more prolegomena to V. : 1962 and more 1963

[Alex Colter]

(And, tho' I am not at all a fan of reading Novels via Computer, the entire
text of which is here,
http://books.google.com/books?id=KCKqVCmhLQwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Nothing+Like+the+Sun&source=bl&ots=eeyzrB1nTA&sig=pCgtZp8zdfm99jyv8sJer73vEvM&hl=en&ei=uQ4TTOHiCYGClAfKraX4Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false
)

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com>wrote:

> Tho' slightly off-topic, I would like to recommend Burgess' Nothing Like
> the Sun, as it seems, compared to A Clockwork Orange, woefully under-read.
> It could be 'his' M&D if one conjures GR as being someways kin to A
> Clockwork Orange...?
> Just an excellent book, 'sall i'm saying...
>
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 6:51 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> MK changes Ian to:
>> But if V. was largely finished in '61...?
>>
>>     * That he {Burgess] had overheard the phrase "as queer as a clockwork
>> orange" in a London pub in 1945 and assumed it was a Cockney expression.¹ In
>> Clockwork Marmalade, an essay published in the Listener in 1972, he said
>> that he had heard the phrase several times since that occasion. However, no
>> other record of the expression being used before 1962 has ever appeared.[4]
>> Kingsley Amis notes in his Memoirs (1991) that no trace of it appears in
>> Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Historial Slang.
>>     * His second explanation was that it was a pun on the Malay word
>> orang, meaning "man". However, the novel contains no other Malay words or
>> links.[4]
>>     * In a prefatory note to A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music, he
>> wrote that the title was a metaphor for "...an organic entity, full of juice
>> and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton."[4] In
>> his essay, "Clockwork Oranges" ², Burgess asserts that "this title would be
>> appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian or mechanical
>> laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was capable of colour and
>> sweetness". This title alludes to the protagonist's positively conditioned
>> responses to feelings of evil which prevent the exercise of his free will.
>>
>> Again, I think I remember TRP finding and expressing lacks in Partridge's
>> Dictionary.....
>>
>> Burgess's mistress, Lhianna Marcella, I think, later his wife, was a TRP
>> reader and later translated GR, I believe. She "met" Anthony via his writing
>> (when
>> she recognized the similarity in two pseudonymous early works he sent when
>> she was with a publisheror agent) but they did not seem to meet in person
>> until 1963. However, who knows whether she and Candida, TRP's agent,
>> exchanged any manuscripts manuscripts?
>>
>> That pavlovian or mechanical laws metaphor SURE came alive in GR...with or
>> without the word "clockwork"...for exactly those free will or wha?
>> reasons....so to speak.
>>
>> And the phrase 'clockwork universe' came from Descartes, that
>> Enlightment rationalist whom TRP gleefully savages in AtD...
>> Descartes' universe was a mechanical ('wind-up') clockwork robot universe,
>> with energy only as the property of matter being in motion and nothing other
>> than ...
>> www.new-science-theory.com/rene-descartes.html- Cached- Similar
>>
>> A notable exclusion from this theory [Clockwork Universe theory] though is
>> free will, since all things have already been set in motion and are just
>> parts of a predictable machine. Newton feared that this notion of
>> "everything is predetermined" would lead to atheism[citation needed].
>>
>> undermined by one of our favorite Pynchon concepts:
>>
>> This theory was undermined by the second law of thermodynamics ( the total
>> entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time,
>> approaching a maximum value) and quantum physics with its unpredictable
>> random behavior.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 6:28 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> > Clockwork Orange (the novel) was published in 1962.  Not necessarily any
>> thematic connection, but the phrase may have got Pynchon's wheels turning.
>>  Lots of clockwork imagery in V.
>> >
>> > Laura
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> >>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> >>Sent: Jun 9, 2010 7:14 PM
>> >>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> >>Subject: Re: more prolegomena to V. : 1962 and more 1963
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>Continuing the post on 1963 first, here is some more from that year:
>> >>
>> >>         --March on Washington
>> >>         --MLKjr. I Have a Dream speech
>> >>
>> >>         --Assassination of America's Fisher-King, JFK, of course, in
>> November
>> >>
>> >>         --for the first time, freshman females in the US answer a
>> longstanding goals poll by not putting
>> >>marriage w white picket fence house and kids first. (still want that,
>> but adventure, travel, chance
>> >>to be single awhile comes first)
>> >>
>> >>1962
>> >>
>> >>           Rwanda and Burundi gain independence.
>> >>    * Supporters of Algerian independence win 99% majority in a
>> referendum. De Gaulle grants independence to Algeria.
>> >>    * A heavy smog develops over London. [Digression but it is easy
>> enough to see this, sea-changed by a genius, as the giant adenoid in GR,
>> yes? ]
>> >>
>> >>      Tanganyika and Uganda become independent within the Commonwealth.
>> >>
>> >>      ['nother digression: Rolling Stones play first gig. Times they are
>> a changing, of course]
>> >>
>> >>      Anti-Mosley- [the fascist]  crowd disrupts a right-wing Union Club
>> public gathering.
>> >>
>> >>     Ranger 4 rocket crashes on the moon. JFK affirms that the US will
>> land a man on the moon before the decade ends.
>> >>
>> >>     Cuban missile crisis, October.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "liber enim librum aperit."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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