pynchonoid

"Call it Capitalism" Thomas Jones on Pynchon's Inherent Vice

2009-11-09T06:27:00.001-08:00

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 04:50:58 -0600
From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave@gmail.com>
Subject: Call it Capitalism

Call It Capitalism
Thomas Jones
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
Cape, 369 pp, £18.99, August 2009, ISBN 978 0 224 08948 7

When Gravity’s Rainbow won the National Book Award in 1974, its
famously reclusive author surprised everyone by turning up at the
ceremony to collect the prize. Except that the rambling, shambling
figure at the podium wasn’t Thomas Pynchon at all, but a comedian and
actor, ‘Professor’ Irwin Corey, who had been hired by Pynchon’s
publisher to impersonate the novelist. The audience gradually got the
joke as Corey, who was once described by Kenneth Tynan as a ‘travesty
of all that our civilisation holds dear and one of the funniest
grotesques in America’, accepted the ‘stipend’ on behalf of ‘Richard
Python’. ‘The great fiction story is now being rehearsed before our
very eyes, in the Nixon administration,’ Corey announced. He described
Gravity’s Rainbow as ‘a small contribution to a certain degree, since
there are over three and a half billion people in the world today: 218
million of them live in the United States, which is a very, very small
amount compared to those that are dying elsewhere.’

What part Pynchon played behind the scenes of Corey’s performance is
unclear, but he probably played some because he has always kept a
tight rein on his public persona, mostly by not having one – apart
from a couple of guest appearances on The Simpsons in 2004 (he’s
depicted with a paper bag over his head). When a CNN camera crew
caught him on film in 1997, he phoned the network to ask them not to
air the footage. They took the opportunity to quiz him about his
reclusiveness. ‘My belief is that “recluse” is a codeword generated by
journalists,’ he replied, ‘meaning: “doesn’t like to talk to
reporters”.’ Authorised by Pynchon or not, Corey’s surrogate
acceptance speech touched on many of the persistent themes and
anxieties of his novels: that America is not, and has never been, the
benign force it would like to pretend to be; that the lines between
fiction and reality are uncomfortably blurred; that it’s hard ever to
be sure that anyone is who they claim to be; and that many of the
things people are inclined to take seriously – literary prizes, global
conspiracies, life – may turn out to be someone’s idea of a great big
joke.

Gravity’s Rainbow was written during the Vietnam War and published a
year after the Watergate break-in. But it is set 30 years earlier,
during the last war that the US engaged in as one of the unambiguous
good guys. It opens with the flight of a V2 rocket launched from The
Hague over the North Sea one December morning in 1944 – ‘A screaming
comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to
compare it to now’ – and ends a literal moment, ‘the last delta-t’,
before the single most devastating V2 attack of the war, which killed
567 people in a cinema in Antwerp on the afternoon of Saturday, 16
December 1944. Over the course of the intervening 750 pages the
narrative loops nine months ahead to encompass the occupation of
Germany, the fall of Berlin and the bombing of Hiroshima.

From the V2 to the atom bomb, Gravity’s Rainbow pursues the
continuities between Nazi Germany and Cold War America. Pynchon
learned a fair amount of what he knows about Nazi rocket technology
from working at Boeing in the early 1960s. The novel’s first epigraph
is attributed to Wernher von Braun, the designer of the V2 and later
director of Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The I.G. Farben
conglomerate, which owned the patent for Zyklon B, is a malign
presence throughout the book. Though Farben was officially broken up
in 1951 on account of its war crimes, various of its constituent parts
– Agfa, BASF, Bayer – still exist, and Farben itself was listed on the
Frankfurt Stock Exchange until 2003 as a trust company with various
real estate assets. The reach, power and longevity of international
corporations far surpass those of any individual or government.

The various structural underpinnings of Gravity’s Rainbow – the
parabolic flight of a missile (one explanation for its title),
differential calculus, the Christian calendar, Kabbalah, astrology,
numerology, Tarot – have been relentlessly documented in books and on
fansites, and are more or less interesting depending on your tastes.
But what they all have in common is a tendency, or a desire, if not to
impose order on chaos then at least to see patterns in it – a tendency
shared, though rarely so explicitly or exhaustively, by all readers
and writers of stories. More fully perhaps than any other novelist,
including Don DeLillo, with whom he is so often (and so oddly) paired,
Pynchon has explored and exposed the overlap between paranoia and
fiction, between the plots imagined or unearthed by conspiracy
theorists and the plots of novels, not least because both are
concerned with what’s excluded from the historical record. The
paranoid’s worst fear is that the conspiracy they see everywhere is
their own invention, or a hoax dreamed up at their expense by someone
out of reach.

In The Crying of Lot 49 (1965), the ‘true paranoid’ is defined as
someone ‘for whom all is organised in spheres joyful or threatening
about the central pulse of himself’. The description could apply just
as well to the protagonist of a novel, the person whose story it
arbitrarily is, as if they were somehow of greater cosmic significance
than anyone else. One of the many startling – and potentially
off-putting – things about Gravity’s Rainbow is the way that a
succession of implausibly named characters about each of whom you
think, first time through, ‘Oh, so this guy must be the hero’ (Pirate
Prentice, Tyrone Slothrop, Seaman Bodine), drop out of the narrative.
It’s a picaresque tale without a picaro.

Slothrop, who has the strongest claim of the vast cast of characters
to be the novel’s centre of gravity, is last seen, nearly a hundred
pages before the end, sitting on a curbstone in occupied Germany,
watching the sun come up. For a while Slothrop has been stumbling
round Berlin in the guise of Rocketman, an ineffectual parody of a
superhero, like an X-rated version of Sesame Street’s Super Grover.
Later, there’s an explanation of sorts for his disappearance: ‘“We
were never that concerned with Slothrop qua Slothrop,” a spokesman for
the Counterforce admitted recently in an interview with the Wall
Street Journal.’ Seaman Bodine is ‘one of the few who can still see
Slothrop as any sort of integral creature any more’: see him, that is,
in the way that we’re supposed to see other people if we’re to keep a
grip on our sense of their, and consequently our own, humanity. Though
the use of the word ‘creature’ suggests that Slothrop and Bodine – and
the writer and reader with them – may have slipped a link or two down
the chain of being.

The idea of humanity, Gravity’s Rainbow implies, is a paranoid
fantasy. But strip it away and all you have left are death, sex and
the laws of physics. The place where they intersect is the black hole
at the novel’s core, around which the plots and the paranoia orbit in
a centripetal swirl. (At least, that’s one relatively respectable
explanation for all the high-tech sadomasochism that saturates the
novel.) Gravity’s Rainbow acknowledges that to see patterns in the
chaos is to be deluded, but at the same time demonstrates the
necessity of the delusion.

This isn’t to say that the patterns we project onto the world, the
lines we draw on the earth, are any less real, or any less
conseq-uential, for being imaginary. One reason for the Second World
War was widespread disagreement about where the edges of Germany were.
In Mason & Dixon (1997), Pynchon tells the story – or rather, a great
many stories – of the surveying of the boundary line that separates
Pennsylvania and Delaware from Maryland and West Virginia. The
location of the unnaturally straight line was arbitrarily (or at least
abstractly) chosen, and Pynchon’s characters get into all kinds of
scrapes as a result of the incongruity between the imaginary line
they’re plotting and the physical land they’re plotting it on.

The business of surveying it was a good deal messier and more chaotic
than you’d guess from seeing it on a map. The finished line is a
joined-up series of tangents to the many circuitous expeditions that
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon undertook between 1763 and 1767. When
their work was completed, the fantasy of the men who’d hired them was
stamped on the earth, and the battlelines of the Civil War that was to
come a century later were already set in stone, literally: the line
was marked out every mile with stones shipped out from England.

The opening of Mason & Dixon, ‘SnowBalls have flown their Arcs,’ is a
softer echo of that first sentence of Gravity’s Rainbow: ‘A screaming
comes across the sky.’ Flying bombs have been transmogrified into a
children’s game. Looking back to the decades before Independence is
one version of the quest for the chimera of America’s lost innocence.
But it requires a shift in tense: the bombs are present, the snowballs
are past. The quest for innocence is doomed to failure: however far
back you go, the elusive quarry has always somehow retreated even
further into the past. Innocence can never be written about in the
present tense. Besides, with hindsight, the snowballs can be seen to
prefigure the bombs: the trajectories and hostilities have always
existed; it’s just a question of waiting for the technology to catch
up.

If it wasn’t already apparent enough in his earlier novels, Pynchon’s
18th-century sensibility was fully unveiled in Mason & Dixon. Forget
DeLillo; the Anglophone novelist whom Pynchon most closely resembles –
with his delight in silly names, scatological jokes, wild digressions
and impromptu outbursts of song lyrics, his disregard for distinctions
between fact and fiction, his scientific background, his belief in the
randomness of the world and fascination with the patterns that appear
in the chaos – is Tobias Smollett. Perhaps the most striking of
Pynchon’s reactions against the legacy of the Victorian novelists is
his treatment of children, especially in Gravity’s Rainbow. He doesn’t
merely defetishise them as vessels of mystical innocence; he
refetishises them as irresistible sex objects. There is a satirical
edge to all the spanking and fucking of children: it can be read as an
exposé of the sexual component latent in the lingering Victorian
ideal, or as an attack on the hypocritical prurience of moralising
media crusades against paedophiles, or as an illustration of the
brutalising effects of war, or as a more general allegory of the abuse
of innocence. Or maybe it’s just porn – an uncomfortable doubt that
maintains the edginess of the satire.

Something that people who don’t like Pynchon often complain about is
that his ‘characters’ aren’t really characters, in the sense that
developed over the course of the 19th century: basically, there’s
never anyone to sympathise with. For his fans, there’s always enough
else going on for this not to be a problem. But it’s also the case
that Pynchon’s fiction reveals something bogus, even sinister, about
the very idea of ‘sympathetic characters’. As readers we may rely on
our liberal humanist ability to ‘empathise’ with immaterial strangers,
but we can still tolerate with bland equanimity the manifold suffering
of the wretched of the earth when we put down our novels and turn on
the evening news. That’s OK: if we couldn’t, we’d all be suicide
bombers. Still, in this respect, Pynchon’s alienating novels are
altogether more ‘realistic’ than any number of finely wrought
explorations of individual consciousness.

Once certain stories have been made up about the way the world is –
that there’s something called the Mason-Dixon Line, for example, or
childhood innocence, or novelistic character – it’s impossible to go
back to a world in which those stories haven’t yet been told. The
epigraph to Inherent Vice, Pynchon’s latest novel, is a translation of
the famous piece of Parisian graffiti from May 1968: ‘Sous les pavés,
la plage!’ But just because the paving stones were laid on top of the
beach, that doesn’t mean that the beach will still be there if you rip
up the paving stones. On the contrary, perhaps the beach is only still
there beneath the paving stones so long as you don’t rip them up. But
then, what good is a buried beach?

That’s the kind of dumb-serious question – ‘Anybody understand why
they call it “real” estate?’ is an actual example – that it might
occur to one of the novel’s perpetually stoned characters to ask. The
protagonist, Doc Sportello, is a diminutive private eye – ‘What I lack
in al-titude . . . I make up for in at-titude’ – with a serious dope
habit and an office in Gordita Beach, a fictional suburb of Los
Angeles last seen in Vineland and based on Manhattan Beach, where
Pynchon probably lived in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Inherent
Vice is set in 1970: Nixon’s in the White House, Reagan is governor of
California, and Charles Manson and his groupies are about to go on
trial for mass murder. Whichever way you look at it, the 1960s are
over, though Doc doesn’t seem to have noticed.

The novel’s title is taken from the world of marine insurance. ‘It’s
what you can’t avoid,’ explains Doc’s lawyer, Sauncho Smilax, who
specialises, not very helpfully for Doc, in maritime law. ‘Stuff
marine policies don’t like to cover. Usually applies to cargo – like
eggs break – but sometimes it’s also the vessel carrying it. Like why
bilges have to be pumped out?’ Doc, when he first hears the phrase,
asks if it’s ‘like original sin’, but it’s more like ‘double
indemnity’. The novel begins with Doc’s ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay
Hepworth, coming ‘along the alley and up the back steps the way she
always used to’ – the nostalgia seeps out of the page – with a story
about how her new lover, a phenomenonally rich property developer
called Mickey Wolfmann, is at risk from his wife and her lover:
they’re ‘working together on some creepy little scheme’ to do away
with him and take his money.

It’s complicated, and it gets more complicated still when a guy called
Tariq Khalil turns up (‘black folks were occasionally spotted west of
the Harbor Freeway, but to see one this far out of the usual range,
practically by the ocean, was pretty rare’) asking Doc to track down a
member of the Aryan Brotherhood he knew in prison, who owes him money
and who also just happens to be one of Mickey Wolfmann’s bodyguards.
And then Wolfmann is kidnapped, the bodyguard is killed and Doc is
framed for his murder. At this point we’re not even 25 pages in, and
Doc hasn’t yet been contacted by the widow of Coy Harlingen, who used
to play the saxophone in an experimental surf band called the Boards,
and who may not in fact have died of a heroin overdose, as everybody
supposed, but be working as a counter-revolutionary triple agent for
the FBI or some other, even more secret government – or possibly
supra-governmental – agency. Phew.

The experience of reading the novel is probably as close to getting
stoned as reading a novel can be. It brings on fits of the giggles and
paranoia jags, and badly messes with your short-term memory: the plot,
as ever with Pynchon, is bewilderingly hard to follow, the plethora of
characters almost impossible to keep track of without taking notes (as
it happens, Doc’s a bit of a compulsive notetaker, to help compensate
for his doper’s memory). It doesn’t, however, make you fall asleep or,
despite the many descriptions of the consumption of every conceivable
variety of fast food, give you the munchies.

Amid all the shenanigans, Pynchon finds time to acknowledge the rise
of the world wide web – one of Doc’s contacts has hacked into ARPAnet,
the precursor of the internet established by the Department of Defense
and various West Coast universities – and to take a few sideswipes at
the war on terror (‘these days . . . most of the energy in this office
[the FBI] is going into investigating Black Nationalist Hate Groups’)
and the credit crunch: ‘It isn’t new money exactly . . . more like new
debt. Everything they own, including their sailboats, they’ve bought
on credit cards from institutions in places like South Dakota that you
send away for by filling out the back of a match cover.’

And, inevitably, there’s a vast and secretive organisation with
tentacles that appear to be busily squirming in every dark corner that
Doc pokes his nose into. It’s called the Golden Fang and, unlike
Farben, it’s undocumented anywhere outside the fiction of Thomas
Pynchon. When Doc warns someone that ‘this is the Golden Fang you’re
about to rip off here, man,’ he gets the dismissive reply: ‘That’s
according to your own delusional system.’ But ditch the silly name and
the comic-book headquarters, and it’s hard not to agree that a system
like the Golden Fang exists, only most people call it, more
prosaically, capitalism. And it’s everywhere:

The Golden Fang operatives were cleverly disguised tonight as a
wholesome blond California family in a ’53 Buick Estate Wagon . . . a
nostalgic advertisement for the sort of suburban consensus that [the
Golden Fang] prayed for day and night to settle over the Southland,
with all non-homeowning infidels sent off to some crowded exile far
away, where they could be safely forgotten. The boy was six and
already looked like a Marine.

The ideological antithesis to the Golden Fang is the lost continent of
Lemuria, submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean, which the hippies and
surfers imagine as an anarchist utopia, more or less accessible
depending on how much acid you happen to have taken. Utopias are what
the paranoid imagine when they’re on a good trip. The trouble is, it’s
not always straightforward to disentangle the positive paranoia from
the negative, and impossible to know which side everyone – including
yourself – is really on. The more closely you scrutinise the struggle
between anarchist utopia and totalitarian capitalism – also one of the
threads in Against the Day (2006) – the more interdependent they seem
to be.

Just look at the drugs: an ineffectual pimp informs Doc that the
Golden Fang is an ‘Indochinese heroin cartel. A vertical package. They
finance it, grow it, process it, bring it in, step on it, move it, run
Stateside networks of local street dealers, take a separate percentage
off of each operation. Brilliant.’ Obviously no single organisation
has this kind of reach. But global capital does. And the drug trade is
as good an example as there is of what the invisible hand of
unfettered capitalism might look like. The pimp’s tongue has been
loosened by ‘a joint of Colombian commercial proven effective at
stimulating conversation’. Indochina and Colombia: the sites of two of
the lengthiest and most disastrous US interventions of the 20th
century. The drug-dependent fantasy of the beach (Lemuria) can only be
sustained as long as the paving stones (capitalism) remain in place:
the people dreaming about the beach are inadvertently paying for the
upkeep of the paving stones.

