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

[Mark Kohut]

Debate point given. I withdraw the word Western, my narrow attempt to
narrowly not be wrong.


On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 9:23 PM Richard Romeo <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
wrote:

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