Repost: The Big One

[Mark Kohut]

Thanks, Paul.

I do think I know, worked with some people every day for years, and they
were fragments of people, just as are some in GR...

And in Pynchon's world of doubled down meanings, think of the upside of
'everything connects"....a wholeness beyond fragmentation....

mark


--- On Wed, 7/16/08, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: Repost: The Big One
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 1:22 PM
> Mark Kohut wrote:
> > A few obs. 
> >
> > I have often thought that the non-rounded characters
> in much of Pynchon's work is because we real human
> beings aren't too "round" in our current
> degraded world,in Pynchon's worledview.
> >   
> You may be on to something, Mark.
> 
> I remember back about 40 years ago being told that we were 
> ONE-dimensional men.
> 
> In Pynchon's world, however, we are surely more like
> hyper-paranoid men.
> 
> What kind of distinctive character trait would required for
> that?
> 
> Guess I'm talking about GR--don't know what the
> hell happened after that.
> 
> Perhaps characters in the True Land of Paranoia don't
> need much 
> character--we can pretty much forget shapes.
> 
> Getting buffeted around by all those interconnecting forces
> (everything 
> connects) doesn't leave much room for individual
> discretion.
> 
> I have long suspected that reading too much Pynchon can
> make people act 
> kind of peculiarly.
> 
> For example, some of us adopt the phrase "everything
> connects" as sort 
> of a motto.
> 
> That gives me pause.  A little tiny pause anyway.
> 
> What if the satirical origins get lost?
> 
> It might be wise to take a lesson from the case of the
> cover of this 
> issue of The New Yorker.
> 
> Some folks may not realize they aren't in Kansas
> anymore. (not too many 
> I hope)
> 
> But getting back to "everything connects," yes a
> lot of things ARE 
> connected, and we should we conscious of this,  but there
> are still a 
> lot of other things that are not.
> 
> To believe that everything is connected can be the mark of
> a psychotic. 
> (a real one)
> 
> A well-meaning sane person who thinks too inclusively here
> runs the 
> danger of not picking up on the connections that really
> exist.
> 
> I duuno where this is going  . . . . except I did want to
> let Mark know 
> I liked his idea.
> 
> P.