World of Baedeker

[Dave Monroe]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 5:35 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> This is a fresh study on the Baedeker which seems to be well done. Under
> "Leseprobe" you can click on a sample. In the description of the book it
> says: The history of the Baedeker "is closely related to the age of
> enlightenment, the rise of the bourgeoisie, to the formation of steam ship
> lines and railways and to modern photography". Sounds rather relevant in
> terms of P.
>
> http://www.campus.de/wissenschaft/geschichte/Kultur-+und+Alltagsgeschichte.40436.html/Die+Welt+des+Baedeker.99509.html?PTBUCH=LESEPROBE
>
> "He was that sort of vagrant who exists, though unwillingly, entirely within
> the Baedeker world --- as much a feature of the topography as the other
> automata: waiters, porters, cabmen, clerks."
> (V, chapter three, III)

Bulson, Eric.  "Pynchon's Baedeker Trick,"
   Novels, Maps, Modernity: The Spatial Imagination, 1850-2000.
   New York: Routledge, 2007.  85-105

"As readers, we cannot decode Pynchon's maps or experience of the
space of his novels without considering the ethical and poltical turn
of the author himself.  'Cartographic accuracy' can make us feel at
home in the world but only if we refuse to figure out where we are in
history.  That was Pynchon's way of making us remember what all the
stars down below represent." (p. 105)

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415976480/

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0801&msg=123940

Thanks, Kai!