GR translation: demolition man

[David Morris]

I missed your points about Khabala and naming powers.  Reversals are a
staple of many curse/hex systems. And naming is defining, controlling,
usually miserably.

For Pynchon I think "perversion" is just "thinking.". In GR he likens
calculus and film as pornography, because they make a meta version of
reality that can be .  Perversion, right?  Fetishm is also a big Pynchon
theme.

The solutions to all of the above problems, and the multitude of others he
mentions was proposed in GR's lab rat Buzby Berkeley production. The rats
lament that Earth's and all its inhabitants would be fine if mankind could
forget that each will die, and instead just be.  That solution is embodied
by Slothrup naked at the crossroad, at the mandrake root power center, when
he starts his disappearance, not thinking, just being.

That's the unobtainable solution, like his love of anarchy.  All beyond the
Rainbow.

David Morris

On Saturday, November 10, 2012, Paul Mackin wrote:

>  On 11/10/2012 11:14 AM, David Morris wrote:
>
> I don't think Pynchon is valuing rational over superstitious.  GR takes
> the question of both quite seriously. And he also implies that both spring
> from an internal mechanism that is basic to human thought.
>
>
> Yes, in this case the superstitious interpretation of the coffee tin
> correctly announces Katje.
>
> I guess I thought that, given the framework of Kabbalistic myth and the
> expected inversion thereof,  I saw sympathetic magic, based as it is on
> the assumption that a person or thing can be supernaturally affected
> through its name or an object representing it, as a perversion of testing
> Pudding's purity at the second antechamber.  Of course the thing you have
> to put alongside is that even the very purest in another person's religion
> is seen as a superstition from the outside. So maybe we have a perversion
> of a perversion.  Pudding correctly accessed  his fate but by impure means.
>
> Ad infinitum.
>
> P
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, November 9, 2012, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
>> On 11/8/2012 2:02 AM, jochen stremmel wrote:
>>
>>> I think what Pynchon refers to here is more general, not only in the
>>> context of WW II or the high and low contact. It's about "a repetition
>>> high and low", low like the malignant pun a filthy, mocking scoundrel
>>> might make and high like a sympathetic magic.
>>>
>>> It's about playing with words and images, similes, metaphors. Like the
>>> demolition man and the Trembler he sees in a spoon between a glass and
>>> a plate, if he has to do the dishes.
>>>
>> Going beyond the specific examples, we might want also to note that this
>> superstitious and magical thinking is meant to exemplify impurity, the
>> opposite of what the second level is supposed to produce or demonstrate?
>>
>> Thinking that contact of the spoon with the cup might produce an
>> explosion--or that a coffee brand name by mere name association will bring
>> forth a cruel lady--are pollutions of thought. (of course in this case
>> there IS a cruel lady)
>>
>> And outside the Kabbalistic framework, the interrelatedness of all things
>> for the paranoiac is suggested.  To the paranoiac everything is connected.
>>  At least in Pynchon. Not sure how that applied to Pudding, but still . . .
>> .
>>
>> P
>>
>>>
>>> 2012/11/7 Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>:
>>>
>>>> Jochen is correct about “demolition man” in  general, but in a WWII
>>>> context
>>>> I think it means Explosive Ordnance Disposal,  someone who *disarms*
>>>> bombs.
>>>> A “trembler” is a vibration-sensitive switch, its central tongue (an
>>>> electrical contact) closing the circuit if it touches either the “high”
>>>> contact above or the “low” contact beneath.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
>>>> Behalf
>>>> Of Mike Jing
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:22 AM
>>>> To: Pynchon Mailing List
>>>> Subject: GR translation: demolition man
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> P234.35-235.4  In the second antechamber is an empty red tin that held
>>>> coffee. The brand name is Savarin. He understands that it means to say
>>>> “Severin.” Oh, the filthy, the mocking scoundrel. . . . But these are
>>>> not
>>>> malignant puns against an intended sufferer so much as a sympathetic
>>>> magic,
>>>> a repetition high and low of some prevailing form (as, for instance, no
>>>> sane
>>>> demolition man at his evening dishwater will wash a spoon between two
>>>> cups,
>>>> or even between a glass and a plate, for fear of the Trembler it
>>>> implies . .
>>>> . because it’s a trembler-tongue he really holds, poised between its two
>>>> fatal contacts, in fingers aching with having been so suddenly
>>>> reminded). .
>>>> . .
>>>>
>>>> What is the "demolition man" mentioned here?  Why the fear of tremblers?
>>>> What is a trembler anyway?
>>>>
>>>> Also, what is the meaning of "high and low" in "a repetition high and
>>>> low"?
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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