Atdtda22: [42.2ii] The empty suburban lamplight, 614

[Mark Kohut]

Well, of course you are right about power re electricity and electric light. 

But I'm going to suggest, in Pynchon's way, that both may be true. That is, that 
TRP in AtD presents electric light as almost entirely a modern technology that adds to all that alienates us
in 'the modern world".
 
Not least because the System won.
Not least because TRPs vision of the modern world  as a place to live is largely negative (with bits
of good possibilities) ; he satirizes the modern world and all that built it relentlessly, especially technologically and
scientifically; makes fun of it: condemns its implications sentence after sentence. 
 
I am now thinking that Byron's promise is another"daylit fiction" in TRPs world, not least because his promised immortality is not "human"...(of course, Byron isn't either but it is another technological/scientific 'promise", no matter who owns it). And there is the Von Braun epigraph.
 
Human, as deep vision seen in glints and hints, matters in AtD (and all of TRPs works, of course). 
 
 I know I am in the minority here with this (and some related notions); maybe a minority of one. Maybe I'm as mad
as Kinbote trying to "understand' Slade's poem in Pale Fire? Or I'm just narrowly stupid and asking/answering 'all the wrong questions' as some p-listers probably think. So be it.  I've been wrong before. I've been right before.

Thanks for challenging me and I will try to keep from boring you and all via player-piano-like repetition.

MK

 
----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 10:58:39 PM
Subject: Re: Atdtda22: [42.2ii] The empty suburban lamplight, 614

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>


>Once again, I'll risk reductionism by suggesting:
> 
>Natural light is almost always a positive in AtD.
>Electric light is almost always not. 

It's not so much electrical light, as it is the controlling of light by "the system," that's evil.  Edison profiteering by being the servant of the ruling class, at the expense of renegades like Tesla.  And in GR, Byron the Bulb haplessly struggling to give electricity over to the people by making it unprofitable for the powers that be.

Laura


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