GR translation: chosen for its affinity for moonlight

[Monte Davis]

Me too <http://www.superstock.com/stock-photos-images/1538R-55016> , but
bandwraith's right: organic/animal/sexual connections with hardware,
human/technological hybrids and chimeras and Bad Priests, have almost always
been bad news in Pynchon since Rachel Owlglass's dalliance with the MG stick
shift and Benny Profane's tete-a-tetes with SHOCK and SHROUD. I'm wary of
"evil technology," but evil  *relationships* with technology abound.

 

A-and "Disney-like" is anything but a sign of benevolence. 'cause foax, when
Tyrone or the narrator drops us into a weekly strip, comic book, or animated
cartoon, a-and talks like an excitable slangy 1940s teenager, why that's
when you REALLY gotta watch yer moral ass! 



 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of rich
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 11:09 AM
To: bandwraith at aol.com
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: GR translation: chosen for its affinity for moonlight

 

FWIW

I remember seeing old 1940s cartoons with airplanes like the DC-3 with big
smiley faces on them

rich

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 7:28 AM, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:

A couple,  three things. This passage is pathetic in the technical sense:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy

 

Airplanes do not have affinities or kind expressions on their faces. Don't
take me the wrong way, I love the line, "affinity for moonlight, the kind
expression on its windowed face," but the reference is to an inanimate
machine. So, it is either very nostalgic, or Disney-like in its embrace of
technology. The DC-3 was/is a great plane, but we shouldn't let our
appreciation of classic technology carry us too far away from the trajectory
of the novel. 

 

The image of Slothrop "curled among the cargo, metal darkness, engine
vibration through his bones...," if not raising alarm bells, should at least
be a nudge from beyond, pre-figuring, as it does, a more advanced metallic
womb with tanks of LOX and a self-contained engine.

 

Not sure if you want to work such interpretive considerations into your
translation, which may have the effect of opening the text to many different
possibilities. For example, is Pynchon setting up a dichotomy between "good"
technology and "evil" technology, or, at least the good and evil potential
of technology, in general, as he does with magic- as he does with everything
from consciousness to orgasm, for that matter? 

 

Then there is that fellow, later on, who regresses into a piano- another
highly evolved form of technology- perhaps an indication of how the more
gentle, smurf-like folk of the counterforce, work out their
inter-generational conflicts, just to throw in another perspective on
nostalgia and technology.

 

Take these musings for what you will, but you might be interested in the
different ways in which this novel has kept me interested over the years. 

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
To: Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tue, Mar 12, 2013 5:35 am
Subject: GR translation: chosen for its affinity for moonlight

P269.20-23  The plane is a battered DC-3, chosen for its affinity for
moonlight, the kind expression on its windowed face, its darkness inside and
outside. He wakes up curled among the cargo, metal darkness, engine
vibration through his bones . . .

What does "its affinity for moonlight" mean exactly?  Does it mean it often
flies at night, or something else?

 

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