Such dreams as stuff is made on

[Ian Livingston]

Kafka, anyone?

On Sun, Jan 20, 2019 at 6:30 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>