BtZ42. History, Cold War, point of no return.

Sun Apr 10 11:21:15 CDT 2016

postscriptum on written language:

David Graeber ‏@davidgraeber <https://twitter.com/davidgraeber> 10m10
minutes ago <https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/695727201027825670>Enfield,
England <https://twitter.com/search?q=place%3A537b8c5518197832>
interesting conversation tonight w archeologists about origins of the
alphabet: first appears in "graffiti" of Canaanite miners, not elites.

Alphabet=preterites Capitalization of (so to pun, not meant literally) =They

On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 1:15 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> I'd forgotten about that passage, Kai. Looking forward to talking more
> about it when we arrive there. Mark, the Iceland Spar variant of alternate
> reality is a good point. Thinking about this more, maybe the upcoming
> Kirghiz Light sequence  is another example of a fork in the road in GR:
> once oral tradition is replaced with written language, the paths forward
> become limited. No alphabetization, then no political violence. Also, no
> Pynchon.
>
> LK
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> Sent: Apr 5, 2016 3:24 AM
> To: Mark Kohut , pynchon -l , "kelber at mindspring.com"
> Subject: Re: BtZ42. History, Cold War, point of no return.
>
>
>
> Although it is "too late", there are "alternate routes that might have
> been taken" in Gravity's Rainbow.
>
> In another April, I wrote/quoted:
>
> * Subject: grgr (25): the fork in the road america never took*
>
> *Date:	Mon, 24 Apr 2000 09:35:30 -0500
>
> *
>  "... memories of the blue hills, green maizefields, get-togethers over hemp and
>  tobacco with the indians, young women in upper rooms with their aprons lifted,
>  pretty faces, hair spilling on the wood floors while underneath in the stables
>  horses kicked and drunks hollered, the starts in the very early mornings when
>  the backs of his herd glowed like pearl, the long stony and surprising road to
>  boston, the rain on the connecticut river, the snuffling good-nights of a
>  hundred pigs among the new stars and long grass still warm from the sun,
>  settling down to sleep ...
>  could he [the colonial William Slothrop] have been the fork in the road america
>  never took, the singular point she jumped the wrong way from? suppose the
>  slothropite heresy had had the time to consolidate and prosper? might there
>  have been fewer crimes in the name of jesus and more mercy in the name of
>  judas iscariot? it seems to tyrone slothrop that there might be a way back ---" (556)
>
>
>  great passage of high lyrical density. must be read out loud like a poem.
>
>  with m&d, if not before, it became clear, i think, that the "fork in the road
>  america never took" is the historical field of force, which inspires pynchon's
>  whole work.
>
>  perhaps naumann was thinking of this, when he said in that radio
>  debate that trp "deserves it to be honored as an american patriot".
>
>  and "the whole space of the zone cleared, depolarized" (556) is echoing this
>  single historical call ...
>
>
>
>
> " ... and somewhere in the waste of it [the Zone], a single set of
> coordinated from which to proceed, without elect, without preterite,
> without even nationality to fuck it up." (p. 556)
>
> But while "the fork in the road America never took" was a real historic
> (and political!) opportunity, the depolarized space of the Zone is - "maybe
> that anarchist he met in Zürich was right" - not only an utopian pipe dream
> but also - "maybe for a little while all the fences are down, one road as
> good as another" - just a temporary thing. Finally, the Zone's "waste" was,
> although war and holocaust were over, in terms of human suffering such a
> terrible time - millions to be fleeing -  that in reality, despite the
> black market, very few people will have breathed easily in absence of
> control. So, the Zone is a mere echo of the fork in the road, not an
> extension. Note, however, that Tyrone Slothrop's rendezvous with Frieda the
> sow enacts his ancestors' memory of "the snuffling good-nights of a hundred
> pigs among the new stars and long grass still warm from the sun, settling
> down to sleep ..." But this is the 20th century, these are the times of V.
> So Tyrone needs a mask "'Wait. How about this?' He puts on the pig mask.
> She stares for a minute, then moves up to Slothrop and kisses him,
> snout-to-snout" (p. 573), and the character of their relation - "Lustful
> thoughts come filtering into Slothrop's mind, little peculiarity here you
> know, hehheh, nothing he can't handle" (p. 575) - seems not to be that of
> creature and good herder. Their beautiful encounter - "Both of them are