This might look like a mutually sustaining cold war between the values
of the 1960s and those of the 1980s, an apparent antagonism that
Pynchon also investigated in Vineland (1990). But actually all the
elements of the conflict were already there in the 1960s. If von Braun
is the malign spirit hovering over Gravity’s Rainbow, in Inherent Vice
it’s Charles Manson, the white racist advocate of black power. He
embodies the contradictions of the decade: he was into free love,
getting stoned, the Beatles and the Beach Boys; he believed in the
coming revolution; and he ordered his followers to go into other
people’s homes and maim and kill in the service of a fugitive idea –
just as Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon did. Manson’s in jail because he
brought the slaughter home to California instead of exporting it to
Central America or South-East Asia; he’s widely recognised as a nutjob
because he preached about the coming of Helter Skelter instead of the
menace of Communism and the domino effect, taking the Beatles’ ‘White
Album’ for his bible instead of the Truman Doctrine.

Inherent Vice is heaving with references to pop culture, not just
music and drugs but films and television too. Zombies and vampires of
indeterminate metaphorical status stalk the streets of Los Angeles.
Sauncho is often too freaked out by what he’s just caught on the tube
– seeing The Wizard of Oz on a colour set for the first time, he
wonders what the Technicolor of Munchkinland must look like to Dorothy
– to pay much attention to what Doc’s trying to tell him. When Doc’s
neighbour finds a huge stash of heroin in a cardboard box that once
held a colour TV, he spends many baffled hours staring at it, trying
to figure out what the programme is.

Both shorter and easier to read than any of Pynchon’s previous novels
apart from The Crying of Lot 49, Inherent Vice gives the impression of
having been easier to write, too. It’s less than three years since
Against the Day was published, compared to the 17 that passed between
Gravity’s Rainbow and Vineland. That may be one reason why,
characteristically hilarious and thought-provoking though it is,
Inherent Vice lacks much of the menace and the passion of its
predecessors.

Then again, perhaps this flattening of affect is deliberate, analogous
to seeing the world through a haze of cannabis smoke, or entirely
mediated through TV. It’s not that the conspiracies and the paranoia
aren’t there any more; it’s just that these days, as he looks back at
California in 1970, it’s hard for Pynchon not to see it all as a bit
of a joke. But there’s something profoundly bleak about the inability
to take anything seriously. Since the conspiracy is inescapable,
there’s nothing to do except laugh at it. Squint the right way, and
what looked like wry indulgence morphs into nihilism.

Possibly the weirdest thing of all about Inherent Vice, however, a
perverse bright spot in the smog of despair, is the thought that
somewhere out there in one of the beach towns of LA County, never very
far away from wherever Doc is carrying out his desultory
investigations, somewhere among the dopers and the surfers and the
hippie chicks, among the dentists and lawyers and loan sharks, among
the voters who put Nixon in the White House and Reagan in the
Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento, Thomas Pynchon is secluded at his
typewriter, at work on Gravity’s Rainbow.

Vol. 31 No. 17 · 10 September 2009 » Thomas Jones » Call It Capitalism
Pages 9-10 | 3928 words

- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Letters
Vol. 31 No. 21 · 5 November 2009

From James Wood

Thomas Jones, in his review of Inherent Vice (LRB, 10 September),
asserts that those who haven’t liked the last Pynchon books ‘often
complain’ that his characters are not proper characters, ‘in the sense
that developed over the course of the 19th century: basically, there’s
never anyone to sympathise with.’ When? I haven’t seen this complaint
in two recent negative reviews by Louis Menand (in the New Yorker) and
by Sam Anderson (in New York magazine). Speaking for myself, as a
hostile reviewer of Against the Day, the question has nothing to do
with whether you consider Pynchon’s characters fully rounded in a
19th-century sense (19th-century characters not being all that
rounded, anyway, in the end); or whether you ‘sympathise’ with them:
does one ‘sympathise’ with, say, Peter Verkhovensky, or Stavrogin, or
Verloc, or any of the people in a Michel Houellebecq novel? Surely the
issue is not what a novel’s characters are (round, flat, major, minor,
caricature, sketch etc) but what a novelist does (or doesn’t do) with
them: what is seriously at stake in the entire novel of which they
form the fabric. And what Pynchon does with his characters,
increasingly, is juvenile vaudeville. If you like that, fine. But in
his review, Jones unwittingly gives two reasons why one might not:
reading Pynchon’s new novel, he writes, ‘is probably as close to
getting stoned as reading a novel can be’ (which he takes as high
praise); and – apropos of Pynchon’s relentlessly jokey treatment of
1970s California – ‘But there’s something profoundly bleak about the
inability to take anything seriously’ (which he also envisages as a
compliment, of sorts).

James Wood
Cambridge, Massachusetts

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n17/thomas-jones/call-it-capitalism

magazine cover by Chums of Chance-related Harry Grant Dart

2008-12-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

posted @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/trialsanderrors/2725730679/ with the following caption:

Magazine cover for "The All-Story" by Harry Grant Dart, taken between 1900 and 1910. Dart was an illustrator and comic artist who also created the short-lived cartoon "The Explorigator", on which the "Chums of Chance" from Against the Day might be modeled, making this my second (speculative) Pynchon reference in a few days. Note that Harry had no problems with women steering!

from John Carvill @ Pynchon-l, re TRP autographed letter

2008-12-17T06:51:00.001-08:00

Has this been seen on the p-list before? Apologies, as usual, if so.

A listing (now defunct I think) for a very interesting sounding Pynchon letter. I'll post the entire text here in case the link dies. Essential reading I would say. Sorry for the lack of paragraphs, that's, um, inherent to the listing itself. Definitely worth the effort to read, I promise.

334. PYNCHON, Thomas. Autograph Letter Signed. January 21, 1974.

Two tightly printed pages, on both sides of one sheet of graph paper, written to his friends, authors David [Shetzline] and his wife Mary [M.F. Beal]. Last paragraph written in pencil, including the signature "Love, Tom." A lengthy letter, over 1000 words, to two friends who date back to his college days 15 years earlier. Both Shetzline and Beal were students at Cornell, and a part of the group that came to be known as the "Cornell School" of writers, including Pynchon, Richard Fariña, Shetzline and Beal. Shetzline published two novels in the late 1960s -- Heckletooth 3 and DeFord, which is dedicated to the memory of Fariña -- and Pynchon wrote blurbs for both of them. Pynchon also wrote a blurb for M.F. Beal's novel, Amazon One, about a group of radical activists of the 1960s. She also wrote what many consider to be the first lesbian/feminist detective novel, Angel Dance. All of these elements come into play in this remarkable letter, which deals with literary matters, poli!
tical matters, and the correspondents' longtime friendship. Written four months after Gravity's Rainbow was published, the letter sheds light on Pynchon's state of mind in the aftermath of the work of writing that novel. The letter starts out apologizing for writing to them together instead of "one by one but haven't been able to write anything to anybody for a couple years, and will be lucky even to get through this one letter here..." He goes on to tell them that his agent, the legendary Candida Donadio, "turns out to be a closet MF Beal freek [sic] and would really dig to establish contact..." He advises Mary to write to Candida but says "don't ask me what about, though, I can't understand any of this literary stuff" -- a remarkable comment from someone who has just finished writing Gravity's Rainbow. A long paragraph details events in New York City, where he is living, including an "Impeachment Rally" in Greenwich Village. Pynchon is self-consciously disdainful of this !
round of political activism: "Maybe I am wrong not to show up,!
after a
ll think of all that great neurotic pussy that always shows up at things like -- oh, aww, gee Mary, I'm sorry! I meant 'vagina,' of course! -- like that, and all the biggies who'll be there..." He goes on to describe that he is having "what the CIA calls a 'mid-life crisis,' looking for another hustle, cannot dig to live a 'literary' life no more..." A "lump of hash I lost somewhere in Humboldt County 3 years ago" figures into what becomes an increasingly textured, complicated narrative, much the way his fiction does, at the same time that it represents his side of an obviously ongoing dialogue, and elicits further contact from the recipients: in referring to stories of bad LSD circulating, he asks "You might as well tell me. How many times'd you end up sucking on the rug?" A dissection of the general state of mind among the self-proclaimed hip in New York City follows, and he waxes nostalgic for the West a couple of times: "Last fall I rode around on the 'Hound for a while.!
Would've dropped by [their place in northern California] except by the time I got in your neighborhood I was bummed out..." Future "master plan" was "to go across the sea, but now I don't know. I've sort of been keying my plans on Geraldine, part of general resolution not to impose shit on her, also cz I'm lazy and can't make decisions... so maybe we will head west, and then again maybe not, but if we do we'll be by your place, OK?" A remarkable letter, exhibiting all of the characteristics for which Pynchon's writing is known, and many of the concerns that he raises in his writings, and addressed to two of his closest and oldest friends. Pynchon even used Shetzline's name in Gravity's Rainbow: Shetzline was credited with having written the "classic study" of "the property of time-modulation peculiar to Oneidine." Folded in twelfths for mailing, else fine in hand-addressed envelope folded in fourths. In content and style, probably the best Pynchon letter we have ever seen.

http://lopezbooks.com/catalog/127/127-10.html

'bout half-ways down the page.

I found this link about a week back, browsing pretty much at random on The Fictional Woods. What a find!

Cheers
JC

---

Dave Monroe wrote (and see also the recent post on mineral evolution, http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/2008/12/mineral-evolution-soul-in-evry-stone.html):

> http://lopezbooks.com/catalog/127/127-10.html

This article appeared in the May 1996 issue of Postmodern Culture and
is still archived at PMC. If you would like to know why I reposted it
at this site, go here.

Copyright (c) 1996 Wes Chapman

Male Pro-Feminism and the Masculinist Gigantism of Gravity's Rainbow
Wes Chapman

The title of Tania Modleski's Feminism Without Women refers, Modleski
explains, to a confluence of two political/intellectual trends: the
subsumption of feminism within a "more comprehensive" field of gender
studies, accompanied by the rise of a "male feminist perspective that
excludes women," and the dominance within feminist thought of an
"anti-essentialism so radical that every use of the term 'woman,'
however 'provisionally' it is adopted, is disallowed" (14-15). The two
trends are linked, Modleski argues, because "the rise of gender
studies is linked to, and often depends for its justification on, the
tendendency within poststructuralist thought to dispute notions of
identity and the subject" (15). These trends are troubling for
Modleski because she fears that, insofar as gender studies tend to
decenter women as the subjects of feminism, they may be not a "new
phase" in feminism but rather feminism's "phase-out" (5).

My concern in this essay is with male-authored work on gender of the
type identified by Modleski, and in particular with its intersections
with anti-essentialism....

[...]

That this politics of discourse may tend to decenter women as the
subjects of feminism is suggested by the one direct and I think
suggestive reference in the novel to a contemporary feminist, M. F.
Beal.8 Felipe, one of the Argentinian exiles, makes "noontime
devotionals to the living presence of a certain rock" which, he
believes, "embodies . . . an intellectual system, for [Felipe]
believes (as do M.F. Beal and others) in a form of mineral
consciousness not too much different from that of plants and animals"
(GR 612). M. F. Beal was (or is) a friend of Pynchon's, author of two
novels, Amazon One and Angel Dance, several stories, and Safe House: A
Casebook of Revolutionary Feminism in the 1970's. David Seed, who has
written most about the relationship of Pynchon and Beal, explains that
the reference to Beal in Gravity's Rainbow refers to a conversation
that Pynchon and Beal had about "the limits of sentience" (227): "Beal
implicitly humanized the earth's mantle (containing of course rocks
and minerals) by drawing an analogy with skin. . . . " (32) In effect,
Beal was espousing what we would now call a Gaia philosophy9; as Seed
writes, "[i]f there is such a thing as mineral consciousness then the
earth's crust becomes a living mantle and man becomes a part (a small
part) of a living continuum instead of being defined against an inert
environment" (227). There is a version of this belief in "mineral
consciousness" in Safe House:

Only recently have a few modern men begun to learn anything about life
and what they are learning is that the only difference from the point
of view of chemistry between living and non-living substances is their
ability to reproduce themselves. (86)

As in her discussions with Pynchon, Beal here minimizes the
distinction between plants and animals on the one hand and
"non-living" beings like minerals; if the "only difference" between
them is the ability to reproduce, then in other ways they are the same
(so, perhaps, rocks are sentient, as Beal had argued to Pynchon
earlier).

One tenet of Gaia philosophy is that the Earth acts as a conscious
organism to protect itself. In Safe House, Beal speculates that one
mechanism by which the Earth might be trying to protect itself is what
she calls a "strategic retreat" -- the possibility that "adult women
given the choice will choose to live without [men] -- to eat, sleep,
work, rear children and dwell without them" (87) -- in other words,
female separatism. Beal wonders whether the contemporary urge toward
separatism might be not just a conscious choice by particular women
but a manifestation of some larger biological necessity:

Could it be that we are witnessing an unfathomably significant genetic
reflex for species survival? Could it be that the DNA code has been
triggered by some inscrutable biological alarm system from the threat
of male violence and annihilation? Could it be that this is some
ancient reoccurring pattern which has activated female response over
the millennia to withdraw, to protect and defend themselves and their
progeny? (87)

For Beal, man has turned away from the earth to "violence and
annihilation," just as for Pynchon humanity has turned away from the
Titans to the "structures favoring death." But for Beal, this turning
away is specifically coded according to gender; the "man" in the
previous sentence refers to men, not to humanity. Conversely, women
are a key part of the Earth's counter-struggle: the earth is
triggering in women, who are open to the message of survival because
they "have always known all things are alike and precious," a "genetic
reflex for species survival," which consists of a disentanglement from
"male violence and annihilation." In Gravity's Rainbow, the
genderedness of Beal's vision is lost; the Titans in Greek mythology
were half male and half female.

Safe House was published in 1976, three years after Gravity's Rainbow,
so it is impossible to be certain whether Beal had in fact worked out
within a specifically feminist framework the belief in "mineral
consciousness" which Pynchon attributes to her. But it seems to me
likely that she had, or at least likely that Beal was a feminist by
that point, and that that feminism was part of her discussions with
Pynchon. If the critique of masculinism in Gravity's Rainbow was
influenced by Beal, then we can see the novel a kind of appropriation
and recentering of feminism; Pynchon subordinates his critique of
masculinism to a critique of militarism, and in so doing defuses the
genderedness of his subject. Within the play of pluralized discourses
in the novel, none of them privileged, none of them untainted by the
structures of power, the issue of gender is subsumed within the issue
of gender discourses. But if everyone is trapped within masculinist
discourse, then masculinism is not a problem of men at all; it is a
role one takes on or steps out of, as Greta Erdmann steps so easily
out of the role of masochist in Alpdrücken and into the role of sadist
with Bianca.

[...]

Works Cited

Beal, M.F., and friends. Safe House: A Casebook of Revolutionary
Feminism in the 1970's. Eugene, OR: Northwest Matrix, 1976.

