TRTR(I.3) Resource Addition - I'll Be Damned

[Erik T. Burns]

a-and of course the whole notion of preterite in Pynchon, them's the
damned.

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 9:58 PM, Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:

> that is a great find.
>
> i think Fort's prose & angle on things is very pynchonesque too -- the
> pynchon perhaps most of all of the short story "Entropy",  esp this: "That
> all progress, if all progress is toward stability, organization, harmony,
> consistency, or positiveness, is the attempt to become real."
>
> as for WG & TR, that makes sense too; his characters are always in search
> of the real, and often they can "recognize" it if not actually access it or
> live it (because, after all, it "lives" them)
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Jed Kelestron <jedkelestron at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> The Book of the Damned, by Charles Fort, is mentioned and quoted in
>> Chapter 3 ("By the damned, I mean the excluded"/"By prostitution, I
>> seem to mean usefulness"/"maybe we're fished for"):
>>
>> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22472/22472-h/22472-h.htm
>>
>> From Fort:
>>
>> By Realness, I mean that which does not merge away into something
>> else, and that which is not partly something else: that which is not a
>> reaction to, or an imitation of, something else. By a real hero, we
>> mean one who is not partly a coward, or whose actions and motives do
>> not merge away into cowardice. But, if in Continuity, all things do
>> merge, by Realness, I mean the Universal, besides which there is
>> nothing with which to merge.
>>
>> That, though the local might be universalized, it is not conceivable
>> that the universal can be localized: but that high approximations
>> there may be, and that these approximate successes may be translated
>> out of Intermediateness into Realness—quite as, in a relative sense,
>> the industrial world recruits itself by translating out of unrealness,
>> or out of the seemingly less real imaginings of inventors, machines
>> which seem, when set up in factories, to have more of Realness than
>> they had when only imagined.
>>
>> That all progress, if all progress is toward stability, organization,
>> harmony, consistency, or positiveness, is the attempt to become real.
>>
>> So, then, in general metaphysical terms, our expression is that, like
>> a purgatory, all that is commonly called "existence," which we call
>> Intermediateness, is quasi-existence, neither real nor unreal, but
>> expression of attempt to become real, or to generate for or recruit a
>> real existence.
>>
>> Our acceptance is that Science, though usually thought of so
>> specifically, or in its own local terms, usually supposed to be a
>> prying into old bones, bugs, unsavory messes, is an expression of this
>> one spirit animating all Intermediateness: that, if Science could
>> absolutely exclude all data but its own present data, or that which is
>> assimilable with the present quasi-organization, it would be a real
>> system, with positively definite outlines—it would be real.
>>
>> Its seeming approximation to consistency, stability,
>> system—positiveness or realness—is sustained by damning the
>> irreconcilable or the unassimilable—
>>
>> All would be well.
>>
>> All would be heavenly—
>>
>> If the damned would only stay damned.
>>
>
>
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