MD Read?

[ish mailian]

There are beautiful passages in GR and in AtD. M&D, though it is a
reflection of and a commentary on the values of day that produced it,
is set when technology had not yet emerged as a hazardous concept (Leo
Marx). It is set in the days of instruments, of measuring devices used
to determine the present value of observations. We might use, as Mike
suggests, and as Nabokov once advised, dust off the old instrument for
reading a book: our tingling spines.

On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> "To rule forever," continues the Chinaman, later, "it is necessary only to
> create, among the people one would rule, what we call...Bad History. Nothing
> will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in
> particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a
> People,--to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em,--'tis the first
> stroke.--All else will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and Devastation."
>
> [...]
>
> When it seems there's a Chance that someone may listen, Mason and Dixon both
> try to explain about the new Planet,--but very few care. It breaks slowly
> upon the Astronomers, that with no time available for gazing at anything,
> this people's Indifference to the Night, and the Stars, must work no less
> decisively than their devotion to the Day, and the Earth for whose sake
> something far short of the Sky must ever claim them, a stove, a child, a
> hen-house predator, a deer upwind, the price of Corn, a thrown shoe, an
> early freeze.
>
> [...]
>
> There may be found, within the malodorous Grotto of the Selves, a conscious
> Denial of all that Reason holds true. Something that knows, unarguably as it
> knows Flesh is sooner or later Meat, that there are Beings who are not wise,
> or spiritually advanced, or indeed capable of Human kindness, but ever and
> implacably cruel, hiding, haunting, waiting,--known only to the
> blood-scented deserts of the Night,--and any who see them out of Disguise
> are instantly pursued,--and none escape, however long and fruitful be the
> years till the Shadow creeps 'cross the Sill-plate, its Advent how mute.
> Spheres of Darkness, Darkness impure,--Plexities of Honor and Sin we may
> never clearly sight, for when we venture near they fall silent, Murdering
> must be silent, by Potions and Spells, by summonings from beyond the
> Horizons, of Spirits who dwell a little over the Line between the Day and
> its annihilation, between the number'd and the unimagin'd,--between common
> safety and Ruin ever solitary...
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l