Why is Data always italicized in M&D?

[da kid]

Yeah, my guess was that it was a fairly ew or unused "fancy" word of the time of the book and so it got the special treatment. But I also thought that there were thematic or other reasons for it since TRP is very much about the data or the opposite of a heavenly city etc.
________________________________
From: Atticus Pinecone <atticuspinecone at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2017 3:47:40 PM
To: Keith Davis
Cc: John Bailey; da kid; Pynchon-l
Subject: Re: Why is Data always italicized in M&D?

English writers of the time period were imitating the German way of capitalizing nouns. &c.

> On Aug 26, 2017, at 11:04 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I like your idea, John. Maybe he's drawing attention to the word as one that needs translation, as a word that we accept too readily as a concrete thing that only has one interpretation and carries a kind of weight or authority. "The data says it, so it's true."
>
> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>
>> On Aug 26, 2017, at 1:24 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Is it the literary convention of printing foreign (non-English) words
>> in italics? Plenty of Latin and French in italics elsewhere in the
>> book, although there's italics for emphasis too, even in non-spoken
>> sections of the book.
>>
>>
>>> On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 10:25 PM, da kid <peterock86 at live.com> wrote:
>>> What's goin on there huh?
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170828/64969cb6/attachment.html>