Atdtda22: [42.2ii] The empty suburban lamplight, 614
Mark Kohut
markekohut at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 21 21:59:42 CST 2007
Re: Monk: yes, sometimes an epigraph is a metaphor, as you lead with.
But I might gloss this way: the "always night" means the modern world largely.
Read again and again how when TRP refers to electric light, the images, the words, the meanings
are almost always negative.....
Mr. Dim Bulb
----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: kelber at mindspring.com
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 10:49:55 PM
Subject: Re: Atdtda22: [42.2ii] The empty suburban lamplight, 614
Well, we largely differ. We differ largely.
("Back to nature" is not in my meaning: a vision of Life before we had to consider "going back' is)
He satirizes grids in AtD. Yet he wrote GR on engineer grid paper.
There's whatever TV he watches and there is TVness in Vineland.
An artist's faustian pact, I suggest.
----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 6:06:05 PM
Subject: Re: Atdtda22: [42.2ii] The empty suburban lamplight, 614
I don't think Pynchon is necessarily anti-technology. He likes science, math, movies, TV pop-culture -- not exactly the attributes of a back-to-nature type. What he probably likes less is how technology is controlled by the powers that be and how this control shapes technology -- only the profitmaaking need apply.
Then there's the T. Monk quote: It's always night, or we wouldn't need light. Presumably he's mainly referring to metaphorical illumination. But on the physical level, I don't interpret this to be pro-sunlight, anti-electric light.
Laura
-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>
>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
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
>Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
>http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Get easy, one-click access to your favorites.
Make Yahoo! your homepage.
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20071121/daeda0b6/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list