Such dreams as stuff is made on

[Jochen Stremmel]

I think Mark has a point there (with anybody else I would have said, is on
the mark there): now that he mentions Burroughs I think he did it in Naked
Lunch, and, as Mark would say, we know that TRP has read NL. But he goes
further, of course.

Am So., 9. Dez. 2018 um 22:54 Uhr schrieb Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> I've read many fewer Burroughs than he's written --and that long ago; long
> before Pynchon immersion --but does he fit your bill?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Dec 9, 2018, at 12:54 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > One of Pynchon's master tropes is to personify -- ascribe *agency* to --
> > resources and principles taken up by technology: coal and oil and
> calculus
> > and control theory in GR, astronomy and cartography in M&D, electricity
> and
> > aviation and silver halides in AtD, virtual "real estate" and its
> > monetization in BE, usw.
> >
> > His most-cited surfacing (and questioning!) of this is Enzian at the
> ruined
> > -- so They say -- Jamf works in Hamburg (518-521), alternating between
> > "Technologies" lusting for their funding and "do you think we’d’ve had
> the
> > Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t
> > wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of
> > civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it’ll
> make
> > you feel less responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered,
> > brother..."
> >
> > Can you suggest other major authors/works that make strong thematic use
> of
> > this trope? In which it's stated or hinted that the "stuff" involved in
> > characters' drives and conflicts *wants* to be exploited, for ends that
> may
> > not be ours?
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>