Such dreams as stuff is made on

[Mark Kohut]

I might add in a general way that many writers in what we might call the
Gothic nightmare genre
could fit the bill but often outside a technology trope, maybe? Fulfilling
the literal question asked in the last paragraph.
 Poe's Tell-Tale Heart tale comes to mind as a pure-enough example. He has
more, of course.
. Re the technology trope, Frankenstein sorta fits, correct? Melmoth the
Wanderer?
The Monk? Gothic castles, do they count?

Just thinkin' unbidden.


On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 5:27 PM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>