BtZ42Read

Tue Mar 15 12:18:42 CDT 2016

Re the English not having (or keeping secret) their word for brennschluss:
that may get a little extra edge from the first page's  "ruinous secret
cities of poor, places **whose names he has never heard*..."*

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 1:09 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Pynchon's writing sends each reader off on their own tangents (sometimes
> multiple ones, in a single sentence). But I prefer to read a little closer
> to the text. "The white line, abruptly, has stopped its climb. That would
> be fuel cutoff, end of burning, what's their word … Brennschluss. We don't
> have one. Or else its classified." The zero point is the top of the
> parabola, the rocket-arc that Pirate sees from his rooftop. At the top of
> the parabola (symmetrical in theory, at any rate), the slope is zero.
>
> So there are two "beyond the zero" points. "Their" side - the Nazi
> rocket-launchers and "our" side (too classified to even name the zero
> point?). An interesting thing happens at the zero point. The first half
> (rising) is engineered, man-made; but in the descent, gravity (Nature)
> takes over. Von Braun: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is
> transformation." Or, as per the Tom Lehrer song: "'Once the rocket goes up,
> who cares where it comes down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von
> Braun.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Keith Davis
>
> Sent: Mar 15, 2016 12:21 PM
>
> To: Joseph Tracy
>
>
> Cc: P-list List
>
> Subject: Re: BtZ42Read
>
>
>
> This could link to Slothrop's final scene, or state, as well.
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 12:20 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Beyond the Zero...beyond nothing, to everything?
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking of it as beyond this life, as well. The behaviorism angle
> is also very insightful. Why not both, and possibly more?
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 11:55 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> I think so. Behaviorism is such a central theme. The screaming also has an
> echo later in the screaming children in the secret behaviorist experiments,
> which reinforces this thinking.  There is also a sense in which Beyond the
> Zero refers to crossing the boundary between life and death. Von Braun
> describes ’the continuity of “our spiritual existence”after death'. Pynchon
> seems to me to be asking what kind of spiritual existence comes out of Von
> Braun’s choices. Is there a sense in which this kind of thinking leads to a
> lust for self annihilation as a mad alchemical experiment. Bliss Zero.
>
>
>
> It is going to be very hard not to leap around here in the text.
>
> > On Mar 15, 2016, at 5:46 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
> lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > On 15.03.2016 09:39, Ian Livingston wrote:
>
> >
>
> >> Then there is this pe-orgasmic pause:
>
> >>
>
> >> “There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screaming
> holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it
> bring its own light? Will the light come before ar after?
>
> >>
>
> >> But it is already light," GR 5.
>
> >>
>
> >
>
> >>
>
> >> Are we beyond the zero at this point? What, exactly, is the zero?
>
> >>
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Could it be that the zero refers to behaviorism? Pavlovian thought is
> via Pointsman very present in this first part of the novel. In this
> context, - please correct me if I'm wrong! - the one (1) refers to the
> successful conditioning, manifest in a concrete behavior. The zero (0)
> refers to the state where the conditioning is extinguished and the behavior
> is not shown by the test subject anymore.  The formulation "beyond the
> zero" then, perhaps, indicates a new phase in human history where the
> thanatoid forces of society start, metaphorically speaking, to go beneath
> our skin. Where science becomes "big science" (and data "big data"), and
> even political mass murder, so very common to history, enters a
> qualitatively new level with the Holocaust, as well as with Hiroshima.
> Sentences like "It is too late", or "It has happened before, but there is
> nothing to compare it to now", would fit such a reading. What do you think?
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >>
>
> >> “Astrologically the beginning of the next aeon, according to the
> starting-point you select, falls between A.D. 2000 and  2200. Starting from
> the star “0“ and assuming a Platonic month of 2,145 years, one would arrive
> at A.D. 2154 for the beginning of the Aquarian Age, and at A.D. 1997 if you
> start from star “a 113.“ The latter date agrees with the longitude of the
> stars in Ptolemy’s Almagest“ CGJ, Aion, 1959, 94n.
>
> >>
>
> >
>
>
>
> -
>
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
>
>
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