Chapter 5 Summary

[ish mailian]

The allusion to the Crystal Palace, London 1851, where technology was
idolized is important. In The Education of Henry Adams, in the
chapters that most influenced Pynchon,  Adams haunts the Exhibition in
Paris, 1900. In 1876 the glass and iron hall of machines is in
Philadelphia. Pynchon, of course, grew up not far from Flushing Meadow
Park, where two Fairs were built, one on Gatsby's Valley of Ashes,
1939, and where, to this day, the rockets stand on exhibit. In the
Swift books and in other boys adventure books the engineer was lauded
as hero, magicians, high priests even. Back on the Kipling thread I
mentioned Bridge-Builders, toss in Wells and Verne and countless
others. Sure there were detractors too. Thoreau, Huxley & Co., and in
film, Chaplin's Modern Times, in classics, Dickens's Hard Times...but
the heroic builder was made part of the popular imagination and the
wisdom of the day was that technological advancement brought progress
to the world, to humanity and the men, almost exclusively men, who
made engineers were heroes. To put on a spacesuit and jump in a rocket
was daring and heroic act that made the world better. GE brought good
things to Life.

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 4:24 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> What was an engineer or what was engineering when P was writing this
> book? I think that an engineer/engineering  had achieved somethings
> nearly miraculous, unprecedented and spectacular. At the same time,
> engineers/engineering may have pushed civilization to the brink of
> destruction. If they had or not, the accusation was commonly
> juxtaposed with the astonishment and wonder. The question is not one
> that many can answer, but it a question that all need to ask and,
> while we may not find an answer, we may at least come to a better
> understanding of the implications of the question. For like it or not
> we live in a world where engineering plays a essential role and one
> that is growing in importance.
> To see how engineering fits into Pynchon we need to tackle three very
> big ideas: Technology, Engineering, and Psychology. We are dipping
> into the Psychology, that is, of course, saturated with Freud and
> Brown, Marcuse....and Film. But we need to look into technic
> (Mumford's useful term, though P insists he never read Mumford prior
> to GR).
>
> Engineering, simply stated, is the application of pure science; a
> creative act, design. Is it about control? Or is it about creativity?
> Is it poetry?
>
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 8:17 PM, 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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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l