IVIV (12): 195-197

[John Carvill]

> Photos are bad in the wrong hands.  One of TRP's more sympathetic characters, Merle in ATD, was a photographer, after all.  The zombie-like Boards may be in cahoots with the Fang, or they may just be looking for their stolen souls, but we-the-readers surely don't support their ripping off Denis' pictures.  Spike's footage of the Chick Planet kidnapping is another case in point.  Spike's documentary footage supplies Doc with info about the bad guys, as does Fritz and Sparky's computer hacking.  Now if the cops were doing it ...
>
> Laura
>

Right. Good stuff, Laura.

And the technology of cameras, and film, is right at the heart of ATD
- the link from silver, as in silver mines, to silver, as in halide,
and then onwards into moving pictures (pulling in GR and Leibniz,
cannonballs, and calculus). We naturally think, also of 24fps, which
may have ended badly, but was very much well-intentioned, using film
technology to fight the power. If we were making a list of Pyncon's
Themes, we'd have to include something about Technology, right? But
whether it's ATD or IV, GR or Ok to be a Luddite, the key always seems
to be ambivalence, the downside being a fear of what the technology
can do in the wrong hands and, ultimately, what can be done once
technology is literally *in* the wrong hands, eh, when technology
crosses that human/machine boundary?

Maybe Doc watching that film of Chick Planet, knowing he is watching a
scene which included/indludes him is very much a key to IV? Doc is
watching a weird scene, with the spine-chilling thought that *he is in
there, somewhere*. Which is kinda similar to Pynchon's perspective on
IV, since he literally *is* in there somewhere, in the background at
teh very least. It's one of, in fact I would reckon it's *the most*,
important aspects of the book: the additional levels at which some
sort of 'investigation' is taking place: Doc is investigating 'what
happened to Mickey', but he's also sort of investigating what happened
to The Sixties, isn't he? Pynchon the Younger is in there, writing GR
on the beach, but he's also there as Pynchon the Elder, looking back
on what happened to him and *his* Sixties. Most importantly of all, we
are investigating all these levels, picking our way through this
palimpsest, and yet we wonder, still, "is there more to this than
meets the eye?"