Fwd: AtD, page 549 "nowadays, we just grow more and more invisible"--Randolph

[David Morris]

I'd say your observations about invisibility are close to the mark,
but I always wince at your characterizing these observations in
"Pynchon thinks this is good" or other similar terms, because if
Pynchon was that simple of a moralist I'd never have like his novels.
There is always some of this simplistic good/bad in his books, but
it's always countered by other good/bad equations or other
abstractions of geometry, chemistry, existentialism that complicate or
neutralize the simplicities.

As for invisibility, there was that introduction to "Stone Junction"
where he laments about digital technology's invasion into previously
hideable turf:

"One popular method of resistance was always just to keep moving --
seeking, not a place to hide out, secure and fixed, but a state of
dynamic ambiguity about where one might be any given moment, along the
lines of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Modern digital machines,
however, managed quickly enough to focus the blurred ellipsoid of
human freedom even more narrowly than Planck's Constant allows."

"Equally difficult for those who might wish to proceed through life
anonymously and without trace has been the continuing assault against
the once-reliable refuge of the cash or non-plastic economy. "

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_stone.html



On 10/19/07, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ok, my 'new' notion:    given what happens to the Chums in AtD......and remarks like the above.....I want to make the case that 'becoming invisible' is Pynchon's idea of a real good thing to become?!.............
>
> Vision: Life should be finding a partner, settling down, leaving residually fascist organizations (if we can, becoming "free' lance, so to speak), raising a family.... accepting "grace".........while we can....before the next seige....in whatever interregnum we are lucky---chance!---to live in....
>
> Comments?
>
> Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "First, they have ultimate faith in invisibility – their own existence in the narrative depends on their state of perceived, altruistic absence from the world...."
>
> thots?
>
> Noseworth, the Master-At-Arms of the Chums division of this organization with a defiant residue of 'fascism', who had no smell to Pugnax early on, is called out, either for real or in a sex-bashing putdown, for homosexuality. cf. homosexuality as a metaphor in Gravity's Rainbow.