M-D and GR / M&D

[Mark Kohut]

Another terrif post. Ne'er as well expressed, maybe.

one key for me: as
Mumford emphasizes in his classic, Technics & Civilization, "they did
not SEEM to have an independent existence"

On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 6:43 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
> From V. and The Secret Integration to M&D the ideas from Wiener and
> Adams haunt Pynchon's writings (fiction and non-fiction). For most of
> human history man was a tool maker and user of tools that were
> extensions of his own organism and these tools did not have, and as
> Mumford emphasizes in his classic, Technics 7 Civilization, "they did
> not SEEM to have and independent existence" (321). The tools, Mumford
> argues, forced man to recognize the limits of his capacities. Certain
> parts of the environment could neither be intimidated nor controlled
> by man, so he must learn the laws of their behavior, and so technics
> tended to create a picture of an objective reality...with the machine,
> education and the process were integral to the use of tools and the
> craft of hands, but with the machine the process was largely done as
> preparation by a technician, an engineer, designer, who alone
> understood the workings of the independent machine. The mechanistic
> production and the depersonalized and dehumanized production is not
> yet in place when Mason and Dixon come to America, where, as we
> discussed, the economy grows by its natural bounty and by population,
> but Pynchon shows how we get to Ahab's floating factory, the search
> for oil, the mad and diabolical man on steel rails driving his machine
> into the Death, as certain as one by a bomb,  the Rocket with his name
> on it.  By M-D we have assimilated the objects and rejected the spirit
> that produced them, though there are, in the carpenter, for example,
> who makes Ahab's leg, a phantom limb of the machine Mason and Dixon
> drive through the woods. Ahab turns to magic and cult, but Nature is
> too powerful, too free, independent of all his monomaniacal control.
> Our boys are haunted by the Pequad, the African's Beloved, Ahab calls
> on these and others to hunt, not for Christ, but for Certitude, for
> certain and absolute knowledge and control. This is, of course, he
> subject of GR.
>
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 6:15 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> One could say, and must make it carry some special meaning, that
>> only with intricate devices and techniks are there problems, or
>> certain kinds of problems at least.
>>
>> The possibilities of mechanical error increase as techniks does.
>> It is all a Step-Function.
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 12:01 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> There are three, at least, chapters in M-D that feature problems Ahab
>>> has with his measuring devices and techniques.
>>>
>>> CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.
>>>
>>> CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
>>>
>>> CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm#link2HCH0118
>>>
>>> also, this may interest some here:
>>>
>>> Memory Machines: Exploring Moby-Dick and Gravity's Rainbow Through the
>>> History of Film Benjamin Paul Spencer
>>>
>>>
>>> http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-03182011-210113/unrestricted/Spencer_BP_T_2011.pdf
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l