Zoyd's Dress

[jody boy]

"Fresh"

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 3:24 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> I like it too....new, original...
>
> On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 9:46 PM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  "More is Less"... You remember, the store in Vineland? Where Zoyd
>> bought his dress? Follow the bouncing check. It's "in the Mayo," or,
>> back in The Day, a more nearly deadly bounce, while checking out a
>> whole mayonnaise factory with a real, silicon-based, "window" and
>> uncertain
>> escape. There's no point, or "collapse of the meaning-function" I'm
>> trying to make here, just the feeling that the future is indeterminate
>> in any specific way- and that future debts may, or may not, reflect
>> the price of present conveniences. In other words, the future emerges,
>> somehow, without regard for the politics of the past or present beyond
>> anyone's control, and often with surprising results- Like Uncle
>> Zoyd not figuring on the "Log Jam" having been transformed into a
>> trendy gay bar where his new dress- designed, he thought, to add to
>> his
>> "psycho" persona- sends out signals of an entirely different nature.
>> Who, excepting Monty Python, could have predicted these new-style
>> lumbar jacks...
>>
>> There is also, I think, in this scene from Vineland, besides the
>> themes of burnt-out sixty's excess and media inspired
>> hyper-consumption,
>> echoes of Moore's Law, regarding the limits of silicon based control
>> of information processing. That, and the Orwellian conjugations of
>> opposites: Love is Hate, Freedom is Slavery, etc. Vineland is set in
>> 1984, after all. But there is, um, more than meets the eye to this
>> sartorial set-piece; even echoes that, to my ear, have an uncanny
>> resonance with today's events. For me, Vineland more than the rest of
>> the oeuvre captures the tenor of today's times- and even offers a
>> glimmer of hope for the future- or at least, of catching the top brass
>> flat-footed.
>>
>> Ok, it's just a novel, but its slyly low-key tubal flickerings hint at
>> future amplifications that mirror what has actually transpired
>> on many different levels in the "real" world, often in resounding and
>> surprising ways. How, for example, could anyone have predicted that
>> the transistor radio in my hand on the beach at Seaside, N.J., in the
>> mid-sixties, blaring disc jock "Cousin' Brucey" on WABC AM radio,
>> would
>> morph into a Smart Phone- with the ability to cut/paste/sample/share
>> and talk back to Cousin Brucey's radio progeny, or even provide
>> live feed of the waves rollin' in- (while sittin' on the dock of
>> Ebay?) or that, joila! the messages of the masses, fake or not,
>> would become Mainstream News?
>>
>> As someone once opined (Mr. Toth? Reagan post-nap?... well, probably
>> just Phillip W. Anderson)- perhaps More is not Less, despite the
>> solidly sad state of affairs to which our current surfeit of
>> communicating power has led us into, but simply, "different" than can
>> ever
>> be predicted by any rational extension of the given constituencies of
>> the present. Knowing something "in principle" is not a guarantee
>> of anything except uncertainty. More information does not necessarily
>> lead to better (or worse!) predictions, but it does comes with a
>> price.
>>
>> Newness emerges with and without regard for cause and effect,
>> otherwise- despite St. Augustine's surrender against the pitiless
>> light of
>> day, there really would be nothing new under the sun. Dressing up the
>> past to fit preconceived notions of what's right for the future
>> might just lead to some rather rude updates.
>>
>>             "I foresee a universal information system (UIS), which
>> will give everyone access at any given moment to the contents of
>>             any book that has ever been published or any magazine or
>> any fact..."  Andrei Sakharov, August 24, 1974.
>>
>>             "Russian Johnny B. Good"
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l