Back to AtD....Tungaska Event, [in late 700s pages]

[Mark Kohut]

Joseph Tracy writes:
I didn't remember those lines and loaned my copy to a friend.  i like what you say though. Totally ramdom event but forcing a global consciousness if only for a while and tearing away illusions a safe neighborhood.. The gospel wolves reminded me of Kein's  book on disaster capitalism.  Friedman seeing disaster as the opportune moment to proclaim freedom for the markets and bullets if nothing else.
 
As above, and below......true....
 
But I am going to push my annotation effort even further, combining the Event as Pentecost exploded.....This Event's "magic' is also like
mutation by radiation, the Word as Nuclear-like blast......
 
On Mar 31, 2012, at 10:52 PM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

> Don't have the text in front of me, but your
> reaction to that part of it reminded me of
> my initial attempt to figure out what P was
> getting at with the description of temporary
> magical happenings post-Tungaska. The
> description of animals- wolves- temporarily
> granted the power of speech, walking into
> to church, up to the alter, and quoting chapter
> and verse, in particular, amused me, and
> made me think of more human predators-
> wolves in sheep's clothing- who prey on,
> and manipulate their flocks, for their own
> selfish purposes, especially in times of
> great tumult.
> 
> Of course, with the oblique reference to
> Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, any
> attempt at seriousness is seriously
> compromised. It's as if the event has
> somehow ripped the very veil of artifice
> between author and reader- what passes
> for the fabric of space/time in a work of
> fiction- and gives license for a barefaced
> wink and a nod. This is not Toto pulling
> away the curtain, or Oedipa talking to the
> director/planetarium projector through
> the swirling steam of the shower. Rather,.
> it is the recognition of a completely
> random event- which could happen again
> at any time- and could lead to any
> number of new evolutionary develope-
> ments, such as the one that led to us.
> 
> It's also Feynman on a grand scale. He
> never made it to Tuva, but we have. Time
> to kick back, light up a bone with the
> author, and just groove on the miracle
> of it all, with an eye out for those wolves,
> of course.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sat, Mar 31, 2012 8:48 pm
> Subject: Re: Back to AtD....Tungaska Event, [in late 700s pages]
> 
> 
> Wonderin' if you could elaborate on those wolves a bit.
> On Mar 31, 2012, at 2:55 PM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 
>> Partial to wolves speakin' The Gospel, myself.
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Sat, Mar 31, 2012 1:37 pm
>> Subject: Re: Back to AtD....Tungaska Event, [in late 700s pages]
>> 
>> 
>> Seems like the essence of the "word"  that explodes their world is 
> something
>> along the lines of' 'you are on a ball in space, vulnerable, open to 
> the
> cosmos,
>> wake up from the limits of your mammalian bodies, your territorial 
> wars, your
>> boys adventure stories." It happens at a time when  science is the 
> new common
>> global language, close on the heels of Einstein's publication of 
> theories that
>> made gravity vanish, based on thought experiments of the motion of 
> particles
> of
>> light through space, ideas that will bring new explosive dimensions 
> to the
> word
>> 'atomic' and 'enlightenment'. It happens at a time when the events 
> can be
>> understood in a non superstitious way.
>> 
>> I feel in general Pynchon is pointing out that humans more easily 
> achieve a
>> change of information than a change of consciousness or  mammalian 
> habit. That
>> despite all the promise of cultural transformation burgeoning in 
> western
>> civilization at the turn of that century, the habit of war exercised 
> enough
>> gravitational pull to bind Europe in the bloody mud graves of WW1 and 
> aerial
>> flames of WW2.
>> 
>> Hot year coming up.
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 31, 2012, at 7:36 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> 
>>> p. 793 The Tugaska Event reveals "the sacred City".....
>>> the Chums "took longer to understand that the great burst of light
>>> had also torn the veil separating their own space from that of the
>>> everyday world"......they had met the same fate as Shambala,
>>> their protection lost"...
>>> 
>>> ..."gravity itself for a moment simply vanished"
>>> 
>>> All textual clues to the immateriality of the Event...
>>> 
>>> The Event = like a religious Visitation revealing the sacred?
>>> Like the Pentecostal Word exploding above everyone's heads?
>>> 
>>> Essay question: How is the Tungaska Event, therefore, similar
>>> and dissimilar from the Rocket in GR?
>> 
> 
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