IVIV (12): 195-197

[Tore Rye Andersen]

John:

> I would say that Pynchon displays (or, if yuo prefer, portrays)  
> a strong antipathy to certain aspects of a given technology, but 
> that his approach is too nuanced and complex to be one-sided. 
> There is often a significant counter-argument to be made.
 
Absolutely. In M&D, for instance, Mason rages against the bloody
Mills (313) which steal the work from the proud British workers,
whereas Dixon points out that Engines can sometimes also remove
the need for slave labor (697).
 
The same argument appears in AtD, where Günther von Quassel asks
Frank to help out on his coffee plantation:
 
"Some kind of a plantation foreman, keepin 'em unruly native 
Indians in line? I get to carry a whip and so forth? Think not,
Günni."
Günther laughed [...]. "Of course, as a northamerican you must
be nostalgic for the days of slavery, but in the highly competitive
market which coffee has become, we cannot afford to linger in the
past."
[There follows a description of the various tasks performed].
Once all done by hand, these jobs were nowadays more efficiently
performed by various sorts of machine. The von Quassel plantation
was in the process of being mechanized" (AtD, 987)
 
Machines are bad, but sometimes they're not so bad. 		 	   		  
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