IVIV (12): 195-197

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Just want to point out that the photographer the scantily clad woman is running away from is good old Merle.  I don't believe, anyway, that TRP would decry photos such as the one of the napalmed little Vietnamese girl, that are taken and used for purposes of social justice, not social control.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Oct 31, 2009 2:27 PM
>To: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>
>Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: IVIV (12): 195-197
>
>Nope....gonna continue being a contrarian here. (Although too busy at the moment to give anything but the short obs and argument)
>
>Yes, P's subtlety opens into great resonant ambiguites...we do/are exploring them.  
>
>But, like a major poet with his tropes and images, he is full of symbols/images, etc. used
>in very non-ambiguous ways. Very Manichean in use (as symbols) which feed that ambiguity as we determine who, what and why they are being used by and for.
>
>Simplistic examples: BAD: angles, esp right-angles; barb-wire; crystals; iron, steel, railroads, North, cobblestones, und so weiter.
>
>Good: Bananas, Gardens, courtyards, water, beaches, purple (and many other bright colors); songs, Venice, und so weiter. 
>
>I suggest photos almost always fall under BAD. From Morris Teflon trying to photograph Benny in THE ACT thru that scantily-clad woman running from the guy with the camera early in AtD---a comment on what has happened to Emerson's Nature, as one resonance---she is running BECAUSE he has a camera, I say.....she wanted lovemaking not 'shot', so to speak.
>
>I suggest that 24fps ends badly because in TRPs still-savage satire, 24fps, with the self-indicted Frenesi, was misconceived from the start. 
>
>The Pequod is wrecked cause Ahab's 'quest' is misconceived. Same kind of thing, a bit lower-scale, here. 
>
>And, I think Pynchon shows, through what happens to Merle and Dally---
>Cf. the distancing, caught in that final so-poignant attempt at communication....Merle at Candlebrow U?---a satirization fer sure, yes? 
>I suggest that P is always sayin' in AtD that what Merle has done with silver "should not" have been done---for his vision; not, of course, as a proscription within history. 
>
>In most fiction we easily distinguish between characters' intentions and the author's overarching vision...........are we doing it enough here (in regard to photography, even maybe technology in general?). We know a good bit about how Pynchon feels about certain technological "achievements"----
>and I will bring up in my support all those who see Against the Day as a massive work about how modernity has failed. Almost totally. Modernity as the sociologists define it---and place it from @1880 to the present, the time of AtD and the time when most "modern" technology began. (Cf. all the parallels between the computer and the internet with THAT time period, just for example)
>
>I am always saying there is much less ambiguity in P's vision of technology than many others say. 
>
>I think there is more ambiguity in his characters than others like Wood and Kakutani say. 
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>--- On Sat, 10/31/09, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: IVIV (12): 195-197
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Cc: kelber at mindspring.com
>> Date: Saturday, October 31, 2009, 5:47 AM
>> > 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?"
>> 
>>
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