IVIV (12): 195-197

[Joseph Tracy]

Well,  actually I can and  prolly do read my own ideas into Pynchon,  
but it seems important to have evidence too. Also it looks like I  
missed the quote marks on the passage Monte is citing. Where is that  
from?

On Nov 1, 2009, at 8:37 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> I did fine in Algebra  and personally think most technology is  
> neutral. But I cannot read my own ideas into Pynchon. Mark is  
> giving many examples, all  of which come to mind rather easily to  
> anyone who has read through Pynchon's work.  I do not think this  
> advances an argument for scientific ignorance, but a skepticism  
> about engineering a better world through engineering. The  
> assertions you and John are making about Pynchon's ambivalence to  
> technology lack examples and textual reasoning.
> I don't think it's a matter of  Pynchon ascribing agency to the  
> technology but to the mindset that fails to  account  either for  
> the negative effects of technology  or for what is frequently the  
> essential and inherent violence of technology.
> On Nov 1, 2009, at 6:38 AM, Monte Davis wrote:
>
>> John Carvill sez:
>>
>>> Interesting that some question the claim that Pynchon is
>>> generally ambivalent about technology. Personally I struggle
>>> to conceive of him being anything but ambivalent.
>>
>> At least after he channeled Henry Adams' dynamophobia in _V._,  
>> he's been
>> quite clear that technology is *not* an autonomous force:
>>
>> "All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do  
>> you think
>> we'd've had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a  
>> name and a
>> penis hadn't *wanted* to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow  
>> up a block
>> full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify  
>> it [or
>> reify it - MD] if it'll make you feel less responsible-but it puts  
>> you in
>> with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem  
>> of our
>> stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans,  
>> human elite
>> with no right at all to be where they are-".
>>
>> That theme carries through all the way to the dynamite, the morphing
>> liner/battleship, and the exhilaration of the proto-Fascist dive  
>> bombers in
>> _Against the Day_. Pynchon is ambivalent in that he knows very  
>> well how
>> technology (like language, or religion, or government) amplifies and
>> empowers our every instinct and impulse, for better or worse.
>>
>> But he doesn't ascribe agency to it. That seems lost on the many  
>> readers who
>> would enlist him in some late-late-Romantic crusade to Get  
>> Ourselves Back to
>> the Garden: "we're warm and human because we bailed out during  
>> Algebra 1,
>> and Technology is our chill external foe." The passage above is  
>> pretty
>> un-ambivalent about that stance: it's not just clueless, it  
>> actually makes
>> things easier for the *people* -- not  the trends, not the  
>> tendencies, not
>> the historical inevitabilities, not the technology, the *people*  
>> -- who are
>> fucking us over.
>>
>> -Monte