[...]

http://titan.iwu.edu/~wchapman/pynchon.html

---

Remedios Varo born 100 years ago today

2008-12-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

"Photograph of Remedios Varo in her studio painting Farewell, 1958, courtesy of Walter Gruen" from http://www.nmwa.org/clara/search_artist_detail.asp?artist_id=25526

More details & links in this Metafilter post:
http://www.metafilter.com/77476/Otherworldly

from ChinaNews.com

2008-12-16T20:27:00.000-08:00

本页位置：首页 → 新闻中心 → 文化新闻

【放大字体】【缩小字体】

20世纪美国头号奇书《万有引力之虹》中译本出版

2008年12月11日 09:12 来源：东方早报发表评论

点击查看其它图片

　　核心提示：在中国翻译家和出版商多年的共同努力下，35年来不停搅动美国文坛，以晦涩、庞杂著称，但又对大众文化影响巨大的后现代经典小说《万有引力之虹》(Gravity's Rainbow)，终于由译林出版社推出了中文版。

　　在中国翻译家和出版商多年的共同努力下，35年来不停搅动美国文坛，以晦涩、庞杂著称，但又对大众文化影响巨大的后现代经典小说《万有引力之虹》(Gravity＇s Rainbow)，终于由译林出版社推出了中文版。

　　大隐士品钦

　　仅就翻译的难度和出版商的决心而言，厚达800余页、77万余字的中译《万有引力之虹》都足以被称作2008年外国文学出版的一大成就。

　　奇书背后必有奇人。《万有引力之虹》的作者托马斯·品钦(Thomas Pynchon)在隐居术方面的修习，与JD.塞林格几乎不相上下。除了小说，他几乎将自己在这个世界上存在过的所有物证统统湮灭，外界能够看到的品钦照片大概只有两张，其中一张还是他二战从军时模模糊糊的黑白戎装照。

　　1973年，《万有引力之虹》在美国出版，大为轰动，孰料引发次年普利策小说奖的大地震。三人评委会支持给品钦授奖，但11位理事推翻了评委的决定，裁定此书“无法卒读，浮夸，滥施笔墨，淫亵”。1974年的普利策小说奖因此空缺。而数月后，美国国家图书奖坚持表彰了《万有引力之虹》，没想到品先生拒绝受奖，最终找他人代领了事。

　　1999年，电影《骇客帝国》中尼奥吞下红色药丸的情节，被公认为导演沃卓斯基兄弟在向《万有引力之虹》致意。

　　小说分四个部分，“零之下”、“戈林赌场的休假”、“在占领区”和“反作用力”。故事发生在1944年圣诞节到1945年9月期间，主要情节是盟军追查德国人正在制造的威力惊人的导弹，美国中尉泰荣·斯洛索普的一张“性交地图”却出人意料地屡次与德国导弹的轰炸地点吻合。寻找，寻找，所有的人都在不停地寻找。

　　很有难度的阅读

　　至少在七八年前，坊间已传言译林将推出此书中译本，但在2003年叶华年译品钦的另一部小说《V》出版之后，中国读者又苦等了五年，才有了今天这个文学历险或“阅读自虐”的机会。

　　“自虐”的说法决不算夸张，但这世上知难而上的品钦迷、甚至野心勃勃的品钦本人，必以之为赞辞。厦门大学外文学院副教授刘雪岚曾援引英国批评家托尼·坦纳(Tony Tanner)的话说：“《万有引力之虹》的深奥与恢弘拒绝任何归纳和概括。”

　　刘女士这样形容此书：“它的内容从文艺学、社会学、历史学、心理学到数学、化学、物理学、弹道学、军事学，几乎无所不包；它的文体从哲学沉思、历史百科、间谍侦探到滑稽喜剧、歌曲民谣乃至戏仿反讽，仿佛无所不能。小说包括73个场景，400多个人物，发生的故事遍及南北美洲、非洲、中亚、东欧和西欧。涉及的社会阶层包括盟军和轴心国的将军和士兵、科学家、政治家、持工、妓女乃至非洲土人。使用的语言包括英、法、德、拉丁和意大利语等等。”(《美国全国图书奖获奖小说评论集》，吴冰，郭棲庆主编，外语教学与研究出版社，2001年)

　　喜欢自虐的还有翻译家。本书主力译者、同样出身厦门大学的张文宇硕士哀叹，为译《万有引力之虹》，41岁的他花去整整三年，丢了博士学位，失去了评职称的机会，“个中艰辛只有自己知道。”他说。

　　但愿这一切都是值得的。

　　康慨

【编辑:张中江】

"I am embarrassed to admit that I have read a book"

2008-12-16T20:24:00.000-08:00

[…] it's not often that new work from the fascist genocidal dictator comes to light, which is why military historians and creepy Nazi memorabilia collectors who live in basement apartments are so excited by the discovery of an aircraft concept designed by Nazi engineers near the end of World War II, a design which smacks of exactly the pants-shitting desperation you'd expect Nazis to be feeling at that point in the war:

Here's the desperately insane idea: Dart-shaped gliders equipped with pilots and 1,000 pound bombs would be carried by conventional planes into allied airspace and dropped. The glider pilot would steer the bomb toward its high-priority target -- a factory that printed posters warning G.I.'s about the dangers of venereal disease, for instance -- and at the last minute, release the bomb and activate a balloon which would explode out of the tail and lift the glider to safety, all of which bears a creepy resemblance to certain details in Thomas Pynchon's big, fat novel Gravity's Rainbow. WHOOPS, sorry for the inexcusable lapse into Fancy Ladism, y'all, I am embarrassed to admit that I have read a book. But if the indignant comments occasionally left by Ayn Rand enthusiasts on certain Daily Briefs posts can be believed, I probably didn't understand it, and am also completely retarded, and anyway probably didn't even read it in the first place. […]

from: http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2008/12/daily_briefs_europe_the_forgot.php

"I don’t expect to encounter things that will frustrate the reading process, the way I might in the work of Pynchon"

2008-12-16T20:21:00.000-08:00

[…] I suppose I approach a title that I know has been labelled as Y.A. thinking that it’s going to be a more relaxing reading experience—maybe relaxing isn’t the right word, but more pleasurable, perhaps—because I don’t expect to encounter things that will frustrate the reading process, the way I might in the work of Pynchon, say. This isn’t to say that Y.A. fiction can’t be highly cerebral or experimental, just that I presume the author wants to cultivate a relationship with the reader that is more welcoming and, yes, probably more emotional. […]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2008/12/book-bench-read-1.html

mineral evolution & "a Soul in ev'ry stone. . . ."

2008-12-16T20:05:00.000-08:00

Kevin Kelly offers an interesting take on "mineral evolution" & links to a recent paper, that may shed some light on a sermon in every stone:

"The theory of "mineral evolution" -- the idea that the Earth's rocks are dynamic "species" which emerged over time, sometimes in concert with living things -- is a radical new idea…"

continues:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/12/technology_a_ge.php

back in the saddle again

2008-12-16T16:22:00.000-08:00

It's official. I re-subscribed to Pynchon-l, I'm reading Pynchon (working through Against the Day and enjoying it), and looking forward to the new novel next year. Maybe I'll start updating this blog.

signed copy of ATD

2008-08-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

…from Chronicle of Higher Education:

M.H. Abrams: A Life in Criticism
By JEFFREY J. WILLIAMS

In literary studies, M.H. Abrams is an iconic name. It appeared as "general editor" for 40 years on nearly nine million copies of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and has also, in a detail that only scholars would know, led the indexes of many a critical book for a half-century. (In fact, one scholar I know cited "Aarlef" just to avoid that custom.) In addition, Abrams, now 95, stamped the study of Romantic literature: His book The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1953) was ranked 25th in the Modern Library's list of the 100 most important nonfiction books of the 20th century, and he was a prime participant in debates over literary theory, especially deconstruction, during the 1970s and 80s.

Last summer I interviewed Abrams — Meyer Howard, but he goes by Mike — at his home in Ithaca, N.Y., up the road from Cornell University, where he has been a professor since 1945 and still goes to his office in Goldwin Smith Hall. Colleagues at Cornell had held a birthday celebration for him, and among the gifts was an inscribed copy of Thomas Pynchon's latest novel. Pynchon had been a student of Abrams's in the 1950s and sent it on. Abrams has the book on the coffee table in his living room.

"ad the Metro’s owners carted off the decorations that had lodged within the imagination of young Pynchon"

2008-06-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

…from today's New York Times:

Then we combed Valletta, marching up and down the hills looking for evidence of the now-sleepy city’s illustrious past and marveling at the cute Victorian-style balconies. On Strait Street in the heart of the Gut, the entertainment district once frequented by visiting sailors, I was hoping to find the Metro Bar, where a key scene of Pynchon’s unsummarizable “V” takes place. We asked old-timers and were directed to a doorway filled with cinderblocks. The Metro Bar was no more.

Like the New Life Music Hall, the Smiling Prince and the Blue Peter — whose faded signs hung over locked and cobwebbed doors — the Metro had shut down sometime after 1979, when the British naval base closed, and I was left to wonder what lay within. Did it still look, as Pynchon wrote, “like a nobleman’s pied-a-terre applied to mean purposes”? Did “statues of Knights, ladies and Turks” still line the “wide curving flight of marble steps” that led to the second-story dance floor? Or had the Metro’s owners carted off the decorations that had lodged within the imagination of young Pynchon (who presumably visited Valletta during his 1955-57 stint in the Navy)?

Today, all that remains of the Gut’s glory days is a 90-year-old tattoo parlor and a few graybeards who remember the noise and chaos and fun. “But now it’s too quiet here, too quiet,” one of them told us. “If you come at Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, you can bring shotgun and you can shoot and nobody, nobody take notice.”
His nostalgia was palpable, and another Pynchon line seemed apt: “Monuments, buildings, plaques were remembrances only; but in Valletta remembrances seemed almost to live.”

call to action!

2007-01-18T10:49:00.000-08:00

Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 11:20:26 -0500 (EST)
From: "John M. Krafft"
Subject: Help wanted

I've been stumped--brain dysfunction or something--by a request
for help that runs as follows:

"on the first page of Eleanor Cook's _Enigmas and Riddles in
Literature_, she writes: 'Literary studies of the riddle are
few and far between. There are studies of the remarkable Old
English riddles. There are studies of riddles in specific
authors: Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Joyce,
Pynchon...' Apparently there is at least one study of
Pynchon's use of the riddle out there. Do you know of it?"

Of course I should, but nothing comes immediately to mind, and
a first, superficial search of my bibliography didn't turn up
anything obvious. Can anyone help?

Thanks.

jmk

- --
John M. Krafft
Miami UniversityHamilton / 1601 University Blvd. / Hamilton,
OH 45011-3399
Tel: 513.785.3031 or 513.868.2330
Fax: 513.785.3145
krafftjm@muohio.edu
http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm

Zak Smith's book arrives

2007-01-15T18:31:00.000-08:00

And a fine-looking tome it is, even with the rather substantial title, Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow with an engaging and well-worth reading Introduction by Steve Erickson.

3 novels of interest to Pynchon readers

2006-12-27T13:29:00.000-08:00

pynchonoid received a fine after-Xmas package, three novels from Soft Skull Press:

The Age of Sinatra by David Ohle
Electric Flesh by Claro (French translator of Pynchon)
H2O by Mark Swartz

We'll write more about them after reading them. Based on previous experience with Soft Skull Press novels, we're looking forward to it.

"the color and the music of this English idiom we are blessed to have inherited"

2006-12-06T05:52:00.000-08:00

Note: the "From Thomas Pynchon" at the top of the typewritten letter appears to be hand-written in block capitals and is partially underlined; Atonement is underlined as well in the original:

From Thomas Pynchon

Given the British genius for coded utterance, this could all be about something else entirely, impossible on this side of the ocean to appreciate in any nuanced way-- but assuming that it really is about who owns the right to describe using gentian violet for ringworm, for heaven's sake, allow me a gentle suggestion. Oddly enough, most of us who write historical fiction do feel some obligation to accuracy. It is that Ruskin business about "a capacity responsive to the claims of fact, but unoppressed by them." Unless we were actually there, we must turn to people who were, or to letters, contemporary reporting, the Internet until, with luck, we can begin to make a few things of our own up. To discover in the course of research some engaging detail we know can be put into a story where it will do some good can hardly be classed as a felonious acvt-- it is simply what we do. The worst you can call it is a form of primate behavior. Writers are naturally drawn, chimpanzee-like, to the color and the music of this English idiom we are blessed to have inherited. When given the choice we will usually try to use the more vivid and tuneful among its words. I cannot of course speak for Mr. McEwan's method of proceeding, but should be very surprised indeed if something of the sort, even for brief moments, had not occurred during his research for Atonement- Gentian violet! Come on. Who among us could have resisted that one?

Memoirs of the Blitz have borne indispensable witness, and helped later generations know something of the tragedcy and heroism of those days. For Mr. McEwan to have put details from one of them to further creative use, acknowledging this openly and often, and then explaining it clearly and honorably, surely merits not our scolding, but our gratitude.

from Pynchon-L:

Makes the front page of the Telegraph this morning, along with his own
section, with sailor suit pic, of the McEwan full page.

Front page text:

RECLUSE SPEAKS OUT TO DEFEND MCEWAN

By Nigel Reynolds
Arts Correspondent

Thomas Pynchon, who vies with J D Salinger for the title of the
world's most secretive author, has broken his strict rules on privacy
to join a campaign to clear the British Booker Prize-winning novelist
Ian McEwan of charges of plagiarism.

In a move described by his British publisher as "unknown", Pynchon, an
American who is never seen in public, does not give interviews and
whose whereabouts are a closely guarded secret, sent a typed letter to
his British agent yesterday to say that McEwan "merits not our
scolding but our gratitude" for using details from another author's
book.

McEwan has been under fire for copying several details from the
memoirs of a wartime nurse in London for his Booker-nominated novel,
Atonement.

In an extraordinary campaign launched yesterday, many of the world's
best known authors rallied around McEwan, complaining that the future
of historical novel writing was threatened if they could not copy or
borrow details from eyewitnesses to history.

Other novelists backing the author include John Updike, Martin Amis,
Margaret Atwood, Thomas Keneally and Zadie Smith.

They recite their experiences of taking others' material for their
books exclusively in the Daily Telegraph.

climbing the mountain

2006-12-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

Learning that the strange and mysterious, potentially mystical, foreign writing on the cover "seal" of Against the Day translates as "Tibetan Government Chamber of Commerce" (as reported on Pynchon-l) reminds me of one of those cartoons where the guy exhausts himself climbing up the mountain to get to the guru who then gives him some useless advice.

I recall the street comedian, used to perform at Venice Beach down south and on Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, called himself the X-Swami X, "the answer to the perennial question, Why Swami why? No, X-Swami X!"

Savage with hecklers, sometimes he'd have a rocking chair and sit with a big handmade book of jokes and read them, sometimes he was buzzing on something, up and moving around, entertaining the students and others sitting on the steps of the Student Union building, , he was also very adept with hecklers, especially one particular blister-faced psycho who used to stand out there where Telegraph meets Bancroft Way and preach the Gospel, X-Swami X could get that guy wound up pretty tight with his rap about wanting to get "eating pussy on skateboards" adopted as an Olympic sport.

He was already up in his 60s then - at least 20 years since I saw him - so perhaps he's knocking them dead in another dimension by now, out there in the multiverse...

Random House Against the Day web site & contest

2006-11-22T22:06:00.000-08:00

...Attention Pynchon readers:

Random House Against the Day minisite offers a competition to win
a rare advance reading copy proof of Against the Day, one of only 77 produced. Be there or be square!

www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon

Moe's on Telegraph Ave. ATD geekfest

2006-11-21T10:09:00.000-08:00

All you really need to know is that pynchonoid, that's right,
won the Pynchon triva contest, just barely edging out
fellow traveler Tim Ware, and the two of us left with
the trivia contest prizes, a copy of Against the Day
each.  Then we fucked their girlfriends and stole
their lunch money and blew that pop stand, into the
Berkeley night.


Favorite attendee:  the woman with the conceptual V.
costume

Silliest sight:  4, count 'em, 4 Pynchon lookalikes
with paper bags on their heads a la TRP's The Simpsons
appearance.

Biggest surprise:  very few people, outside of
Pynchon-l, know that TRP niece, Tristan Taormino is
known for her movie about anal sex.

Most frequent web site mention:  The Modern Word

2d most frequent web site mention:
http://pynchonoid.org

link:
http://www.telegraphbooks.com/monday.htm

Against the Day extract in Spanish

2006-11-14T06:29:00.000-08:00

...from a friend overseas, notice of "an extract of Against the Day as translated in Spanish. This was posted on the website of Christophe Claro, French translator of Pynch, Gaddis, Vollmann, etc.

http://backfromoz.blogspot.com/2006/11/pynchon-fragmento.html

The extract comes from here:

http://mierdadescalzo.blogspot.com/2006/10/lo-prometido.html"

The French translation of Against the Day is expected in 2007.

AP re Pynchon fans

2006-11-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

Fans Still Passionate About Publicity-Shy Thomas Pynchon

Nov. 8 - Zak Smith is a painter, a rebel and an Ivy
Leaguer, a Yale University graduate with a green
mohawk, an apartment of wall-to-wall illustrations and
a passion for comics, classic novels -- and Thomas
Pynchon.

About 10 years ago, Smith had a feeling that he should
try Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," an instinct
consummated from the very first page. Smith didn't
just read the book, he reread it, marked it up and
went back to it so many times that his paperback copy
is held together by duct tape.

He also began seeing the book in pictures, eventually
drawing hundreds of mostly expressionist sketches --
one for every page of Pynchon's 700-page World War II
novel -- that were exhibited at the Whitney Museum in
2004, now hang in the permanent collection at the
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and will come out as
a book this fall.

"A lot of the ideas that were in Pynchon were hovering
around in my head -- technology and the future and the
present, true things and science fiction, and making
them into pictures was almost a way to exorcise these
ideas," says the 30-year-old Smith, a resident of
Brooklyn.

Thomas Pynchon doesn't have the readership of Mitch
Albom or Danielle Steel, but he is the rare writer who
inspires such obsession by words alone. For more than
40 years, he has built and sustained a legend through
such encyclopedic novels as "V." and "Gravity's
Rainbow," avoiding all media contact or even publicity
photos. For his new book, the 1,000-page "Against the
Day," publisher Penguin Press didn't even issue a
formal announcement, but assumed, correctly, that
simply including it in the fall catalog would take
care of the job.

