Tesla Electroegyptianism

[Michael Bailey]

Bled Welder wrote:

>No but seriously, I understand that it may not be as rewarding as say convincing Cheney >that he's a horrible example of human, or that he's a perfect specimen of our nihilist dark >ages,

in that Kerouac book Desolation Angels, the Gary Snyder character
teaches the Kerouac character a Buddhist exercise, which if applied to
Cheney would be something like "Dick Cheney, equally a coming Buddha".

--- good way to quell outrage at a career in government directing
military procurement toward private enterprise, then into one of those
enterprises, then when Halliburton's profits dip, back into government
to be a leading proponent of an offensive (in every sense of the word)
war that doubled Halliburton's stock price.  a-and it's not like they
did such a great job rebuilding Iraq either...army guys shocked in the
shower by crappy wiring eg...and there was no warranty to make them
repay for their screwups...and they moved their HQ offshore...yeah,
great patriot...heckuva humanitarian...

equally a coming Buddha

but not directly on-topic for Pynchon except as an example of one of
the themes of GR - war as commerce flexing its muscles

> or as pleasant and rewarding as getting to the bottom finally of whether or not Finn >was >asleep as he snuggled against Jim in the frightful dark,

I think alice is fond of pointing out connections with Melville and
Hawthorne, among others, but I find there is a resonance too with
Twain.  There's the strong impulse to be a jovial storyteller, & an
equally strong urge to grapple with huge structural societal problems;
there's a temptation always present to be as bitter as Bierce,
countered by an unique ability to share the sweetness of certain
aspects of living...not to mention the fascination with language as
it's spoken...

and in some muddled way, in my mind the recent moves by Wood et al to
redefine literature in a way that tends to devalue the intellectual
currency of Pynchon and an arbitrary list of others "of his ilk" -

...in fact, that seems to be the most salient feature of the exercise...

blend in with Fiedler's assault by ridicule on the giant, and (imho)
well-deserved, reputation of Twain, so that a look at Huck Finn for me
is trying to point out the baby Fiedler left exposed when he emptied
the bathwater (I'm not accusing him of actually "throwiing the baby
out"), with somewhat of an expectation that there's a family
resemblance to the baby in Pynchon's fiction that is similarly left
high and dry by unsympathetic criticism...

>but I happen to believe that >unfolding and revealing about what's under the dark mythologies we've been given to believe about civilizations greater than ours is important.

sure, why not?  different bunch of sources, no doubt interesting in
their own right, and totally different perspective on Pynchon!

>Even for something as ultimately pointless as what AtD means or says.  Or maybe AtD >is not meaningless!

you're in the right forum to suggest that...

>Perhaps there is a Merle center,

perhaps among the scholars at Candlebrow, who don't have to follow
hard and fast rules about, hrumph, being alive and such, there are
some ancient psilo-shamans and so forth...

>and Lew will finally admit the >obvious truth about the Egyptians, that yes they had very >advanced technologies that we don't know about.

Lew's encounter with that would involve Tarot, I guess.
Then you have Frank's skull session in Mexico, which might be closer
to the particular ancient civilization you seem to be indicating...

>And yes, their individual learning had a lot to do with indoctrination by ways of certain >psychedelics, et cetera.  There's even a fascinating connection with Tesla.  It would >probably be not difficult to find these lines and connections open in AtD, just a matter of >unfolding and revealing them.  But who's looking for them?  You've been indoctrinated to >not look for them...

who, not Pynchon fans, certainly?  part of our remit is to collect
that kind of lore.  Pray tell us more!

I like to squint through a literary lens most of the time because,
well, it's pretty illuminating......but just because I have
preconceptions that pre-industrial science was largely hit and miss,
brilliant minds working from a limited fact base without much
equipment, and in the service of vicious ruling elites pointing toward
warfare and systematic oppression of the populace much of the time,
doesn't mean that I'm not aware there may be other ways to view
previous civilizations...

>You have to admire a system that can gather a group of scholars together who are hyper->aware in general how deep our culture of fabricated indoctrination is and yet no one will >admit the obvious and biggest one, and it has everything to do with Pynchon, and no one >will admit it.

people like Derrida, or Wittgenstein, I guess, pointing at the fact
that the words with which we discuss things are a topic in themselves,
and their nature defines what we can discuss and how we can discuss it
- yeah, I get tired of that sometimes too...it's like, "yeah, words
are limited, but tell me anyway"

>I suppose all this has been debating years going past by now on here, and it's just all >new to me.  I suppose someone could say, "Yo, Michael, been done, baby."  But I'm >enjoying the ride nevertheless.

it's never been done exactly the way you will do it, if that's any comfort...