Pynchon's Winding Stair

[Otto]

2009/11/28 alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>:
> We have cycled over from everything is connected ("paranoia") to
> nothing is connected ("anti-paranoia").
>

"Once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a
certain degree of *being connected* one to another, the chances for
freedom are over for good". (GR 627).

"The Pychonian opposition between They (IG Farben etc.) and We
(Slothrop, Mexico, Pirate Prentice, etc.) is a replay of the
opposition of Slothrop’s Puritan forefather’s polarity of the Elect
and the Preterite. Information control is the contemporary version of
God’s eternal knowledge of each individual’s ultimate damnation or
salvation, and both theology and computer technology naturally produce
paranoid fears about how we are hooked into the system, about the
connections it has in store for us."  (103)
(Bersani, Leo, "Pynchon, Paranoia, and Literature", Representations 25
(1989): 9–118.)