"Pynchon fans tend to take his work seriously I think
because, beyond the intrinsically interesting subject
matter and intriguing stories, his books are so rich
and complex, touching on so many topics," says Pynchon
fan Doug Millison, a writer, editor and Web design
consultant based in El Cerrito, Calif.

Pynchon is now 69, but time, and the Internet, have
advanced in his favor. It's been nine years since his
previous novel, "Mason & Dixon," came out, and fans
have fully digitized their passion, building an online
community worthy of an author who as much as anyone
brought a high-tech sensibility to literary fiction.

Numerous Web sites and a "Pynchon News Service" have
been launched, and a team of experts is busy
assembling a Wikipedia-like page for "Against the
Day."

"It will, I predict, quickly become a focus of the
several hundred reader-researchers worldwide who read
Pynchon and write about his works in academic and
popular media," Millison says.

"The Internet has made it easy for Pynchon's academic
critics and lay readers to find each other and sustain
an online discussion that's continued now for over a
decade."

Smith believes that Pynchon readers share a handful of
characteristics, presumably not unlike the author's --
liberal politics, an interest in technology and a
broad and unpredictable range of interests.

Fans, who have gathered to talk Pynchon in London,
Malta and elsewhere, all have their stories of
conversion. Tim Ware, who runs the Web site
www.thomaspynchon.com from Oakland, Calif., recalls
having a hard time getting through "Gravity's
Rainbow," at least the first time around.

"I went back and looked again at the first page and
everything just sort of snapped into view, and I
thought, `This guy is a genius,' like those who walked
the Earth in the 19th century," says Ware.

"And I got rather messianic about it, and I wanted my
wife to read it. I started creating an index of all
the characters, because there were so many and it was
so hard to keep track of them."

Millison also was turned on by "Gravity's Rainbow." He
was an Army private -- a company clerk "just like
Radar O'Reilly" -- in Korea in the summer of 1973,
when he read the novel, which came out that year and
won the National Book Award.

"`Gravity's Rainbow' hit me hard, especially the parts
set in Europe during and just after World War II. I'd
never read a writer whose voice on the page came so
close to echoing the sound and feel of the Cold War
'50s and '60s, hip and angry and complex," he says.

"I've read each of the novels at least twice, studying
the text closely both times. I also collect first
editions of Pynchon's novels, and first editions of
the novels for which Pynchon has written endorsements,
cover blurbs or support quotes that have been used in
advertisements."

Charles Hollander, a Baltimore-based "independent
scholar" of Pynchon, first read him as an
undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. It was
1963, the year Pynchon debuted with "V." Joseph
Heller's "Catch-22" was becoming a counterculture
classic, but Hollander believes that "Catch-22" was
more about the veterans of World War II.

"Pynchon was the guy who wrote for my generation, so
much so I heard people joke at parties that he had a
receiver by which he could read others' late-night
falling asleep thoughts," he says.

"The reason ... (Pynchon) is important to me and his
`fans' is he seems a bit ahead of the curve in seeing
what is important, and what will become the important
issues we are faced with."

He is as remote from the general public as J.D.
Salinger, but Pynchon experts say they care more about
his work than about the man himself, who reportedly
lives in New York with his wife and agent, Melanie
Jackson. Both Hollander and Ware say they know people
friendly with Pynchon who insist he is not "some guy
squirreling away in his attic," according to
Hollander.

"My sources tell me he is pretty social, in his style.
I think he avoids the media because he sees the media
as an arm of the establishment, a means of social
control that he won't be a party to," Hollander says.

"I've stayed away from the cult of personality. I
don't play in that zone," Ware says.

"His reluctance to speak with the press or have his
photograph taken kind of plays into the style of the
novels. There's a lot of mystery and ambiguity in
them, and a lot of mystery and ambiguity about the
author. When you know things about the author, you
begin to insert those feelings into the books. Not
having any information makes the reading experience a
little purer."

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten, or redistributed.

http://us.f347.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=28173&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes

that Book Description

2006-11-04T10:07:00.000-08:00

From: "Mike Beiderbhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifecke"
To: "trp"
Subject: A-and
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 09:09:08 -0600

the blurb on Amazon might have been a tad, just a tad, disengenuous.

Further regards,

Mike

*****************************
Just Browsing?
http://home.comcast.net/~beider19
*****************************

another good report re Against the Day

2006-11-04T07:24:00.000-08:00

From: "Mike Beiderbecke"
To: "trp"
Subject: Re: Non-spoilerish first impression of AtD on Modern Word site
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 09:01:20 -0600

Well,

I have read slightly more than twenty-five pages.

All the hallmarks of what we (or at least I) have come to love
about TRP are there. Weird names, strange songs, frustrating allusions (fact or
fiction?), long paragraphs, ellipsis, long shaggy-doggish things that lead to horrible puns, et cetera.

Closer in style to GR than his other novels, but at the same time incorporating elements that have appeared in his writing both pre- and post-GR.

Perhaps best summed up, IMHO, as a progressive knotting into.....

Regards,

Mike

"the Pynchon we love to read"

2006-11-03T07:16:00.000-08:00

Apparently you don't have to read much of Against the Day - this guy writes after having read 25 pages - to realize it's good:

...sez The Modern Word:

Publisher’s Weekly wrote that the novel “glows,” and I know what they mean: like the cover, the book is just white. Pure writing, pure Pynchon. As Pynchonoid wrote, this is “the Pynchon we love to read.” And it is.

Hope they know I was echoing a Salman Rushdie statement re Mason & Dixon.

2006-10-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks for Dave Monroe for posting this to Pynchon-l:

Surveillance, by Jonathan Raban
Clueless in Seattle as the age of paranoia dawns
By Pat Kane
Published: 27 October 2006

In an era where we can access any current affair from
a thousand different viewpoints - the blog comment,
backed up by the YouTube clip, discovered in the
e-mail newsletter that makes it to SkyNews - one feels
like cheering wildly for an old-fashioned "social
novel" like Surveillance. To sit with an artful,
humane narrator like Jonathan Raban, and share his
concerned gaze at an America gone nearly mad with
paranoia, is time well spent. This is the second in
his trilogy of Seattle novels, the first being the
dot-boom threnody Waxwings. By now it's clear how
Raban wants to filter the maelstrom of this United
States of Insecurity.

[...]

... Remember all those paranoid postmodern conspiracy
fictions: Pynchon, Ballard, DeLillo? Now, all it takes
is a classical realist in Seattle to walk the streets,
watch the news, listen to the conversations, and you
get the same effect. Surveillance is as useful and
eloquent a meditation on the extremism of the present
as you would wish to curl up with on a long weekend.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article1930755.ece

the dragon and the eagle

2006-10-27T09:15:00.000-07:00

That's the title of a book just received, of interest perhaps to Mason & Dixon readers, although China is likely to have some place in Against the Day. The author, A.Owen Aldridge, argues that, contrary to previous assumptions that "the image of China did not penetrate North America until after the inauguration of the trade between Canton and the East Coast shortly after the War for Independence came to an end....a lively curiosity about non-Western culture existed in America before the middle of the eighteenth century and that a good deal of accurate information about it was available during the American Revolution aklong with an almost equal amount of myth and legend....The following pages will reveal some extraordinary instances of this relationship: Franklin at the age of thirty-two publishing in his Philadelphia newspaper an analysis of the thought of Confucious, brother-in-law Thomas Paine comparing Confucious and Christ as great moral teachers...."

The Dragon and the Eagle: The Presence of China in the American Enlightenment
by A. Owen Aldridge. Wayne State University Press. Detroit, Michigan. 1993.

under the pynfluence: Nina Marie Martinez

2006-10-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

...sez today's San Francisco Comical, in an article about three SF Bay Area novelists who received the Whiting Writer's Award:

Nina Marie Martinez was born in San Jose, the daughter of a first-generation Mexican American prune-picker-turned-building contractor and a German American stay-at-home mother. A high school dropout, she was a single mom at 20, supporting herself and her daughter by reselling flea-market finds. Soon, she was a vintage-clothing maven and decided to go back to school to study business.

"All I knew was that I needed money, and if you needed money, you studied business," she says. But taking general education classes reminded her of one of her first loves, literature. (The other was the Giants.)

So she went to UC Santa Cruz to study literature. That's when she started hearing voices.

"They weren't trying to make me do bad things or anything," she says, laughing. "These women were having a conversation in my head, and I started writing it down." That conversation was the spark for her debut novel, "Caramba!: A Tale Told in Turns of the Cards," published in 2004 by Knopf.

"When I wrote 'Caramba!' I felt like I was writing the great American novel," she says. "Not too long ago, this was Mexico. My ancestors roamed these lands for hundreds of centuries."

The book takes traditional Mexican Loteria cards as pivot points -- and illustrations -- for the assemblage of a high-energy plot. Publishers Weekly described the novel as "an effervescent, luminous debut."

She cites Thomas Pynchon and Vladimir Nabokov as two of her literary influences, particularly while writing "Caramba!" "The funny thing is, my favorite writers are white males and most of them are dead," she says, noting that Latina authors are too often stereotyped. "They think we're all sitting in the corner reading 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.' "

Martinez lives near the Santa Cruz boardwalk with her 16-year-old daughter and two Chihuahuas and says she will never forget the professor who said that the most interesting fiction is written by people who speak more than one language.

"My girlfriends and I have always switched back and forth from Spanish to English," Martinez says. "When these two languages intermingle, they're both changed. Language is pliant. It can move and shift without breaking."

Her next novel, coming out in 2008 from Knopf, is the story of a girl who survives a difficult childhood and becomes the queen of the flea market. "When you write a book, there are books that you hold close to your heart," she says. Just now, she is reading "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller and "Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell.

"What does it mean to be down and out, but living artistically?" she asks. "My new book is dedicated to the discarded, people who've been thrown away. I am drawn to things and people whose peculiarness or beauty goes unappreciated by the vast majority of society."

Caramba!: A Tale Told in Turns of the Cards

the Pynchon we love to read...

2006-10-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

...is the Pynchon of Against the Day. At a party this evening in the Oakland HIlls, I had a chance to spend some quality time up close and personal with the host's ARC, by the time I was 10 pages in my skull was tingling, another 25 and I had lost all sense of the passage of time, only the intense bouquet of artisanal pizza managed to bring me back. Reluctantly, I tore myself away from Pynchon, glad I only have to wait a few weeks at most to get my own copy and finish reading it. We're in for a treat, my friends.

the white city by alec michod

2006-10-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

One of Against the Day's best prepared advance readers is Alec Michod, author of The White City, a novel set at the 1893 Chicago Fair that Pynchon features in his new book. Michod claims a significant Pynchon influence. First published in 2004, The White City has been reissued in a new paperback version.

Publisher's Weekly reviews Against the Day

2006-10-24T19:14:00.000-07:00

Pynchon’s ‘Against the Day’ Glows

Penguin Press will release Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, his first novel since Mason & Dixon, early next month. Below is PW’s review which calls the work “knotty, paunchy, nutty, raunchy.”

Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon. Penguin Press, $35 (1,120p) ISBN 978-1-59420-120-2

"....that rushing you hear is the sound of the world, every banana peel and dynamite stick of it, trying to crowd its way in, and succeeding."

Knotty, paunchy, nutty, raunchy, Pynchon’s first novel since Mason & Dixon (1997) reads like half a dozen books duking it out for his, and the reader’s, attention. Most of them shine with a surreal incandescence, but even Pynchon fans may find their fealty tested now and again. Yet just when his recurring themes threaten to become tics, this perennial Nobel bridesmaid engineers another never-before-seen phrase, or effect, and all but the most churlish resistance collapses.

It all begins in 1893, with an intrepid crew of young balloonists whose storybook adventures will bookend, interrupt and sometimes even be read by, scores of at least somewhat more realistic characters over the next 30 years. Chief among these figures are Colorado anarchist Webb Traverse and his children: Kit, a Yale- and Göttingen-educated mathematician; Frank, an engineer who joins the Mexican revolution; Reef, a cardsharp turned outlaw bomber who lands in a perversely tender ménage à trois; and daughter Lake, another Pynchon heroine with a weakness for the absolute wrong man.

Psychological truth keeps pace with phantasmagorical invention throughout. In a Belgian interlude recalling Pynchon’s incomparable Gravity’s Rainbow, a refugee from the future conjures a horrific vision of the trench warfare to come: “League on league of filth, corpses by the uncounted thousands.” This, scant pages after Kit nearly drowns in mayonnaise at the Regional Mayonnaise Works in West Flanders. Behind it all, linking these tonally divergent subplots and the book’s cavalcade of characters, is a shared premonition of the blood-drenched doomsday just about to break above their heads.

Ever sympathetic to the weak over the strong, the comradely over the combine (and ever wary of false dichotomies), Pynchon’s own aesthetic sometimes works against him. Despite himself, he’ll reach for the portentous dream sequence, the exquisitely stage-managed weather, some perhaps not entirely digested historical research, the “invisible,” the “unmappable”—when just as often it’s the overlooked detail, the “scrawl of scarlet creeper on a bone-white wall,” a bed partner’s “full rangy nakedness and glow” that leaves a reader gutshot with wonder.

Now pushing 70, Pynchon remains the archpoet of death from above, comedy from below and sex from all sides. His new book will be bought and unread by the easily discouraged, read and reread by the cult of the difficult. True, beneath the book’s jacket lurks the clamor of several novels clawing to get out. But that rushing you hear is the sound of the world, every banana peel and dynamite stick of it, trying to crowd its way in, and succeeding. (Nov.)

This article originally appeared in the October 24, 2006 issue of PW Daily.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6384205.html?nid=2286

ATD-related: tesla coil fun

2006-10-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

"Take one CD, Microwave at full power for 5 seconds,
and place on top of tesla coil. Enjoy!"
http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/cdzap.html

the glowing reports keep rolling in

2006-10-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

"Best book I've ever read," says one battle-toughened novelist who is half-way into Against the Day.

Yes, Bodine's in there.

http://pynchonwiki.com launches to support Against the Day readers

2006-10-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

At his Hyperarts Pynchon Pages (http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/) Tim Ware has announced his http://pynchonwiki.com project, which sounds very cool - just the sort of Web 2.0, fan-generated content-creation process that will draw hard-core Pynchon readers to build a site that will
support the far larger audience of Against the Day readers as they read the book in the coming months and years. I'll have a chance to find out more about the
project later this week, I expect.

Against the Day details!

2006-10-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

...from: The Literary Saloon :

We didn't get a personalized proof of Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day (as others did), but yesterday -- a month before the 21 November on-sale date -- a beautiful hardcover finished copy was delivered:

Not quite the drop-everything event for us that it is for some others, but certainly something we look forward to spending much of the next month with.
It weighs in at 1085 pages, and around 410,000 words. The opening scene is aboard: "the hydrogen skyship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting", as some members of the Chums of Chance are on their way to Chicago .....
It's divided into five sections:
The Light Over the Ranges
Iceland Spar
Bilocations
Against the Day
Rue du Départ
The epigraph is from Thelonious Monk.
And the first impression is that the Pynchon book it most resembles is, indeed, Gravity's Rainbow. But that's just a very quick first impression: this is definitely a text it's going to take a while to deal with.

Pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk (the Penguin Press publicity page is -- so far -- useless).
In Time Jeffrey Ressner wondered about the difficulties of Promoting Pynchon; it certainly looks like there will be extensive and intensive Internet cove

rage.

advance reviewers say: Against the Day is killer

2006-10-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

I've heard that now from a couple of folks lucky enough to have review copies of the novel. "M&D meets GR" is the way it sounds after listening to one Pynchon devotee and reviewer rhapsodize.

Amazing how some folks on Pynchon-l keep complaining about the lack of a traditional marketing campaign, I guess they just can't see what's happening. No substitute for word-of-mouth, which is what the publisher has generated in spades with Pynchon's Book Description, with ARCs in reviewer hands now the buzz is getting bigger. Pre-publication orders at Amazon.com. Articles now appearing in top-tier pubs like the New York Times, and a place reserved on the bestseller list as soon as it's published. I don't know what more a publishing executive or author could expect from a marketing campaign that eschews the usual canned promotional crap, respecting readers enough to let them pass along word of a killer new book on the way, instead of clubbing them with paid advertising and promotional stunts (any defenestration plans out there?).

I was told today to expect a call from an Associated Press reporter who's looking for pynchonoids to interview for a feature - I'm not holding my breath, but if it's true, this is a "viral" campaign that appears to be taking hold in a serious way. Add in the various fan-built sites that are bound to emerge in the next few weeks, it's a viral (hate that metaphor, but it's what they say) campaign with legs, too.

best,
pynchonoid

calling all novelists influenced by Pynchon

2006-10-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

We're interested in reading and reviewing novelists who have been influenced by Thomas Pynchon or whose books somehow share a special affinity with Pynchon's. Contact pynchonoid at yahoo.com for details.

