Chapter 5 Summary

[Joseph Tracy]

I don’t see how consciousness equates to engineering?  As to whether engineering is natural, when a bird builds a nest is it natural? 
 
What seems particularly unique to me about human engineering is the externalization of memory, the externalization of technologies of recording knowledge, information, imagination. Then there is how that feeds into the engineering of war and culture.

The question of how Pynchon treats consciousness itself is challenging, but we do see in Slothrop a backward momentum away from the modern control based culture where he starts.


> On Apr 13, 2016, at 12:16 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> In other words, engineering is a control by man that isn't "natural." Which implies that consciousness isn't natural. "Natural" would thus mean unthoughtness.  Right?
> 
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:03 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Control by man is engineering.
> 
> Control over natural forces, especially death, or other "outside" forces is taken "inside," engineered, controlled.
> 
> The Wind is natural spirit. To veer against the wind is the rocket.
> 
> David Morris
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, April 12, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> "It's control. All these things arise from one difficulty: control. For the first time it was inside, do you see? The control is put inside. No more need to suffer passively under 'outside forces'--to veer into any wind. As if......"
> 
> Besides the control associations listed in Joseph's post, a Control is the person the medium uses to communicate with, ---Selena I guess?  And there is what The Firm is trying to do, is doing we learn here (but not what yet)......now internalized? ???? 
> 
> Wind, formerly secular to Roland, is now everywhere. Often a symbol of spirit, the Spirit, in many religious uses....
> 
> Eventyr is Norse for adventure, or fairy tale, ...Gloaming is that time of day before dark....
> 
> Another scene where Pynchon is always saying?: ...."more than in all your philosophy" [science?], Horatio?" Even if fully ironic, as seems to be Mann's use per Kai's post, it still sez here, people act as if there is......
> 
> it keeps the ambiguity of Both Sides of the epigraph as plot device seesaw/fulcrum alive. 
> 
> And opens up interpretation as a metaphor, a synecdoche, a 'something else' in meaning. 
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 1:17 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Here is a summary of key events in the chapter. Disagreements with anything?
> 
> At the opening of Chapter 5( 30-38) we enter a seance conducted in some space of  SOE aka the Firm, a space lit by a sensitive flame in which a medium, Carroll Eventyr, seems to have entered the spirit of Roland Feldspath expert on control systems, guidance equations (a concept which haunts the novel in various forms: rocket guidance,determinism/calvinism/fascism/gnosticism ). Roland has " transected into the realm of Dominus Blicero”, but Roland gets distracted from Blicero by lights moving as in a  dance and  particularly by the  wind as a kind of ecstatic force he never knew. He calls out to his wife Selena ,who assures she is listening; he starts talking about the difficulty of control and  about replacing the invisible hand of the market  with self creating control, dispensing with God, then counters that this is only a more harmful illusion that A causes B when they are part of same….
> The seance is almost over as the sensitive flame that responds to sound and movement retreats then soars up as a new rocket falls  and Jessica Swanlake throws dart  which hits dead center .  Selena ,  the dead Feldspath’s wife is there. All is recorded by Milton Gloaming trying to develop statistical analysis of psychic and other events( death is the most frequent word he records). Jessica and Gloaming converse, he asks about Roger Mexico, her lover, who she says is with Pirate Prentice.  We move to conversation in Snoxall’s (pub,club?) between Prentice and Mexico; Prentice is more ambitious and more paranoid than first impression.  Mexico thinks the project with psychics is endangered by the revival of witch laws . Prentice is delivering microfilm to Mexico from Bloat. We find out about PISCES under the larger White Visitation. Pirate is concerned about the non-war/post-war related schemes arriving with the  Americans and obscuring Germany and war, thinks Mexico is being used in one such indecent plot, notes Mexico’s growing enthusiasm for microfilm being sent. Beautiful Jessica triggers Prentice's memory of affair with Scorpia Mossmoon, now long over. PP longing for real love, friendship, jealous of , but hoping Jessica and R M stay together. As chapter fades into maudlin with memory of Mossmoon’s inevitable departure Pynchon brings in the merry midgets but it falls a bit flat.
> 
> 
> We think of WW2 as a particularly modern and technological war and that gets much attention in GR, but from the start Pynchon is diving into a less respectable aspect of the pursuit of information. Psychic or paranormal phenomena . Why is it so prominent? We know it played a role in the war, but is it standing in for something larger in the Novel? In some ways it allows P to introduce nonstandard economic and political information into the War history. Is there more?-
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> 
> 

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