Chapter 5 Summary

[ish mailian]

Weimar Culture and Futuristic Technology: The Rocketry and Spaceflight Fad
in Germany, 1923-1933

Michael J. Neufeld

Technology and Culture, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 725-752


On Thursday, April 14, 2016, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> <javascript:;>> 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
> <javascript:;>> 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
> <javascript:;>> 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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