Jokerman 8

2006-10-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

That's the title of this intriguing new novel just received, from Richard Melo, a novelist influenced by Thomas Pynchon. We'll review it as soon as possible. Info @ Soft Skull Press

a gnostic urge drives desire for digital liberation

2006-10-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

[...] Even the individual self, so long trapped in the human body, would finally be free to step outside its fleshy confines [...]
From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
by Fred Turner

Mu!

2006-09-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

[...] Kratom's main active ingredient, mitragynine, binds to the same opiate receptor (mu) as opium, heroin and cocaine. [...]
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19125711.000

[...]Question,-- whether a Dog hath the nature of the divine Buddha. A reply given by a certain very wise Master is, "Mu!"[...]

M&D, 22

2006-09-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09282006/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm

'V' NOVELIST'S XXX MOVIE KIN

September 28, 2006 -- THOMAS Pynchon, the legendarily reclusive author of such celebrated novels as "V," "Gravity's Rainbow" and "The Crying of Lot 49," has a XXX-rated skeleton in the family closet - his brainy niece stars in and directs hard-core porn flicks.

Village Voice sex columnist Tristan Taormino, who had a privileged upbringing on Long Island and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University, went on to star in "The Ultimate Guide to Anal" Vols. 1 and 2, and then directed "House of A - - ." This week, the dark-haired beauty is set to release her first Vivid Video effort, "Chemistry," in which seven porn stars are "left to their own devices for two days and told nothing is off limits" and use "perv cams" to film each other performing sex acts.

Few know that Pynchon is the brother of Taormino's mom. For years, Taormino has tried to get him involved in - or even just acknowledge - her carnally charged career. But the interview-averse author, who lives in seclusion on Long Island and refuses to be photographed, has refused.

But Taormino is giving it one more shot. She wants Pynchon to show up for the party for her new film at 49 Grove next Thursday, and is inviting him to take part in her next movie - although not as a performer.

"I think it would be fascinating for him do commentary on the next one," Taormino told Page Six. She said Pynchon would get a bang out of what she does if he only took a closer look at her films and books, which include an anthology, "Best Lesbian Erotica."

"We're more alike than different. We're both writers and I think he's intrigued in general by pop culture," she said, adding she doesn't know if Pynchon has watched her movies. "He hasn't asked me for any and I haven't sent him any. I haven't given any of them to my mother, either." He's probably not aware of her online store, which features sex toys, lubricants and all the latest latex and rubber gear.

Not surprisingly, Pynchon's literary agent didn't return our call. And Taormino, who wistfully remembers when her uncle attended her college graduation, admitted: "I'm not holding my breath."

pynchonoid blog makes the college grade, yo

2006-09-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

This blog is linked as a resource for

ENGL636, S II '04, M-F 1330-1445, ARM 119 :: Studies in an Author / Thomas Pynchon :: WVU Department of English

And "pynchonoid" moves out of the realm of this blog and my screen name in Pynchon-l. One requirement for the course:

"Join Pynchon-L, the list for pynchonoids"

Ambitious reading list, too, although not quite as much as the absurd suggestion I once heard, that you have to read Finnegan's Wake in order to fully appreciate Gravity's Rainbow; it puts pynchonoid.org in nice company, that's for sure, warranted or not:

Partial List of Recommended Texts
(all at WVU Library; *=also at WVU Bookstore)
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, especially Chapters XXI, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV.
Aleida Assmann, "Texts, Traces, Trash: The Changing Media of Cultural Memory," Representations #56, link (JSTOR)
Hanjo Berressem, Pynchon's Poetics: Interfacing Theory and Text
Leo Bersani, "Pynchon, Paranoia, and Literature," Representation #25, link (JSTOR)
Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History
Charles Clerc, Mason & Dixon & Pynchon
Peter Cooper, Signs and Symptoms: Thomas Pynchon and the Contemporary World
David Cowart, "The Luddite Vision,"American Literature Vol. 71 #2, link (JSTOR)
Walter Dornberger, V2
Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth
Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology
*Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
Molly Hite, Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon
*Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
C. G. Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Vol 9 of the Collected Works
C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Vol 12 of the Collected Works
J. Kerry Grant, Companion to the Crying of Lot 49
Kathryn Hume, Pynchon's Mythography: an approach to Gravity's Rainbow
Friedrich Kittler, "Media and Drugs in Pynchon's Second World War," in Reading Matters: Narratives in the New Media Ecology, ed. Tabbi and Wutz
Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film
Stefan Mattessich, Lines of Flight: discursive time and countercultural desire in the work of Thomas Pynchon
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon, ed. Levine & Leverenz
Frank Palmieri, "Neither Literally nor as Metaphor: Pynchon's the Crying of Lot 49 and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions," ELH Vol 54 #4, link (JSTOR)
I. P. Pavlov, Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex
William H. Plater, Grim Phoenix: Reconstructing Thomas Pynchon
*Thomas Pynchon, V.
*Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Edward Mendelson
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus
Rchard Sasuly, IG Farben
Lance Schachterle, "Information Entropy in Pynchon's Fiction," Configurations Vol 4 #2, link (Muse)
Gershom Sholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, especially part III
*Stephen Weisenburger, A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel, (not in the library)
*Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, especially chapters I, II, V, XI
Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History
George Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology

...thanks to Dave Monroe for bringing this to the attention of Pynchon-l.

Against the Day

2006-07-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

That's the title of the new book, according to Slate.

curiouser & curiouser

2006-07-19T20:26:00.000-07:00

culturebox
The Pynchon Post
Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?
By Troy Patterson
Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006, at 3:32 PM ET

Things did not delay in turning curious when the first beats of the drumroll began for Thomas Pynchon's forthcoming book. Last month, lit-bloggers and news-writers reported that Penguin Press would issue the author's sixth novel in December. This whetted the palates of those hard-core fans who have spent the years since 1997's Mason & Dixon speculating that Pynchon was at work on a doozy about lady mathematicians of the old school and also, uhm, Mothra. Last week, Amazon.com put up a page that listed Untitled Thomas Pynchon at a svelte 992 pages and bore a description purportedly written by the master himself. In fact, it purported quite well indeed and also rather charmingly, promising an archetypal Pynchonian buffet of settings, characters, and old tricks ("Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically.") Then the description just vanished from the page.

Was this a hoax? A jump-the-gun glitch? A hype? In any event, one Amazon customer must have gone through his Web browser's cache and reposted the thing on the customer discussion board, touching off an instant classic of that kind of chatter where M.F.A. meets LSD. The following comments are fairly typical: "I am saying that the blurb is Pynchon parroting Pynchon … viral-marketing or, more hopefully, a Swiftian self-parody and critique of Internet subcultures (a sort of new, updated Tale of a Tub.)" Whee!

(For the record, Penguin Press's publicity chief disavows all knowledge of the blurb, and Amazon hadn't sorted its story out by press time. Pynchon did not immediately return an answering-machine message left at what I reasonably assume to be his Manhattan apartment.)

To be sure, when Mason & Dixon came out nine years ago, the scholars and nuts who compulsively post to the pynchon-l mailing list were on the case in cyberspace. But the new book with the rather coyly withheld title will enter an Internet Age in bloom, which is just too perfect. Labyrinthine structures, shifting identities, abstruse interconnections, funky mail systems—in its delirious maximalism, Pynchon's work has more than a few affinities with all this fine new technology, and the technology enables Pynchon fans to interact in a wholly Pynchonian way. Ladies and germs, start your master's theses, your conspiracy theories, and your attributions of prophecy: Here's where hypertext meets literature.
Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2146152/

Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

book description

2006-07-15T07:55:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE 16 July 2006: After appearing on the Amazon.com page, the Book Description disappeared. Maybe somebody pulled the trigger too soon, Amazon also announced a Book Description would be published this week. After thinking about it a bit, and re-reading the text, I believe the fact that it appears over Pynchon's name indicates that he either wrote (doubtful, it sounds a lot like marketing copy, I think he revised/approved it) or approved it, and thus it should be taken seriously as yet another rare instance of Pynchon writing about his fiction.]

from Amazon.com:

Book Description
Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.
With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.
As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.
Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.
Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.
--Thomas Pynchon

About the Author
Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner, a collection of short stories, Vineland and, most recently, Mason and Dixon. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.
Product Details

Hardcover: 992 pages
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (December 5, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 159420120X
Shipping Information: View shipping rates and policies
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,444 in Books (See Top Sellers in Books)
Yesterday: #4,044 in Books

1904

2006-06-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

from the OED:

wahoo, int.
DRAFT ENTRY Sept. 2004
orig. and chiefly U.S.
Brit. /whu/, /whu/, U.S. /whu/ [Imitative. Cf. YAHOO int.]

An exclamation used to express excitement, enthusiasm, or delight, or to attract attention.

1904 Washington Post 24 June 3/5 The old stage coach long-drawn yell ‘Wahoo’ was echoed through the hall. 1951 in V. Randolph Pissing in Snow (1976) 118 She kept a-hollering ‘Wahoo! Wahoo!’ 1983 P. FUSSELL Class vii. 167 Noise and vociferation identify the proles, who shout ‘Wahoo!’ at triumphant moments in games. 2000 Red Herring Mar. 416/3 It's $150 million's worth of nothing right now... But if they get even one company to market, then wahoo!

Gravity's Rainbow, 452:

“1904 […] was the year the American Food and Drug people took the cocaine out of Coca-Cola, which gave us

p-list sez it's set in Chicago, 1987

2006-06-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

Pynchon novel out in December

by Josh Getlin, June 22, 2006, Los Angeles Times

Thomas Pynchon, the reclusive, award-winning author of "Gravity's Rainbow," "V," "Mason & Dixon" and "Vineland," is finishing up a new novel, and the book will go on sale in December, his publisher announced this week.

"There is not yet a title, and we're not releasing information about the subject matter at this point," said Tracy Locke, associate publisher for Penguin Press. "At this point, that's really all I can tell you."

Pynchon's new novel, his first since "Mason & Dixon" in 1997, is shrouded in mystery, as were many of his previous books before publication. The author, born in 1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island, N.Y., has long avoided publicity, and his books have acquired a cult-like status among many readers. — Josh Getlin

M&D illo'd

2006-05-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

from:
SCENES AND IMAGES FROM "MASON & DIXON"
Francisco Munuera Wallhead

[link goes to must-read International Pynchon Week page]

a 'second generation' modernist

2006-05-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Washington College Senior Wins Nation's Largest Undergraduate Literary Prize

CHESTERTOWN, Md., May 21, 2006 — Most college seniors will look back on their graduation ceremony as a day of pomp and circumstance culminating in a handshake and a diploma. For Marshall Shord, 21, a Washington College English major from Berlin, Maryland, the ceremony brought another reward: a check for $55,907.

Shord's critical thesis on Thomas Pynchon, along with his portfolio of essays, stories, and poems, earned him the largest literary award in the country exclusively for undergraduates—the Sophie Kerr Prize—presented Sunday, May 21, 2006, during the College's 224th Commencement ceremonies.

The awarding of the Sophie Kerr Prize, given annually to the graduating senior who demonstrates the greatest "ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor," has in recent decades been a highlight of the commencement ceremony at the 224-year-old liberal arts college. The Prize, worth $55,907 this year, is among the largest literary awards in the world. Washington College has awarded more than one million dollars in prize money since it was first given in 1968, most often to writers of poetry and fiction. Scholarly and journalistic works, though less often selected, are given equal consideration. Shord was one of 31 to submit a portfolio for consideration, but it was a critical thesis on novelist Thomas Pynchon that earned him departmental honors from the English department and caught the attention of the Sophie Kerr Committee. In making the award, they praised his "intellectually adventurous" thesis while also noting the quality of his poetry.

English Professor Richard Gillin, who presided over the committee's deliberations, stressed that the prize can be awarded for student writing outside the submitted portfolio—in this case, the critical thesis Shord submitted as a graduation requirement. But it was clear that the committee was also impressed with Shord's creative writing and especially his poetry. Gillin praised Shord's poems for their "stark imagery and slowly developing realizations that are often plangent and unsettling."

Professor Thomas Cousineau, Shord's thesis adviser, echoed Gillin's enthusiasm for this year's winner, calling Shord's examination of Pynchon's major novels one of the best theses he had ever seen.

"I was especially impressed by his complex reading of these novels as the work of a 'second generation' modernist writer who managed to find highly original ways of imitating the methods of his high-modernist master James Joyce," Cousineau said. "Marshall also offered intriguing applications to these novels of the reinterpretation of the Narcissus myth that Marshall McLuhan proposed in his landmark Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man."

Shord's professors expect him to continue on to graduate school. "In fact, we will insist on it," Cousineau said with a smile.

The Sophie Kerr Prize is the namesake of an Eastern Shore woman who made her fortune in New York, writing women's fiction during the 1930s and 1940s. In accordance with the terms of her will, one-half of the annual income from her bequest to the College is awarded each year to the graduating senior demonstrating the best potential for literary achievement. The other half funds scholarships, supports student publications and the purchase of books, and brings an array of visiting writers, editors, and publishers to campus to read, visit classes, and discuss student work. Her gift has provided the nucleus for an abundance of literary activity on the bucolic Eastern Shore campus.

Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in historic Chestertown on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, it is the first college chartered in the new nation.

Contact Information: John Buettner, Director of Media Relations
410-810-7408

jbuettner2@washcoll.edu

Sending Institution: Washington College

Story Date: May 20, 2006

Keywords: Marshall Shord, Sophie Kerr Prize, literature, award, Washington College

69

2006-05-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Thomas Pynchon!

(Read about his 38th surprise birthday party at Tim Ware's fine HyperArts Pynchon Pages site.)

bursting the limits of time: new book of interest to Mason & Dixon readers

2006-05-03T20:08:00.000-07:00

Rudwick, Martin J. S. Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution. Published with the support of the Getty Grant Program. 840 p., 145 halftones, 34 line drawings. 7 x 10 2005 Cloth $45.00 spec 0-226-73111-1 Spring 2005

In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh joined the long-running theological debate on the age of the earth by famously announcing that creation had occurred on October 23, 4004 B.C. Although widely challenged during the Enlightenment, this belief in a six-thousand-year-old planet was only laid to rest during a revolution of discovery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this relatively brief period, geologists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth-and the relatively recent arrival of human life. Highlighting a discovery that radically altered existing perceptions of a human's place in the universe as much as the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud did, Bursting the Limits of Time is a herculean effort by one of the world's foremost experts on the history of geology and paleontology to sketch this historicization of the natural world in the age of revolution.

