Re: M&D, the people’s memory vs the internet
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Thu Apr 19 04:35:27 CDT 2018
I think Frenesi's quote---consider the source--is not a positive one in
TRP's vision, but, yes,
is like how Morris glosses it.
I think we can see a deep belief in history as 'real' tradition to allude
to one of TRP's faves, TS Eliot.
Cherrycoke's 'history' is as much American PR, melodrama (see the squeals)
and romanticism, and intended
bullshit as real. ..."Print the legend" as Hearst said it.
On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 10:49 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> A nine pairing of quotes.
>
> The first plays the concept of "Here Now" that the hippies (including TRP)
> sought in the 60's. This quote makes that time naive of soon to come
> digital slicing and dicing of recording and portraying history and memory.
>
> In GR, calculus was an enemy because it sliced time into infinitely smaller
> frozen segments. GR likened that sliced recording of reality to film
> recording. I think the polemic presented involves unmediated experience vs
> the goal of control.
>
> The second quote is a quandry for me. the "no future" thing sounds new age
> here/now, but it really describes "nothing next." Pure, nothing else next,
> death. I think that state is represented by the zero.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 6:38 PM gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's weird you mention that Smoke, must be that zeitgeist or
> something... I
> > was looking for this passage in Vineland a couple weeks ago to make some
> > point or another, who knows? But it relates to Cherrycoke ... "Frenesi
> > Margaret, Zoyd Herbert, will you, for real, in trouble or in trippiness,
> > promise to remain always on the groovy high known as Love," and so forth,
> > it may have been over in half a minute, there were few if any timepieces
> > among those assembled, and nobody seemed restless, this after all being
> the
> > Mellow Sixties, a slower moving time, predigital, not yet so cut to
> pieces,
> > not even by television (pg.38)."
> >
> > For whatever reason, I guess it was a conversation or current events that
> > forced that particular passage into my mind, and I had to do some digging
> > in the novel to find it. It's not particularly profound or important to
> the
> > novel, but Zoyd is no doubt remembering, and the passage is colored by
> the
> > contours of his memory... It also illustrates the transition that was
> > happening at the time, as the 1960s/70s were a time where societies were
> > transitioning from an analog to a digital world... This process took time
> > to work itself out, and was still ongoing in the temporal setting of
> > Vineland, circa 1984. These is this interesting passage from Frenesi,
> > "...to ignore history and the dead, to imagine no future, no yet-to-be
> > born, to be able to simply go on defining moments only, purely, by the
> > action that filled them. Here was a world of simplicity and certainty no
> > acidhead, no revolutionary anarchist would ever find, a world based on
> the
> > one and zero of life and death. Minimal, beautiful. The patterns of lives
> > and deaths... (pg.71)."
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Memory, Cherrycoke tells us, belongs to the people.
> > >
> > > Anyone have any thoughts on how the internet, the right to be
> forgotten,
> > > and/or Bleeding Edge play into this?
> > > --
> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
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