911 Prewarning
Paul Mackin
mackin.paul at verizon.net
Sat Mar 2 09:53:25 CST 2013
http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/db/
On 3/1/2013 9:18 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> I did get used to them. They were like homing towers - when you
> emerged from the subway, you could look for them, then get your
> north-south orientation. When I worked as an electrical apprentice at
> the first buildings to go up in Battery Park City (built on the
> landfill created by the excavation for the towers), the most
> convenient women's bathroom was at a place in the lower level of one
> of the towers, called The Loading Dock (or Zone?). When I visited the
> area, soon after the towers fell, I felt as if I were visiting a
> double amputee in the hospital - it was devastating.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: malignd at aol.com
> Sent: Mar 1, 2013 6:49 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: 911 Prewarning
>
> That's true and for good reason. Yet, and this is something
> perhaps peculiar to architecture, New Yorkers came to like the
> towers and even some (professional) critics softened their views.
> Plus Philippe Petit! How could you not love that they were there,
> given what he did with them?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> To: kelber <kelber at mindspring.com>
> Cc: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Fri, Mar 1, 2013 11:08 am
> Subject: Re: 911 Prewarning
>
> The original Twin Towers design was widely panned by architectural
> critics.
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 10:04 AM, <kelber at mindspring.com
> <mailto:kelber at mindspring.com>> wrote:
>
> As the towers were going up, they looked like two giant file
> cabinets, plunked down in the middle of what had been a
> delicate, filagreed skyline. But I suppose they were really
> some sort of homoerotic image. Maybe that's what ticked al
> Qaeda off. Personally, I find the new, heterosexual fuck-you
> phallus they're constructing obscene. "Look how long and hard
> we are now! Don't fuck with the new viagrified trade center,
> evil terrorists!" For a long while, it looked like they
> weren't going to add the foreskin. But now it's in just about
> complete. Jews circumcize in infancy. Muslims wait 7-10
> years. Is it a dare?
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bandwraith at aol.com <mailto:bandwraith at aol.com>
> Sent: Feb 28, 2013 10:14 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org <mailto:pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Subject: Re: 911 Prewarning
>
> I witnessed the towers just after the first plane hit. All
> the conspiracy theories are rubbish- mostly because they
> detract from the real issue, the symbolic power of their
> destruction. Al Queda was hip to this as early as 1993-
> when the morons tried to bring one of them down with a
> garage bomb planted in a rented vehicle, after which they
> then tried to recoup the deposit on! The only people
> stupider than Al Queda were the various security agencies
> charged with protecting us from them.
> Pynchon's most specific reference to the symbolic power of
> the World Trade Center occurs in Chapter 11 (as a
> self-signifier of moral bankruptcy) of M&D- the twin
> gallows, shimmering on the horizon of St. Helena, the two
> terms- capitalism and slavery- so essential for the
> western enterprise. Reading it post-911 is enough to cause
> goose bumps- prescient. And don't forget that steady wind
> blowing in (back) from the coast. So stop changing the
> subject. Al Queda was well aware of the location of our
> "crotch" and it took them two kicks, but they finally
> caught us right in the balls. If there was a conspiracy it
> was between those flea bitten fanatic scumbags and our own
> stupidity.
> Since 911, any critique of the capitalist enterprise has
> been forced to walk gingerly around the issue of sympathy
> for the devil. But coincidence works in strange ways, and
> the demonic, despite its rabid hatred, is sometimes
> twisted into the agency of The Good- much to its own chargrin.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de
> <mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org
> <mailto:pynchon-l at waste.org>>
> Sent: Thu, Feb 28, 2013 8:34 pm
> Subject: Re: 911 Prewarning
>
>
> /How about discussing the issue in relation to Pynchon's work?
>
> Not that he knows the answers re 9/11, but neither do we,
> so ...
> /--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day_and_September_11
>
> *9/11 in Against the Day*
> On roughly pages 138-155 of /Against the Day/, the
> Lovecraftian narrative about a mysterious power dug up
> from the ice bears numerous parallels to the events of 9/11:
> Page 145: "even reaching the depot would prove an Odyssey.
> For the streets were in mad disorder"
> Page 148: "the bad dream I still try to wake from, the
> great city brought to sorrow and ruin"
> Page 151: "they'd been warned, repeatedly, about just such
> a possiblity. The city more and more vertical, the
> population growing in density, all hostages to just sich
> an incursion."
> Page 151: "a story taken so for granted that its coming
> true was the last thing anybody expected"
>
>
> Against the Day & the Controlled Demolition Hypothesis
>
> It has been suggested that the following excerpts might
> allude to the Controlled demolition hypothesis
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_demolition_hypothesis_for_the_collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center>
> for the collapse of the WTC:
> Page 85: "some of these explosions, the more deadly of
> them, in fact, were really set off to begin with not by
> Anarchists but by the owners themselves."
> Page 175: "Only slowly would it occur to his ultra-keen
> detective's reasoning that these bombs could have been set
> by anybody, including those who would clearly benefit if
> "Anarchists", however loosely defined, could be blamed for
> it."
> (...)
>
>
> 9/11 and Pynchon's other works
>
> *Gravity's Rainbow*
> The poem/song that appears on the final page of the book
> contains an image that takes on new meaning post-9/11:
>
> /There is a Hand to turn the time,/
> /Though thy Glass today be run./
> *Till the Light that hath brought the Towers low*
> *Find the last poor Pret'rite one...*
> /Till the Riders sleep in ev'ry road,/
> /All through our crippl'd Zone./
> /With a face on ev'ry mountainside/,
> /And a Soul in ev'ry stone/...
>
> (...)
>
>
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