Addressing this intellectual revolution for the first time, Rudwick examines the ideas and practices of earth scientists throughout the Western world to show how the story of what we now call "deep time" was pieced together. He explores who was responsible for the discovery of the earth's history, refutes the concept of a rift between science and religion in dating the earth, and details how the study of the history of the earth helped define a new branch of science called geology. Rooting his analysis in a detailed study of primary sources, Rudwick emphasizes the lasting importance of field- and museum-based research of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Bursting the Limits of Time, the culmination of more than three decades of research, is the first detailed account of this monumental phase in the history of science.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
A note on footnotes
Introduction
Time and geohistory—Historical parameters—Historicizing the earth—Text and illustrations—Maps of knowledge

Part one: Understanding the earth

1. Naturalists, philosophers, and others
1.1 A savant on top of the world
First ascents of Mont Blanc—Science on the summit—Return to civilization—Conclusion
1.2 The Republic of Letters and its supporters
Savants, professional and amateur—The Republic of Letters—A variety of supporters—Conclusion
1.3 Places of natural knowledge
Laboratories and museums—Savants in the field—The social life of savants—Scientific publication—Conclusion
1.4 Maps of natural knowledge
The literary and the philosophical—Natural history and natural philosophy—Philosophy and theology—Conclusion

2. Sciences of the earth
2.1 Mineralogy as a science of specimens
Minerals and other fossils—Identification and classification—Fossils of organic origin—Fossil localities—Prize specimens—Conclusion
2.2 Physical geography as a spatial science
Huge solid facts—The primacy of fieldwork—Proxy pictures—Maps as instruments—Conclusion
2.3 Geognosy as a structural science
-stops: -.5in 0in .5in"The mining context—Structures and sequences—Primaries and Secondaries—Sequences of Gebirge—Fossils in geognosy—Conclusion
2.4 Earth physics as a causal science
The “physics” of specimens—The “physics” of physical geography—The “physics” of geognostic structures—The “physics” of rock formations—Conclusion
2.5 The question of time
The short timescale versus eternalism—Volcanoes, valleys, and strata—Estimates of the timescale—Encounters with theologians—Conclusion

3. The theory of the earth
3.1 Geotheory as a scientific genre
The meaning of “geology”—The goals of geotheory—Conclusion
3.2 Buffon’s cooling globe
Buffon’s first geotheory—Nature’s epochs—The earth’s timescale—Conclusion
3.3 De Luc’s worlds ancient and modern
The “Christian philosophe”—De Luc’s binary system—Natural measures of time—Conclusion
3.4 Hutton’s eternal earth machine
A deistic geotheory—Cyclic processes—A theory confirmed by fieldwork—Time and eternity—Conclusion
3.5 The standard model of falling sea levels
The multiplicity of geotheories—Neptunist geotheory—Conclusion

4. Transposing history into the earth
4.1 The varieties of history
The diversification of history—Chronology and biblical history—Chorographers and antiquarians—Herculaneum and Pompeii—Conclusion
4.2 Fossils as nature’s documents
Human history and its natural records—The natural history of fossils—Fossils and the earth’s revolutions—Conclusion
4.3 Volcanoes and nature’s epochs
The making of a physical geographer—The volcanoes of Auvergne—Epochs of volcanic activity—A lake on the site of Paris—Conclusion
4.4 Rock formations as nature’s archives
The volcanoes of Vivarais—Nature’s erudite historian—Censors and critics—Exporting geohistory to Russia—Conclusion
4.5 Global geohistory
Causal processes and geotheories—The place of contingency—Saussure as a geotheorist—De Luc as a geohistorian—Conclusion

5. Problems with fossils

5.1 The ancient world of nature
The deep past as a foreign country?—Fossils and geohistory—Migration and transmutation—Conclusion
5.2 Relics of former seas
Vanished shellfish—Living fossils—Fossil fish and possible whales—Explaining the former world—Conclusion
5.3 Witnesses of former continents
Fossil plants—Large fossil bones—The “Ohio animal”—Giant elks and bears—Conclusion
5.4 The antiquity of man
Humans in geohistory—Texts and bones—History from artifacts—Conclusion

Interlude: From survey to narrative

Part two: Reconstructing geohistory

6. A new science of “geology”?
6.1 Revolutions in nature and society (1789–91)
Meanings of revolution—Blumenbach’s “total revolution”—Montlosier’s continuous revolution—Geotheory as a flourishing genre—Conclusion
6.2 Geotheory as geohistory (1790–93)
De Luc’s new system—A differentiated “former world”—The role of fossil evidence—A critique of Hutton—Conclusion
6.3 Theorizing in a time of trouble (1793–94)
Geotheories and focal problems—Dolomieu’s mega-tsunamis—Dolomieu on the Nile delta—The sciences under the Terror—Conclusion
6.4 Geotheory politicized (1793–95)
De Luc and Blumenbach—Cultured despisers of religion—The politics of Genesis—Conclusion
6.5 “Geology” redefined (1794–97)
The sciences after Thermidor—Desmarest’s survey of geotheories—La Métherie’s geotheory—Saussure’s Agenda—Dolomieu on “geology”—Conclusion

7. Denizens of a former world
7.1 A mushroom in the field of savants (1794–96)
Fossil bones as a focal problem—The young Cuvier—The megatherium—The mammoth—Conclusion
7.2 Cuvier opens his campaign (1797–99)
Cave bears and fossil rhinos—Dolomieu and de Luc as Cuvier’s allies—Cuvier’s research program—Hostile critics—Jefferson’s megalonix—Conclusion
7.3 The Napoleon of fossil bones (1798–1800)
Savants in wartime—Cuvier and the First Consul—Cuvier’s network of informants—Cuvier’s international appeal—Conclusion
7.4 Lamarck’s alternative (1800–1802)
The threat of transformism—The response to Cuvier’s appeal—Mummified animals from Egypt—Lamarck’s Parisian fossils—Conclusion
7.5 Enlarging a fossil menagerie (1802–4)
A peaceful interlude—A cumulative case for extinction—Earlier and stranger mammals—Conclusion

8. Geognosy enriched into geohistory

P chooses cover artist for new Gravity's Rainbow

2006-05-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

From: "Erik T. Burns"
To:
Subject: Miller/Pynchon in Variety Magazine
Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 14:52:20 +0100

Miller time; News Brief
Steven Zeitchik
30 April 2006
Daily Variety

A9 2006, Variety, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed
Elsevier, Inc
When he's not writing new graphic novels for Hollywood to snap up, "Sin
City" creator Frank Miller has an unusual sideline: drawing for Thomas
Pynchon.

Penguin Classics was redesigning its line of influential novels and
asked Pynchon if he'd like a new jacket for his novel "Gravity's
Rainbow." At first Pynchon resisted, says publicist Caroline Farrington.
But he came back and said he'd allow it, on one condition: if Miller did
the design.

Miller, at work on the Weinstein Co.'s "Sin City 2," agreed. A new
edition of the tome will be released in October.

she wouldn't use his name without his permission, would she?

2006-04-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Writer-Director Tristan Taormino Joins Vivid Entertainment; Will Head New Vivid-Ed Imprint and Direct New Line

LOS ANGELES, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 04/10/2006 -- Writer and director Tristan Taormino has joined Vivid Entertainment and will be involved in two major projects simultaneously. She will head an innovative imprint called "Vivid-Ed" that will produce a new breed of instructional movies and she will direct a new line of reality videos for Vivid.

"Tristan is one of the bright talents to come into the adult business in this generation. We are thrilled that we'll be able to have her fresh perspective on two very exciting new projects simultaneously," said Steven Hirsch, co-founder and co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment.

Taormino, the author of the best-selling books "Down and Dirty Sex Secrets" and "True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion," will direct the first two titles in the Vivid-Ed series and will bring in other directors for the second and third productions in the first year.

"I plan to combine education and information with entertainment and arousal," says Taormino. "It's all about teaching people techniques and inspiring them to want to practice what they learned right away! We will appeal to couples looking to improve their sex lives and be more adventurous. The films will feature attractive, intelligent real-life people as well as articulate, exemplary adult performers. With Vivid-Ed we have a chance to inform, educate and get someone off simultaneously. This definitely will not be your father's sex ed tape."

Much of the inspiration for the Vivid-Ed project comes from sex workshops Taormino has been teaching around the world for the past eight years on subjects including safer sex, g-spot stimulation, erotic role-playing, and sex toys. "Plenty of men and women tell me that they love all-sex features so the focus of my Vivid work will be on fresh performers, hot, spontaneous sex, real chemistry and real orgasms for everyone. Couples already trust Vivid for erotic features, now they can count on Vivid for hot reality, too."

The niece of famed novelist Thomas Pynchon, Tristan Taormino grew up on Long Island and now lives in New York City, where she is a columnist for the Village Voice. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in American Studies from Wesleyan University and is the author of three books and editor of 14 anthologies.

Vivid Entertainment Group is the world's leading adult film company. Its "Vivid Girl" concept brings together top adult film stars who are signed to exclusive agreements styled on the old Hollywood contract star system which it pioneered in the adult entertainment industry. Vivid has wide brand-name awareness through films and licensing programs that extend to advertising, apparel, book publishing, virility supplements, condoms, snowboards, calendars, comic books and a variety of other products. For more information write rm@vivid.com.

....thanks to Dave Monroe for posting this to Pynchon-l...

God calling, timed release

2005-12-30T18:07:00.000-08:00

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510102

via Godlorica:

Physics, abstract
physics/0510102

From: Stephen D. H. Hsu [view email]
Date (v1): Tue, 11 Oct 2005 20:15:52 GMT (5kb)
Date (revised v2): Tue, 6 Dec 2005 06:20:04 GMT (7kb)

Message in the Sky

Authors: S. Hsu, A. Zee
Comments: 3 pages, revtex
Subj-class: Popular Physics

We argue that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a stupendous opportunity for the Creator of universe our (assuming one exists) to have sent a message to its occupants, using known physics. Our work does not support the Intelligent Design movement in any way whatsoever, but asks, and attempts to answer, the entirely scientific question of what the medium and message might be IF there was actually a message. The medium for the message is unique. We elaborate on this observation, noting that it requires only careful adjustment of the fundamental Lagrangian, but no direct intervention in the subsequent evolution of the universe.

Full-text: PostScript, PDF, or Other formats

Gravity's Rainbow, p. 4]

"You didn't really believe you'd be saved. Come, we all know who we are by now. No one was ever going to take the trouble to save you old fellow.... "

the Portuguese word for "fool"

2005-12-23T18:18:00.000-08:00

Scientists find 'mass dodo grave'

The dodo was mocked by Portuguese and Dutch colonialists for its size and apparent lack of fear of armed, hungry hunters. It took its name from the Portuguese word for "fool", and was hunted to extinction within 200 years of Europeans landing on Mauritius.

you lookin at me?

2005-12-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

Psychologists at the University of Liverpool have found that people still find it difficult to understand how mirrors work.

...from: Humans Do Not Understand Mirror Reflections, Say Researchers

....more than enough mirrors in Pynchon's work to confuse readers; in the opening of Mason & Dixon is one good place to start.

vintage octopus pulp covers

2005-12-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

One of many: http://www.cyrune.com/pulp.html

(Thanks, Dave!)

everything IS connected

2005-12-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

New movie:

Syriana
Everything is Connected

headline of the day:

2005-11-17T08:43:00.000-08:00

We pee on things and call it art

"Roger has unbuttoned his fly..."

–Gravity's Rainbow p. 636

comic books map response to a dangerous world

2005-11-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

from EurekAlert!
15-Nov-2005

Contact: Jill Yablonski
JournalNews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net
781-388-8448
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Comic books shadow how we react to threats

In times of social danger and economic turmoil, many psychologists believe that people become more aggressive, more conventional, and less interested in feelings and emotions. A new study published in the latest issue of Political Psychology finds that comic book characters do these things as well. In times of higher threat, i.e. the events of 1979 which included the Iran hostage crisis, comic books contained more aggressive imagery, focused on male characters, and were less introspective. The authors reviewed comic books published between 1978 -1992 frame by frame to judge the amount of violence and conventionalism drawn, the number of women and minorities in speaking or subordinate roles, portrayal of wrongdoing by the authorities, and the amount of reflection (thought in balloons rather than dialogue). In general, the authors found that women spoke less and a significantly greater number of panels were devoted to aggression during high threat periods.

The authors reviewed eight Marvel comic books that are still published today. These titles included four titles that featured more conventional heroes that represent American virtues like U.S. patriotism (Captain America) and the everyman (Spider-Man). The other four heroes were less conventional with themes such as persecution by society (X-men) and a vigilante who lives in an "amoral urban hell" (Daredevil). When compared against their own sales, the unconventional titles sold more copies during the low-threat times compared to the high-threat times; whereas the conventional hero sales remained flat. "As an aspect of popular culture, comic books have always reflected the historical time period in which they were produced," author Bill Peterson explains.

###

This study is published in the December issue of Political Psychology. Media wishing to receive a PDF of this article please contact journalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net

Political Psychology, the journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, is dedicated to the analysis of the interrelationships between psychological and political processes.

Bill Peterson is a professor at Smith College. He is a personality psychologist who has published many peer reviewed articles on topics related to political psychology. Dr. Peterson is available for media questions and interviews.

Blackwell Publishing is the world's leading society publisher, partnering with more than 600 academic and professional societies. Blackwell publishes over 750 journals annually and, to date, has published close to 6,000 text and reference books, across a wide range of academic, medical, and professional subjects.

"Fresh Stuff From Zonenkinder in Berlin, Germany"

2005-11-14T07:52:00.001-08:00

Benny Profane, porno star

2005-11-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

A fellow pynchonoid writes:

From: [XXX]
Subject: Benito Sfacimento indeed...
Date: November 3, 2005 4:06:25 PM PST
To: pynchonoid@pynchonoid.org

Greetings and salutations!

I feel so proud right now that I just caught a wierd piece of Pynchon news before anyone else. I just watched a new porn DVD entitled "Kill Girl Kill", and during the opening credits I saw that I was about to be treated to a porn performance by none other than one Mr. BENNY PROFANE! In the last scene of the movie, here was a sex scene between a cute young goth girl and Benny... and this porn actor pretty much looked just like his namesake out of "V", sans spectacles. Benny Profane the porn actor looks to be in his early twenties, very pasty complexion with acne, kinda chubby, crewcut, and the most disturbing body modification below the belt that I have ever seen in a porn (this guy's choice of body piercing is not for the squeamish). According to the IMDB, Benny has starred in and directed other dirty movies, which I am curious enough to track down now. I will get back to you on whether or not his other movies involved titanium dentures. So that's it in a nutshell. We have seen Thoms Pynchon references in movies, music, and on television, and now even even good-old pornography is not safe from Pynchon's paranoid grasp on the imagination.

My obssesive viewing of hardcore porn has finally paid off,
George.

here's proof:
http://www.iafd.com/person.rme/perfid=BennyProfane/gender=m/Benny_Profane.htm

Editor's Note: In addition to Kill Girl Kill, Mr. Profane has apparently also appeared in Psychocandy, Psychocandy 2, and Psychocandy 3, distributed by a company called Pirate Booty. "Benny Profane" and video poster images from Freddy and Eddy's Psychocandy Video Review:

the Khirghiz Light

2005-09-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

Rapoon's "The Khirghiz Light" makes tolerable background music:

[...] A founding member of pioneering post-industrial/experimental band :zoviet*france: (AMG), Rapoon (AMG), aka Robin Storey, has produced a large body of solo work that is influenced by Can, Neu!, Stockhausen, Cage, and especially Eno and Hassell. Rapoon is one of the most musically important non-classical artists I will ever be privledged to post about on this blog. He has released 7 of his magnificent, groundbreaking albums through Magnatune. [...] The Kirghiz Light is a 2-CD epic ambient poem that pushes percussion to the background in favor of sound texture manipulation and loop mixing. The human voice is often invoked. Several tracks “We Fell Like Rain”, “Frostling Merge”, and “Into Light”) introduce entirely new ideas to the genre, however minute. The album is monumental. [...]

remembering Pynchon Park

2005-09-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

City's last game is remembered
Sunday, September 04, 2005
By GARRY BROWN
gbrown@repub.com

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, with 1,788 people in the grandstand at Pynchon Park, a big ballyard near Springfield's North End bridge.

The visiting Pittsfield Red Sox were shooting for the Eastern League pennant. They had George Scott at third base, Reggie Smith at second. Two years later, Scott and Smith would be playing different positions for a Boston Red Sox club on its way to an "Impossible Dream" pennant.

The home team, the Springfield Giants, had Tommy Arruda of Fall River, a 17-game winner and an Eastern League All-Star for the second straight year. Springfield also had Denny Sommers, a scrap-iron kind of catcher who prided himself on never missing a game.

Those ballclubs met Sept. 5, 1965 - making this the 40th anniversary Sunday of that game. Springfield has never had a professional baseball game since, and shows no initiative toward ever having one again.

It was sadly fitting that Springfield's last game turned out to be a resounding defeat. Pittsfield scored a 9-0 victory, punctuated by a seven-run splurge in the ninth. Pittsfield ace Billy McLeod threw a two-hitter, putting his record at 18-0. McLeod never made it to the major leagues, but it's doubtful that any other minor league pitcher ever had a better year.

Writing in The Springfield Union of Sept. 5, 1965, the late Ray Fitzgerald noted, "There was much chatter throughout the park that this could be the last year the Giants have a team in Springfield."

Ray Fitz of Westfield covered the Giants during their eight years in Springfield. He went on to become an award-winning sports columnist for the Boston Globe.

His foreshadowing proved to be correct. In early November, 1965, general manager Chick O'Malley announced that the Springfield franchise would relocate to Waterbury, Conn., for the 1966 Eastern League season. Springfield's loss of professional baseball was followed by the loss of Pynchon Park itself. In August 1966, the old stadium burned to the ground and was never rebuilt.

Springfield's first pro team, the Ponies, played in the original Eastern League from 1893-1900. Later in the 20th century, Springfield had teams in the Connecticut State League, Eastern Association, Colonial League, the Eastern League again (1939-43), the New England League and the Triple A International League.

Springfield lost its Triple A team in 1953, but baseball was revived here in 1957 when the San Francisco Giants placed their Class A farm club at Pynchon Park.

The return of baseball was met with a flush of success. Although the team finished last, Springfield led the league with an attendance total of 133,140. In 1958 and '59, San Francisco graced Springfield clubs with talent that produced back-to-back championships. Many of the players from those two teams would go on to become part of San Francisco's pennant-winning club of 1962.

Springfield drew 110,499 in 1959, when the team featured a future Hall of Famer - pitcher Juan Marichal.

