Chapter 5 Summary

[ish mailian]

"Strung into the Apollonian Dream": Pynchon's Psychology of Engineers
Joseph Tabbi
NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction
Vol. 25, No. 2 (Winter, 1992), pp. 160-180

On Saturday, April 16, 2016, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','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>
>> 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
>> >>
>> >>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160416/27bf5173/attachment.html>