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

[bandwraith at aol.com]

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?