After those two big years, attendance gradually diminished. The 1965 team, which went 63-77 and finished 22 games behind Pittsfield, hit the franchise low in attendance - 61,545.

Springfield's franchise became a victim of a general decline of interest in minor league baseball in the mid-'60s. It was not until the mid-'90s that a minor league baseball revival began. Today, the minors thrive, setting attendance records and establishing a revenue stream through effective marketing of team logos, caps and other merchandise.

When the Giants played here, they produced several Eastern League All-Stars and a large group of players who would make it to the major leagues. Felipe Alou, a 17-year major league player who now manages the San Francisco Giants, was Springfield's first star of the 1957-65 era. Felipe's younger brother, Matty, played with Marichal and catcher Tom Haller on the 1959 championship club.

Springfield also had its "career minor leaguers" - good players who just never got the opportunity to move up - like Arruda, Sommers and shortstop Eddie Herstek.

The last game played by the Springfield Giants took place Labor Day at Pittsfield's Wahconah Park. Pittsfield won 3-1 to take the pennant by one game over an Elmira club which had Pittsfield's Mark Belanger at shortstop and future Hall of Famer Earl Weaver as its manager. Scott homered to clinch the victory and the Eastern League's Triple Crown. The losing pitcher? Arruda, who worked the last three innings.

Tony Eichelberger, a second baseman who never got to the big leagues, gained his place in local history as the player to make the last out in Springfield's last game. He grounded to shortstop.

JOHNNY'S QUEST: Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon doesn't like to talk about the batting race, because he puts top priority on winning the American League East title. However, it certainly would be nice to have a batting championship to add to his resume when free-agency time comes around at the end of the season. Damon is looking for a five-year deal, but may have to settle for four. With the Red Sox? That will be one of the big offseason questions.

Damon had the American League batting lead for most of the season, but has slipped a bit lately, thus allowing Texas shortstop Michael Young to move ahead of him. That particular race could go right to the wire.

Young offers an interesting comparison to the rest of his ballclub. While he shoots for the batting title, the rest of the Texas lineup shoots for the American League lead in strikeouts. The Rangers went into the weekend with 913 strikeouts, most in the AL.

WELL-ARMED: When Kevin Millar hit a two-run, game-clinching home run for the Red Sox Wednesday night against Tampa Bay, he did so by getting ahead on the count and taking advantage of it.

As Millar explained his at-bat, he dropped a bit of information that the average baseball fan might not realize.

"That guy has a great arm. I mean, a really great arm. You can't fall behind against a pitcher like that. I was lucky to get ahead, and lucky to get a pitch on the plate," he said.

Millar was talking about Jesus Colome, a 27-year-old right-hander from that baseball hotbed, San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic.

The average baseball fan (present company included) probably knows little of Colome, because he pitches for a last-place team and as a result, doesn't put up eye-catching numbers.

Ah, but the hitters know who can throw. Millar made that clear in his praise of Colome and his fearsome fastball.

OFF WITH THEIR SOX: A friend sent this e-mail: "I can't look at Mark Bellhorn and Alan Embree in Yankee uniforms. It's just not right."

Hey, both players needed a job after being let go by the Red Sox. They were fortunate to land with a good team, so get used to it. We'll be seeing them up close this month - and we'll even get to see how Bellhorn looks without his scraggly beard and hairdo.

Remember the words of Terry Francona: "We love Mark Bellhorn, but we hope he never gets a hit against us."

©2005 The Republican© 2005 MassLive.com All Rights Reserved.

the "real" Kenosha Kid?

2005-08-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

wiki: The Kenosha Kid by Forbes Parkhill.

"the walking machine"

2005-08-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Bearing and recording degradation: In 1945, an astute German woman faces hunger, rape and chaos
review by Edie Meidav, San Francisco Chronicle, 7 August 2005

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City
by Anonymous; translation by Philip Boehm

[...] destined to be a classic, given its depiction of one woman's candid response to an unambiguously horrible season, the vanquishing of Berlin by the Soviets over eight life-changing weeks in the spring and early summer of 1945.

In contrast to many Holocaust diaries, its author was a woman lacking Jewish ties, a German journalist in her 30s who had traveled abroad and who spoke a bit of Russian, her relative fluency becoming both a burden and a privilege once the "Ivans" entered Berlin. "An orphan," she says of herself at one point, "a pale-faced blonde always dressed in the same winter coat." Written often in a basement air raid shelter or in an apartment sacked daily, on scraps and shreds, it was issued in Germany in the '50s, only to be met with a shaming reception, given the book's frank account of rape in war. Hence the author, who died in 2001, chose to remain Anonymous.

Because some of the author's most complex thoughts concern the nexus of gender and war, including the weakening of prewar ideas of German masculinity, the published diary was no naif's tale. The intelligent introduction by Anthony Beevor makes the useful point that rapes by Stalin's army were less often a terror tactic, as was the case in the Spanish Civil War and Bosnia, and more pertinently arose from what Russian psychiatrists have called barrack eroticism, "created by Stalinist sexual repression during the 1930s (which may also explain why Soviet soldiers seemed to need to get drunk before attacking their victims)."

[...] Several sorts of archetypal scenes take place frequently, including the piecing together of a meal out of nothing, running down stairs to the shelter or volunteering in some useless, well-meaning effort. The most socially dense moments are those when Anonymous considers which of the conquering soldiers she should entertain at night: Who among them will act as a "single wolf to keep away the pack"? How can she prevent more of the gang rape she encountered early on? She is clever and survives, and later, after a calm settles in, wonders if she might not have been more clever and survived with greater feeling intact. "To the rest of the world we're nothing but rubble women and trash," she says later on. When she chokes on her own words, we understand that she feels more than she can write, and such moments sing out, among the most moving in an already gripping testament. When her long-lost soldier boyfriend returns, when she shows him her diary, she feels she has lost her connection to him. "For him I've been spoiled," she mourns. Early on, she has begun to dissociate, referring to her depleted self in the third person as "the walking machine." [...]

surreal TRP motif two-for

2005-08-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

Porky Pooper

a screaming comes across the sky

2005-07-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

.... In 1953, Tanaka Tomoyuki, a young film producer working for the Toho Film Studio, was assigned to produce a film entitled In the Shadow of Honor, a Japanese –Indonesian co-production. It was a story about a former Japanese soldier who stayed on following Japan's surrender and participated in the Indonesian independence movement. However, rising diplomatic tensions between the Japanese and Indonesian governments forced the canceling of the project before filming began. With a substantial sum of money allocated for the project, Tanaka had to find a quick alternative project to utilize this budget to make an attractive popular film. Tanaka was a visionary who later produced some of Kurosawa Akira’s best films such as Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and Aka-hige (Red Beard). Facing this crisis, he decided to take advantage of a recent incident that was had captured the popular imagination. That was the hydrogen bomb test Bravo shot that the U.S. conducted on Rongelap (or Bikini) Atoll in the Marshall Islands in March 1954. The radioactive fallout from the test enveloped a Japanese fishing boat called the 5th Lucky Dragon with deadly effects. Influenced by the popular success in 1952 of the re-release of the 1933 classic film King Kong, Tanaka set out to film a giant monster film like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the 1953 American film. [...]

Godzilla's preference for darkness and intense dislike of light evokes the behavior B-29 bombers, which flew at night and sought to evade searchlight beams. From the raid on Tokyo on March 10, 1945, Brigadier General Curtis LeMay, the Commander of the XXI Bomber Command, changed U.S. bombing strategy from precision bombing during the day to carpet bombing with recently developed napalm bombs at night. The U.S. carried out “saturation bombing” until the end of the war in August 1945, repeatedly attacking cities from Hokkaido to Okinawa, including Tokyo, Kawasaki, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Fukuoka and Naha. More than 100 cities were destroyed, causing one million casualties, including more than half a million deaths, the majority being civilians, many of them women and children. Indiscriminate bombing reached its peak with the use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Truman's claim to the contrary notwithstanding. Of course, many Japanese who saw the original Godzilla film had first hand experience of aerial bombing and had lost relatives and friends as a result.

In one scene, a boy cries “Chikusho (“You brute”), watching Godzilla stalking away towards the ocean from Tokyo Bay after a rampage. This scene vividly reminded the audience of B-29 bombers flying off after dropping tens of thousands of bombs on their urban target. The film includes scenes of people trying to escape carrying household goods, of a burning city, of injured people being brought into a safe shelter, and of screaming children. These pictures evoked the horror of napalm attacks in cities throughout Japan. [...]

...read it all: Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster?, History News Network, 25 July 2005

shit money word

2005-07-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

New York, where else?

gravity's rainbow

2005-06-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Rainbow over church
Originally uploaded by Matthäus.

Church or ICBM? Which do you want it to be?

influential?

2005-06-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

"The Kenosha Kid" by Forbes Parkhill
Western Rangers, August 1931

"Hatred and dread hung over the town like a pall. Pard turned against pard; every man suspected his neighbor. And to solve that mystery, The Kenosha Kid--Robinhood of straights and flushes--plays his most thrilling game for a desperation jackpot."

2005-06-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

Fortune Pig

Pointsman

2005-06-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

jace

Gravity's Rainbow, p. 644:

And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City.

with Pynchon on the Dark Side

2005-06-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Commencement Address
Cornell University
President Jeffrey S. Lehman
May 29, 2005

Members of the Class of 2005, candidates for advanced degrees, families and friends of the graduates, Chairman Meinig and other members of the Board of Trustees, honored guests.

On behalf of my colleagues on the faculty, it is my privilege to welcome you to Schoellkopf Field for this morning’s celebration of those students who are completing their degree requirements here at Cornell University. Twenty-eight years ago, I was sitting where today’s graduates are seated for my own Commencement ceremony. You cannot imagine how thrilling it is for me to be here today, as Cornell’s President, addressing today’s graduating students.

At the outset, I think it is important for us all to recognize that none of these graduates made it to this day alone. Others provided the emotional, intellectual, and financial support that was necessary to make their education possible. So let us take a moment to ask those who are not wearing caps and gowns — the parents, grandparents, spouses, partners, siblings, sponsors and friends, all of whom have sustained these graduates — to stand now so that we may acknowledge you and your contribution to their success.

Graduating students, I want you to appreciate just how carefully your beloved Cornell has prepared you to enjoy this moment. It is the moment of your commencement. And we have placed you on Schoellkopf Field, facing west.

West. The direction of the sun as it traverses the sky. By day it is the destination of the celestial body that energizes our planet. By night it is the destination of the other stars that illuminate our sky.

When we look out towards the western horizon, it is natural to ponder our own destinies as well. For the horizon marks the limit of our capacity to see, the boundary between what we know with confidence and what we can only imagine.

Your time at Cornell was always oriented towards the horizon of this graduation day. Today marks the boundary that separates your student life, a life which – at least by your final year – you more or less understood, from life after graduation, a life which lives in the domain of imagination, of aspiration, of hopes, and of dreams.

When we, your teachers, contemplate the boundary that you are now crossing, we know some important things. We know that during your time here at Cornell you have learned much. You have developed expertise in at least one field of study and gained comfortable familiarity with others. You have proven your ability to swim – at least a little. And you have nurtured qualities of mind and heart that transcend any particular body of knowledge or academic discipline. Members of the Class of 2005, the Force is strong with you.

It is clear that "special powers you have." You have the power to do good in the world. You have the power to create the magic that will make our lives better, to make constructive contributions to all humanity. We celebrate you and all that you can accomplish.

But we also know that at this moment you might also be feeling a wee bit anxious. You might be wondering, "What if I fail? What if I don’t live up to the expectations that others have for me, or that I hold for myself?"

Think of the Star Wars movies. We know that, just as the Force is strong with you, it was also strong with Anakin Skywalker.

He too had special powers. But he ended up as Darth Vader. How could that have happened?

So let me begin by reassuring you. None of you will become Darth Vader. Really.

But perhaps your anxiety might present itself in a slightly milder form: how can you be sure that you do not go over to the Dark Side?

And here I think that I can be of some service to you. This morning I will take a little bit of poetic license and extend the metaphor of the Dark Side to explore some of life’s moral complexities – the traps, if you will – that await you on the other side of graduation. These traps might not be so serious as to put you on the road to becoming Sith Lords, but they might nonetheless make it harder for you to realize your full potential.

Let me begin by discussing what I mean, and what I do not mean, by "the Dark Side."

First, when I speak of the Dark Side I am not talking about anything like “unwavering devotion to the cause of evil.” That narrow a view doesn’t work even in the world of George Lucas. Lucas takes great care to indicate that, as Anakin Skywalker turns into Darth Vader, he does not believe that he is embracing evil. He believes that the Jedi are the ones who have been corrupted; he is committed only to knowing the truth and to saving the life of someone he loves.

Nor can we say that the difference between the Sith and the Jedi is that one pursues its ends through intolerable means and the other restricts itself to benign means. Each side is equally willing to be violent to promote its cause.

The Dark Side I am interested in is more subtle. Think of it not as evil, but as good people run amok. Yielding to a certain kind of wholly understandable temptation, in a way that ends up being counterproductive for the individual or damaging to the larger community.

In your lives after graduation, what forms might that Dark Side take? How might they tempt you? How can you successfully resist them, so that your lives are maximally successful, fulfilling, and beneficial?

Rather than approaching those questions head-on, I would like to examine them indirectly, as they are refracted through the lens of fiction. To do so, I will make use of two different works by one of the great writers of our time, Thomas Pynchon.

Pynchon came to Cornell to study engineering physics in 1953. He was a talented science student, but he was also good in other subjects, and in his sophomore year he decided to major in English.

Pynchon had some wonderful teachers in the English department – people like M.H. Abrams, Baxter Hathaway, James McConkey, Arthur Mizener, and Walter Slatoff. They recognized his prodigious talent early on. One of them saw the potential in a paper that Pynchon wrote for class, entitled, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna." The literary journal Epoch was edited by Baxter Hathaway at the time, and he decided to publish "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" in the Spring 1959 issue, just before Pynchon graduated. According to a letter from Pynchon 25 years later, having that story published in Epoch was a major factor in his decision to try to make a living as a writer.

The story concerns a man named Cleanth Siegel who attends a party in Washington, D.C. Siegel finds himself cornered, one at a time, by two different members of an extended, interdependent social group, both of whom regale him with details of their lives, from the petty to the bizarre. As they drone on and on, Siegel feels himself getting fed up with them, and with the entire lot of partygoers. He comes to see himself as a kind of father-confessor to this self-styled “Group.” And then, oddly, he comes to see himself as their savior.

Late in the story, Siegel meets one of the newer, more marginal entrants into the Group, a man named Irving Loon. And Siegel develops a hunch that Loon suffers from a mental illness called Windigo psychosis. A person suffering from Windigo psychosis has a deep identification with the Windigo, a mythical Canadian ice monster that craves human flesh. This identification can often lead the psychotic to become homicidal as well. Pynchon writes, "[I]f this hunch were true, Siegel had the power to work for these parishioners a kind of miracle, to bring them a very tangible salvation."

Now the salvation that Siegel has in mind for them is horrifying. He goes up to Loon and says the word "Windigo," hoping that it might trigger a psychotic break and prompt him to violence. And it works. Loon flips out. While Siegel watches, Loon takes a Browning Automatic Rifle down from the wall, and loads it with ammunition. Siegel casually leaves the party and walks downstairs, whistling as he goes. He hears screams. He shrugs. And as the story ends he hears the first burst of gunfire.

All of us would say that Cleanth Siegel went over to the Dark Side. He would presumably argue that the damage he caused was in some sense necessary to promote a larger good, the overall good of his flock. But this is nothing more than the familiar claim of a fanatic.

Unfortunately, the daily news reminds us that fanatics remain all too present in our world today. In pursuit of what they consider a greater good, they do horrible things. Even murder feels warranted to them, they are so obsessed with achieving their objective.

But in speaking of what I will call the Windigo Dark Side I do not want to limit our attention to this kind of fanaticism. That feels too remote, too distant from our lives. I want to make the challenge more relevant, more difficult, by having the Windigo Dark Side also encompass fanaticism’s much milder cousin: tunnel vision.

People afflicted with moral tunnel vision recognize a good, something that carries a positive benefit for the world. They see a path to that good. And they become so committed to pursuing that path that they lose sight of the costs to other values that might be associated with going down that path. These are the kinds of blind spots that can undermine communal life and collective progress.

The temptations of moral tunnel vision are everywhere we look. Think, for example, of the soldiers who, in their efforts to defeat a dangerous enemy, are tempted to slip into torture. Think of the campaign workers who want to help their candidate, and are tempted to caricature the opponent unfairly. Think of the advocates for a cause who are tempted to use tactics that are disproportionate to the goal they champion. Think of the business leaders who are tempted to be stingy about workplace safety in order to improve their price position in a competitive marketplace. Think of the university leaders who are tempted to deform their institutions in hopes of rising in the magazine rankings.

