ATDTDA have the chumps decoded the q-weapon?

[Mark Kohut]

I just want to add what everyone might be taking for granted here,
but I have been told more than once to 'state the obvious'...
(and not just by smart p-listers. ;-)

Pynchon hates cameras...............................................


----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, February 2, 2008 2:51:16 AM
Subject: ATDTDA have the chumps decoded the q-weapon?

Froim the Chumps of Choice Blog:

The weapon, as described on pg. 559, may well be the same enigmatic
object which Miles saw the Others pointing at him on pg. 417. We see
that it is small, with an eyepiece, an interior mirror, set in a
leather case and can be slung over the shoulder from a strap. Sounds
to me like a weird SLR camera. That it has been sold to Woevre by
someone who shares a name with a giant photographic film and paper
company, only adds to the impression.

Indeed, as Nebulae describes the action of the w term as something
that crosses space and travels with time, one is put in mind of a
photograph, something which crosses the three elements of space the
instant it is created and then travels its own way through time. When
shooting, the weapon produces a flash which briefly blinds Woevre, and
another parallel with an SLR can't be ignored.

In describing the inner working of the thing, (565:37 - 566:5) Umeki
indulges in what sounds to me as splendid nonsense.

I'll note that both Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray produced what they
called enigmatic objects, odd surrealist sculptures which to this day
resist interpretation.


----------comments from the blog included----------

At Friday, May 18, 2007 6:24:00 AM,  cleek said...
if Pynchon is implying that the SLR camera is a weapon of immense and
terrifying power because it has a spring-loaded mirror and a
pentagonal glass prism, i'll burn this tome and scatter its ashes.

but i think he's too smart for that. this device, whatever it is,
might look like an SLR and maybe we're supposed to draw parallels from
it to photography, but it just can't be an ordinary camera.


and


At Sunday, May 27, 2007 9:06:00 PM,  brooktrout said...
I have been nagged by cleek's reasonable doubts and questions about
the Q weapon as an SLR though I think this(SLr) is a valid
interpretation. I have been re-reading the section and have come t0
sense that it is more. It is dividing squaring, rounding, focusing and
reflecting light like a camera , but what is it takiing a picture of.?
It seems to be a kind of Karmic reversal tool. Woevre , at first keen
to test it on the Italian anarchists, loses control of himself ,
points it at the now revealed Inconvenience, sees himself in a flash
of light and a chorus of sound and is psychically devastated by his
own history as an agent of the Belgian exploitation of the Congolese
and similar actions in South Africa.

Somehow there is an implied translation process in these chapters from
the mathematics to the technical and social effects of the maths.



-- 
Young Scrooge:
Life is filled with tough jobs, and there'll always be sharpies to cheat me.
Well, I'll be tougher than the toughies and sharper than the
sharpies...and I'll make my money square.

---From The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa


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