BtZ42 pages 72-73-74

[Monte Davis]

> What a way to drive home the control by conditioning theme.

Or one could notice the pop songs, movies, and brand / advertising
allusions throughout GR, often with a wink such as Roger & Jessica's "cute
meet". Culture -- any culture -- IS a web of conditioning. And the more
effective that conditioning is, the more "natural," universal, and
inevitable will seem the conditioned behavior or attitude.

It's so cute when a world which puts thousands of times more resources into
advertising, PR, and propaganda than into psychological research finds time
for an anxiety attack  over hypnosis, behaviorism, subliminal prompts,
neuro-linguistic programming, and other threats posed by (what else?)
science.

Auden: "Of course behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a
no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical
appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed
in public."




On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 6:42 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Some commentator says Pynchon 'deliberately' misspells *segway *on page
> 72 (Miller edition) Why?
> (that's my why?)
>
> p. 74 Why is Pirate's prostate aching after his ejaculation? Isn't that
> what unejaculating "blue balls" cause?
>
> "Like every man growing up in England, he was conditioned to, etc......
> fetishes...." When first read it hit me that my 'normal' sexual desires,
> previously understood as natural, universal--which I guess they are--are
> still culture-bound. What a way to drive home the control by conditioning
> theme. We've all been there in some way.
> Imagine any young person still reading this today for the first time??
>
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