Re: Thomas Pynchon Predicted the Pandemic in 'Gravity's Rainbow.’ Now Aren't You Sorry You Didn't Read It?

[Richard Romeo]

Curious about the western man reference. Japan’s imperialist agenda during WW2 was very much cut from the same cloth as other Western colonial endeavors: nasty, brutal etc. That famed co-prosperity sphere. Is that western man, too, a way of thinking, a virus if you will, transplanted outside of the western dream. Is China the current mantle holder with its road and belt type initiatives?
Has the virus jumped from West to East? Who isn’t tainted now by it?

rich

> On Jul 5, 2020, at 8:40 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It’s Brownian as you know. His pushing Freud thru the end of logic and the Greeks. I buy it. Always have. We’re talking about Western human beings here. 
> 
> That other wonderful sentient creatures mourn the death of their loved ones might mean we explore their consciousness of death as we can. 
> “If a lion could speak, we would not be able to understand it”—WITTGENSTEIN might be relevant. 
> 
> And I also fully agree with your fine words on the sin of Defying Death, a special arrogance, nicely phrased and surely one of the major plots of GR. 
> 
> Both can be true. I buy them both, it’s rich as life that way. 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> On Jul 5, 2020, at 8:26 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Of course our ability to be madly willful is also rooted in our physiology.  But some SciFi buffs would disagree.
>> 
>>>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 7:13 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I think the concept of humans being the virus on this planet really means to indict "conscious" and subsequent willfulness.  In GR that kind of consciousness is rooted in the knowing we will each die.  The Bugsby Berkeley mouse extravaganza in the mad scientist's White  Visitation lab explicitly laments humankind's knowledge of death.  It's very Freudian. I don't buy it.
>>> 
>>> Many species very explicitly mourn the death of their loved ones. So consciousness of death isn't the "sin."  I think GR identifies humanity's real sin as Defying Death, a very special arrogance.  Willfulness, not knowledge.
>>> 
>>> David Morris 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 5:45 PM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> You never did the Corona Kid.
>>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 12:47 PM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> this is a good essay. I was kind of irked LeClair went to get a pull quote
>>>>> from, of all things, "The Matrix," to pin down this "humans are the virus"
>>>>> idea; TRP's version of it was plenty (and much less hacky than the Matrix
>>>>> bit, or even the current & ridiculous "maybe we are the virus" meme.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 12:22 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> This imaginatively stretches the reading wonderfully, but it is so good. I
>>>>>> love all the smart readings which take it away from the literal Blitz and
>>>>>> rocket, which fetish pervades too many, I pick a fight with by declaring.
>>>>>> (I'm done, you win).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So alive and in touch with reality now and the reality of *Gravity's
>>>>>> Rainbow*.(isn't the section quoted, which seldom is, GREAT?) All those
>>>>>> tentacles and tendrils involved.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> LcClair has lived with this book from the beginning and makes the overall
>>>>>> case again why great books "touch bottom" so well that they are always
>>>>>> true. There it stands intertwined with Moby Dick,
>>>>>> the two greatest American novels of their centuries, I say.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> My vote for the best critical essay of our times since.....Pynchon wrote
>>>>>> the intro to the reissue of* 1984*? (written for effect and as if I know
>>>>>> more than a few)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> https://www.thedailybeast.com/thomas-pynchon-predicted-the-pandemic-in-gravitys-rainbow-now-arent-you-sorry-you-didnt-read-it
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
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