V-2nd C4 It Was Almost a Mystic Experience

[Mark Kohut]

"'... the highest condition we can attain is that of an object--a rock'"

I think this concept comes right out of some then-fashionable existentialist
like Sartre.....

I remember a professor using it in a course on same.....



----- Original Message ----
From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, January 16, 2011 5:36:23 PM
Subject: V-2nd C4 It Was Almost a Mystic Experience

"Later she would say, 'It was almost a mystic experience.'" (V., Ch.
4, Pt. II, p. 109)


"I'm undermining you"

http://oed.com/view/Entry/211840

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/undermine


"'MacKenty's elevator'"

Can't ... find ... illustration ...


"'... the highest condition we can attain is that of an object--a rock'"

From Kathleen Fitzpatrick, The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American
Novel in the Age of Television (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP, 2006),
Ch. 2, "Machine," pp. 58-97:

"This, then, is the significance of Esther's nose-job dissociation in
V.: not the discovery of a higher level of being but an escape from
being, a self-objectification." (p. 84)

http://www.anxietyofobsolescence.com/
http://www.anxietyofobsolescence.com/2006/04/chapter-2/
http://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/books/11/the-anxiety-of-obsolescence
http://books.google.com/books?id=pdkDXNbPPuUC


"Stent mold" (p. 112)

stent noun \ˈstent\
Definition of STENT

1: a mold formed from a resinous compound and used for holding a
surgical graft in place; also : something (as a pad of gauze
immobilized by sutures) used like a stent
2: a short narrow metal or plastic tube often in the form of a mesh
that is inserted into the lumen of an anatomical vessel (as an artery
or bile duct) especially to keep a previously blocked passageway open

Biographical Note for STENT

Stent, Charles Thomas (1807–1885), British dentist. In the mid 19th
century Stent developed a dental-impression compound containing
gutta-percha, stearine, and talc, which he produced and sold with the
aid of his sons Charles Robert (1845–1901) and Arthur Howard
(1859–1900), who also became dentists. In 1899 the compound was
trademarked under the name Stents. During World War I the Dutch
plastic surgeon J. F. S. Esser discovered that Stent's compound could
also be used to form molds for holding skin grafts in place, and in a
1917 publication he referred to such molds as “stents molds.” Over the
next several decades the singular form stent became a generally used
term in plastic and oral surgery. The meaning of stent continued to be
expanded to include other types of artificial supports for human
tissue. In 1954 the American surgeon William ReMine applied the term
stent to a polyethylene tube used to support an anastomosis in an
experimental biliary reconstruction....

http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/stent