The Recognitions and V.

[Ian Livingston]

I wish I could point to something in Pynchon that suggests increased
population as a factor in the sort of entropy he portrays. That is
certainly a factor I consider important. More people = greater
isolation, alienation. It's an ineluctable irony.

On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 11:05 AM, Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com> wrote:
> While I would agree there's nothing in V to suggest a belief in a
> prelapsarian paradise (as village culture, hunter gatherer societies,
> whatever) - it also appears that Pynchon - at least the early Pynchon
> - sees the centripetal forces of entropy and mechanization
> *accelerating*; the depersonalizing, disintegrating aspects of human
> history grow more and more ferocious as the powers of techno-violence
> trend upwards - or downwards, as the case may be.
>
> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 1:04 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hm. Do ya think? I haven't read The Recognitions yet, but V. seems to
>> me to suggest that it has always been a fragmented world. Pynchon
>> represents history as an Ariadne's thread through an ongoing
>> Armageddon in which individuals seek ever more tenuous connections as
>> complexity becomes more evident. The unifying element is memory
>> itself, rather than recollection of a better unity.
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Fragmentation and loss as the overarching meaning of the modern world. Both.
>>> Belief that the world was once unified and that that was/is felt as a basic Good
>>> Thing.
>>>
>>> (Of course, other books, writers, too, I'm sure. Who?)
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Richard Ryan
> New York and the World
> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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> "Brilliant!";"Superb!" - NYTheatre-wire.com
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>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant