gives way to the experience of
plural life-worlds that resist unification, and therefore meaningful
integration.

From: R. Gordon Kelly, Mystery Fiction and Modern Life, University Press of
Mississippi, 1998, 25.

Cf. Simmel on the importance of symbolism:

As secondary symbols--as they may be called by contrast with the naive
symbolism of naive states of mind--increasingly replace the direct substance
of things and values in practical life, the importance of intellect in the
conduct of life is extraordinarily enhanced. As soon as life no longer moves
between particular sense impressions but is determined by abstractions,
averages and synoptic views, then, particularly in the sphere of human
relations, a more rapid and exact process of abstraction will produce an
advantage.

From: Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, ed David Frisby, Routledge,
2004, 151.


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