AtDtDA(28): Invisible Functionaries

[Mark Kohut]

On 3/22/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:


> "invisible functionaries"

  Misc.: in an 1851 book by George Cruikshank, (famous enough in his time), called Bentley's Miscellany, there is a riff on Nature's creations in which 'invisible functionary" refers to the
  Brain......!!    
   
  in a 1903 book on household economy, the phrase refers to maids........................
   
  



Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
  On 3/22/08, Dave Monroe wrote:


> "invisible functionaries"
>
> angels
>
> http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/a.html
>
> http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=A
>
> From Robert L. McLaughlin, "Pynchon's Angels and Supernatural Systems
> in Gravity's Rainbow." Pynchon Notes 22–23 (1988): 25–33 ...
>
> Among the novel's ambiguities are the mysterious, giant, supernatural
> beings who appear from time to time to observe the action. These
> beings ... have usually been identified as Rilkean angels. However, a
> study of the way these beings function in the novel and of other uses
> of "angel" imagery suggests instead that they are the ultimate
> manifestation of Them, the novel's ubiquitous controllers. This
> interpretation implies that the supernatural Other side is not a
> holistically unified realm free of the divisions and distinctions made
> and enforced by earthly controllers ... but rather the originary
> system of control that structures the entire life/death system. (p.
> 25)
>
> http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pn/pn022.pdf
>
> I was surprised, by the way, as to how many non-Pynchonian Google hits
> there were for that phrase. Is there an OG source? Let me know ...

Cf. ...

"Why shouldn't the IG go to séances? They ought to be quite at home
with the bureaucracies of the other side." (GR, Pt. III, pp. 410-11)



       
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