GR translation: Post-A4 humanity

[David Morris]

The examples of workers in the tunnels are portrayed as unlike the previous
soldier comradery. The implication is bueraucatic mechanistic inhumanity.
No more soldierly or human comradery.

On Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 7:46 AM Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's a heavily loaded phrase, Pynchon showing a lot of his thematic cards
> in one quick glimpse:
>
> 1) not just Americans (post-Nazi, post-German, post-European) but
> "humanity" -- as David sez, almost a biologically new breed -- another
> stroke in the implied post-GR future from 1945 to 1973, the future that is
> arc'd over in the last pages of the book
>
> 2) something like Goths wandering the Roman forum after the city's fall,
> or Mongols in Hangzhou in 1276, or Ottomans in Constantinople 1453 --
> "successors" involved in something larger and older than they can grasp
>
> So I don't think the existing translation is wrong to the extent it means
> "executors of a will," people carrying out instructions from the dead --
> but it needs to be opened out somehow to a longer time scale, to ritual
> ("last rites") significance. After all, when the Americans and Russians get
> their looted hardware home, the Rocket *will* be resurrected (a-and how!)
>
> On Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 8:02 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Humanity " would have a much larger meaning than the people doing the
>> work down in the tunnels.  It suggests a new evolutionary human, shaped in
>> ways by the advent of the A-4.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 4:41 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> V304.1-7, P308.30-37   Post-A4 humanity is moving, hammering, and
>>> shouting among the tunnels. Slothrop will catch sight of badged
>>> civilians in khaki, helmet liners with GE stenciled on, sometimes
>>> getting a nod, eyeglasses flashing under a distant light bulb, most
>>> often ignored. Military working parties go at route-step bitching in
>>> and out, carrying crates. Slothrop is hungry and Yellow James is
>>> nowhere in sight. But there is nobody down here even going to say
>>> howdy to, much less feed, the free lance Ian Scuffling.
>>>
>>> I'm trying to get a better handle on the phrase "Post-A4 humanity".
>>> The published translation has it as "people who are handling A4's
>>> affairs" (after its death), which seems obviously wrong to me. But a
>>> simple direct translation seems a bit unclear in Chinese, although it
>>> might still be the best choice. Any thoughts on its meaning would be
>>> greatly appreciated.
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>
>
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