Light, that pervasive subject and theme in AtD.

[Toby Levy]

During one early re-read of Gravity's Rainbow I highlighted every use
of the word light and it's formations )lit, lighted, lightning, etc)
and it there was an incredibly large number of highlights.

Toby


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 8:42 AM
Subject: Light, that pervasive subject and theme in AtD.
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>


How IBM Created The World’s Fastest Light-Powered Chip IBM has
developed an optical chip — thats a microchip that uses light instead
of wires to transmit data — capable of transmitting data at the nearly
unfathomable speed of 1 terabit per second. That’s fast enough to
allow someone to download 500,000 HD movies in one second, or the
entire contents of the Library of Congress in an hour. Read more →

One reason books last is that their 'symbolic form', as someone named
it, gathers the right metaphors, images, symbols for meaning.
One must, I think, have a little awe at TRP for finding "light" so
pervasively rich.

That metaphor is one place where AtD is still a 'prophetic' novel....