> dripping with dew. He follows her on down to the stream, takes off the mask
> again [sic!] and throws water at his face while she drinks besides him,
> slurping placid. The water is clear, running lively, cold. Round rocks
> knock together under the stream. A resonant sound, a music [sic!]. It would
> be worth something to sit day and night, in and out, listening to these
> sounds of water and cobbles unfold ..." (pp. 573-574) - is nevertheless an
> uncharacteristically peaceful moment in this otherwise not so peaceful
> book. Oink!
>
>
>
> On 04.04.2016 16:05, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> Laura wrote, kindly asking me directly a question 'cause I keep bloviating
> about AtD: (please all,
> this question is for all of us)
>
> Laura:
> "I see GR as Pynchon's attempt to find that point - zero point, point of
> no return, Brennschluss - where the Cold War was set in motion. He knew, of
> course, that he'd have to go back much earlier. In GR, it's already too
> late. In ATD and M&D he digs deeper. I can't offhand think of any examples,
> but it seems to me that in ATD, he's presenting alternate routes that might
> have been taken - Tesla, the Quaternions - Mark K., can you help here? Even
> in Bleeding Edge, there's at least a vision of what might have been."
>
> I would say that Yes AtD offers many thematic branchings of possible
> alternate routes--by breadth of embodied themes. Perhaps not so localized
> in time nor place but in a kind of Iceland Spar of Alternate History, such
> as different sources of energy, a different world if there were no
> imaginary numbers (metaphorically ), much other kinds of world richness
> (and justice)...all presented conceptually, not via much arguable real
> history, as I think of it.
>
> But AtD is also, as we have all said, a presentation of modernity, (some
> of) its global effects and the consequences of. I have always thought
> 'around 1870" as the earlier time in question, and I found this for this
> post:
>
> Wikipedia:
>
> Charles Baudelaire <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire> is
> credited with coining the term "modernity" (*modernité*) in his 1864
> essay "The Painter of Modern Life," to designate the fleeting, ephemeral
> experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has
> to capture that experience. In this sense, it refers to a particular
> relationship to time, one characterized by intense historical discontinuity
> or rupture, openness to the novelty of the future, and a heightened
> sensitivity to what is unique about the present (Kompridis 2006
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity#CITEREFKompridis2006>, 32–59).
>
> As an analytical concept and normative
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_%28philosophy%29> ideal, modernity is
> closely linked to the ethos <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos> of
> philosophical and aesthetic modernism
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism>; political and intellectual
> currents that intersect with the Enlightenment
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment>; and subsequent
> developments as diverse as Marxism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism>
> , existentialism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism>, modern
> art <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art> and the formal
> establishment of social science
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science>. It also encompasses the
> social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in
> attitudes associated with secularisation and post-industrial life
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life> (Berman 2010
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity#CITEREFBerman2010>, 15–36).
>
>
> Regarding the direct Cold War question: I don't see it at all in AtD since
> we know of
>
> the huge balloon-based Russo-US Chums' 'State' or Whatever--, a
> transnational Alliance of some kind--- that the book builds to.
>
>
> But, one smart reader, David Cowart, I think, in a lit essay I once
> read----which is probably in his book or reworked into his book, which I
> have not read---did argue this: V is not set in the middle of the 50s for
> nothing, at the tail end of McCarthyism---where national 'spying' on the
> other was patriotic--and around the Suez Crisis for nothing. He argued that
> as we thought about Pynchon's vision of America (the US of A, as Jochen
> more precisely prefers), we must start there not with* Lot 49 *nor even *The
> Secret Integration*.  Because Cold War fifties, the Bomb and Everything
> Else.
>
>
>
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