In the world of action you will find that it is surprisingly easy to become convinced of the paramount importance of your cause. It is a short step to see those who oppose you as evil or immoral, or maybe just stupid or naive. And another short step to tell yourself that the harm you inflict on them is necessary to promote a greater good, or might even be, in some way, for their own good.

When you leave Cornell, I know that you will use your Jedi powers to promote noble ends. And I know that most of the time, you will not find it difficult to remain clear-eyed about the relationship between the goals you are pursuing and the means that are appropriate to them. But you should also be prepared to face the temptations of the Windigo Dark Side.

The second Pynchon work that I would like to discuss is his second novel, The Crying of Lot 49, published in 1965. It tells the story of Oedipa Maas and her struggle to make sense of a world in which nothing can be known with certainty.

The book begins when Maas receives a letter informing her that she has been named co-executor of the estate of her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity. Her efforts to sort out the estate lead her to meet a series of alienated young people, one of whom directs her to attend a play entitled, The Courier’s Tragedy. The play feels like a bad imitation of Shakespeare, a senseless mixture of sex, betrayal, torture, and killing. In Pynchon’s words, it is "like a Road Runner cartoon in blank verse." Late in the performance, Maas is struck by an obscure reference to "Trystero."

Maas sets off to understand this reference. She traces the evolution of the play’s text through different publications, finding many changes associated with the Trystero line, but none that offer any realistic account of why the changes were made. Her odyssey leads her into an increasingly bizarre world. To take just one example, she encounters a man who claims to have built a machine incorporating Maxwell’s Demon. Those of you who, like Pynchon, studied physics, know that Maxwell’s Demon is an imaginary creature who was invented to get around the second law of thermodynamics. And part of Maas’s growing frustration in The Crying of Lot 49 derives from her inability to get the machine to work.

She comes to believe that a conspiracy has created an underground postal system in California, going by the acronym W.A.S.T.E., "We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire." As her obsession with the putative conspiracy deepens, Maas finds herself more and more isolated, cut off from her husband, from her psychiatrist, and even from the lawyer she thought was helping her.

Towards the end of the book, Maas is led to an obscure historical source which suggests that Tristero [sic] really existed – as a man who, in 1577, set up an underground postal system to challenge the existing postal monopoly in sixteenth century Europe.

And then, just when the reader is tempted to believe that the puzzle has been neatly sorted out, Pynchon shows how W.A.S.T.E. and the entire Tristero postal conspiracy might have been an elaborate hoax, constructed by Inverarity himself in order to torment his ex-girlfriend. But we really cannot be sure. Because this is, after all, a world in which nothing can be known with certainty.

In The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon has again given us characters who do not feel quite like us. Cleanth Siegel was a fanatic. And Oedipa Maas seems to be a bit too easily drawn into the world of conspiracies.

But in speaking now of what I will call the Tristero Dark Side I again want to broaden our view. Rather than restricting our focus to conspiracy theorists, I would like to define the Tristero Dark Side by reference to a related but more familiar idea, the rush to judgment. This is the temptation to see too quickly a pattern emerging, to infer too soon an organizing principle, and then to become unable to assimilate contrary evidence into your worldview.

After you leave Cornell, you will have the opportunity to take positions of authority and responsibility. In those roles you will be required to act under conditions of uncertainty, to use your best judgment about what is going on when you have little information. These will be wonderful opportunities for you to do good in the world. They will invite you to draw on your very best qualities – your compassion, your intelligence, your intuition.

And at these moments you will also have the opportunity to negotiate the temptations of the Tristero Dark Side. It will be surprisingly easy to believe that you know more than you do, to see more order in the universe than is really there, to see less entropy, to see conspiracies where there is only coincidence. It will take hard work to remind yourself of the limits of your own knowledge, to stay receptive to new evidence, to keep an open mind, especially when you feel very real time pressures weighing on your decision.

Think, for example, of the national leaders who must assess the danger posed by other countries. The journalists who must decide how much credence to give an anonymous tip. The labor negotiators who must decide whether to trust the latest representations that management has made to them. In these contexts, people are naturally tempted to connect the dots. It is more satisfying to know the answer than to live with ambiguity. And often it is easiest to have that answer take the form of malevolence, or conspiracy. It is so tempting to rush to judgment.

And yet, you can defeat the temptations of the Windigo Dark Side and the Tristero Dark Side. You do not have to develop moral tunnel vision. You do not have to rush to judgment. I am happy to provide you with five strategies for staying true to your best selves. Think of them, if you will, as the five virtues of a Jedi Master: a love for complexity, a patient spirit, a will to communicate, a sense of humor, and an optimistic heart.

First, a love for complexity. Fanaticism is anchored in the belief that one has discovered The Truth, a master key that explains the world. That same kind of belief can generate both tunnel vision and a rush to judgment.

When you feel yourself developing that kind of certainty that you have access to a master key, push back. Use all of your intellectual and sympathetic powers to seek out multiple perspectives. See the world through your critics’ eyes. Feel your adversaries’ pain. When it seems as though you’ve got it all figured out, ask yourself whether Pierce Inverarity might have led you astray, and whether you might be missing something important.

Second, a patient spirit. When the stakes seem highest, it is natural to believe that only swift and decisive action will do. When you feel that impulse, wait. Take a walk around the block. Review in your mind the foreseeable consequences of your decision – the outcome you hope for and the collateral damage that might be avoidable. Remember how much you do not know. Then you will be able to act, and to do so in ways that enable you to keep on learning.

Third, a will to communicate. Pynchon’s writings are filled with the communicative failures of his protagonists. Characters have insights, but they fail to share them with others in a way that is intelligible, in a way that can be helpful. And those failures make it easy for the Dark Side to move in. In these circumstances your rule of thumb should be that responsibility lies with the speaker. It is up to the person with the insight to find a way to convey it so that the audience understands.

As you assume greater leadership roles, having acquired special learning, knowledge, or expertise, that rule of thumb will become more and more important. It is not enough to have such learning. And it is not enough to bombard your listeners with data. You must come to understand what the linguist George Lakoff has called "frames" – the ways in which your listeners structure their perceptions of the world. And you must help them to develop frames that will allow them to appreciate the importance of the learning you have to share.

Fourth, a sense of humor. Humor is the great enemy of the Dark Side, and the most powerful form of humor is self-deprecation. And here Thomas Pynchon has offered us a priceless example.

After graduating from Cornell, Pynchon emerged as one of the great writers of the twentieth century. His five novels have each won wide acclaim. But he decided early on that he would not accept the celebrity that success can bring. He chose instead to do what he could to preserve normalcy in his life by preserving his privacy. In particular, he avoided cameras. He would not allow his photo to be taken. He declined to give interviews.

But then, to the shock and amusement of a literary world that had become somewhat obsessed with finding Thomas Pynchon, along came the January 25, 2004, episode of the television show, The Simpsons.

In that show, Marge Simpson writes her first novel, The Harpooned Heart. Eager to promote sales of the book, the publisher seeks blurbs from Thomas Pynchon and Tom Clancy.

So picture, in your mind, the following scene. Imagine a Simpsons character. A man wearing a paper bag over his head, with a question mark painted on the bag, above the eyes. He’s standing in front of a house, near a big neon sign that reads, "Thomas Pynchon’s House. Come On In." The Pynchon character makes a call on his cell phone to Marge’s publisher.

And here is what the Pynchon character says. (By the way, this really is the voice of Thomas Pynchon):

["Here’s your quote. Thomas Pynchon loved this book. Almost as much as he loves cameras." ]

The Pynchon character ends the call and hangs a big sign around his neck that says "Thomas Pynchon," with an arrow pointing at his head, still covered by a paper bag. He starts shouting at passing cars:

["Hey, over here. Have your picture taken with a reclusive author. Today only, we’ll throw in a free autograph. But wait! There’s more!"]

A self-deprecating sense of humor will take you far indeed, perhaps all the way to the Simpsons.

And finally, an optimistic heart. When we reflect on Anakin’s fall, we recognize that the Dark Side’s greatest allies are fear and despair. Those are the emotions that fuel tunnel vision and a rush to judgment. To fight them you must arm yourself with realistic optimism. Not Panglossian denial of the problems in our world. But a kind of working faith that, on balance, over the long haul, things will work out, justice will be served, progress will occur, success will be achieved. That kind of attitude seems to be a predicate for most forms of collective achievement. Think of it, if you will, as the spirit that underlies Episode IV: A New Hope.

* * *

New graduates of Cornell University, as you face the western horizon of your lives, I ask you to think about this moment in the way that Pynchon had Oedipa Maas think of a critical moment in her own life. "She thought ... of a sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west."

This is your sunrise. You are about to embark on lives of service to a society that desperately needs you. And as you go, let me conclude by sharing a few hopes that we, your teachers, hold for you:

May you enjoy the special pleasures of craft — the private satisfaction of doing a task as well as it can be done.

May you enjoy the special pleasures of profession — the added satisfaction of knowing that your efforts promote a larger public good.

May you be blessed with good luck, and also with the wisdom to appreciate when you have been lucky rather than skillful.

May you find ways to help others under circumstances where they cannot possibly know that you have done so.

May you be patient, and gentle, and tolerant, without becoming smug, self-satisfied, and arrogant.

May you know enough bad weather that you never take today's sunshine for granted, and enough good weather that your faith in the coming of spring is never shaken.

May you always be able to confess ignorance, doubt, vulnerability, and uncertainty.

May the Force be with you.

May you frequently travel beyond the places that are comfortable and familiar, the better to appreciate the miraculous diversity of life.

And may your steps lead you often back to Ithaca. Back to East Hill. For you will always be Cornellians. And we will always be happy to welcome you home.

Congratulations, one and all.

a one-shot flash-in-the-pan amateur?

2005-05-31T09:57:00.000-07:00

Pynchon, for example, wrote in 1983 to apologize for not responding to Barthelme's invitation to a "Postmodernist Dinner"in New York. The notoriously reclusive author of Gravity's Rainbow said he couldn't have attended anyway, as he was "between coasts, Arkansas or Lubbock or someplace like 'at." (Doing what? one wonders.)

Pynchon also moans about suffering from writer's block and feeling "like a one-shot flash-in-the-pan amateur." He jokes that he thought he saw Barthelme in Greenwich Village but didn't approach him "on the off-chance it was Solzhenitsyn" ? a reference to Barthelme's distinctive facial hair. For a return address, Pynchon listed his literary agent.

...from: University of Houston gives insight into writer Donald Barthelme through exhibition of his papers
By Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle, May 27, 2005

new book: Handbook of Narrative

2005-05-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

...looks good:

HERMAN, Luc and Bart VERVAECK, Handbook of Narrative
Analysis, University of Nebraska Press, 2005, 232 p. ISBN: 0-8032-7349-5

The study of narrative has been a continuous concern from antiquity to the present day because stories are everywhere—from fiction across media to nation
building and personal identity. Handbook of Narrative Analysis sorts out both traditional and recent narrative theories, providing the necessary skills to interpret any story that comes along.

In addition to discussing classical theorists such as Gérard Genette, Mieke Bal, and Seymour Chatman, Handbook of Narrative Analysis presents precursors (such as E. M. Forster), related theorists (Franz Stanzel, Dorrit Cohn), and a large variety of
postclassical critics. Among the latter, particular attention is paid to the ethics of reading, gender theory, and "possible worlds."

Not content to consider theory as an end in itself, Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck use two stories by contemporary authors as a touchstone to illustrate each narrative approach, thereby illuminating the practical implications of theoretical preferences and ideological leanings. Marginal glosses guide the reader through discussions of theoretical issues, and an extensive bibliography points readers to the most
current publications in the field. Written in an accessible style, this handbook combines a comprehensive treatment of its subject with a user-friendly format appropriate for specialists and nonspecialists alike.

Luc Herman is a professor of American literature and literary theory at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He is a Pynchon specialist and the author of
Concepts of Realism. Bart Vervaeck is a professor of Dutch literature and literary theory at the Free University Brussels. He is the author of a study on postmodern Dutch literature.

cooking up the urban crocodile story

2005-05-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

Croc hunters tracking a myth
by Ed O'Loughlin, 21 May 2005

The Yarkon and Ayalon rivers meet in Tel Aviv's concrete underworld of highway overpasses and grimy storm drains, and it is here that a strange drama is played out each night.

Outnumbered by journalists, two reluctant rangers from Israel's Nature and National Parks Protection Authority launch their small boat on to the toxic waters and putter upstream into the darkness, torch beams probing for eyes gleaming from the scum.

In recent days, Tel Aviv has been gripped by an outbreak of one of the world's most enduring mind viruses - the legend of the urban crocodile.

Despite its own scepticism, the parks authority says it feels obliged to ease public fears following a number of reported sightings in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.

Hillel Glaffman, head of stream monitoring, says Tel Aviv winters are too cold for crocodiles, "but we can't take any chances, so we have to go out and search the banks. I think if nothing is found in the next few days there will be no further searches."
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The Nile crocodile, its salt water cousin and the North American alligator are among the very few animals that will readily hunt people for food; little wonder that they haunt the imagination.

This urban crocodile story was cooked up by the elusive American author Thomas Pynchon (himself something of an urban legend) for his 1963 debut novel, V.

Despite having "fiction" stamped all over it, the story took a life of its own and has since been misapplied to scores of cities around the world.

In fact, there is nothing particularly far-fetched about the Tel Aviv sightings. Crocodiles lived wild in the region's coastal swamps as recently as a century ago and two years ago a large feral crocodile was pulled out of the River Jordan, where once they were plentiful.

Last year a number of hatchlings were stolen from a crocodile ranch and handed out as presents to Israel's thriving gangster fraternity; some of these young crocodiles have since turned up in streams.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Pynchon!

2005-05-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

My Other Car is a Pynchon Novel

2005-05-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

...is a bumper sticker (scroll down) from this comic strip:

reinserting "the biographical author Thomas Pynchon into the critical equation"

2005-04-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

from Pynchon-l, where the notion encapsulated in the headline-quote above has, freqently, been castigated as sacrilege:

Abstract
Reading Pynchon Rewriting
Luc Herman

The canonization of Thomas Pynchon as the American postmodernist author of the 1960s and 70s has been partially enhanced by his perceived invisibility, which functioned as one of the main proofs of Foucault’s and Barthes’s suggestion that a writer was by no means in control of his own writing. While the paradoxical notion of perceived invisibility doesn’t mean at all that Pynchon is a total mystery—the author can be reached fairly easily through his wife, the literary agent Melanie Jackson, and a few years ago he even consented to a fax interview for a biography on one of his friends (Hajdu 2001)—he has been toying with this image up to the present day. In January 2004, he lent his voice to an episode of The Simpsons in which he appeared as a “famous reclusive author” with a brown paper bag over his head. However, Pynchon has definitely been quite serious in trying to cover up certain aspects of his personal and professional life. In the early 1990s, his lawyers managed to block access to an application he had submitted with the Ford Foundation in 1959 (Weisenburger 1991), and in 1998 they successfully took on the Pierpont Morgan Library, which had acquired a cache of letters to his former agent, Candida Donadio. It was hardly surprising then that genetic criticism on Pynchon, apart from two articles (Fowler 1984; Patteson 1984) about the transformation of his early short story, “Under the Rose” (1962) into chapter three of his first novel, V. (1963), did not amount to much. The typescript of V. acquired by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas (Austin) in 2000 radically changed this critical impasse. The 685 page typescript is a first version of the novel and contains more than a 100 pages eventually removed from the text. Pynchon cannot prevent people from seeing this remarkable object since it is the property of the Ransom Center.

As a long-standing Pynchon critic I took a natural interest in this typescript and am currently working on a series of articles about it. My purpose in this paper is to take a step back from my own research practice so as to consider the politics of genetic criticism dealing with an author who has been eager to cover up all his traces apart from his publications. The typescript obviously reinserts the biographical author Thomas Pynchon into the critical equation. “Should” this lead to a more profound understanding of certain ideological issues related to his first novel, and allow us to “correct” already existing interpretations, or “should” it rather, in an effort to avoid the pitfalls of critical arrogance, be seen as merely one approach among many? In my answer to this question, I will focus on how the character of the black jazz musician in V., McClintic Sphere, is stripped in the novel’s final version of various characteristics indicative of Pynchon’s stand on race at the beginning of his literary career.

Thanks, Rich!

2005-04-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

V. in the hotel lobby....(v.2)

GR pictures on the Web

2005-04-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

Zak Smith:

My entire set of Gravity's Rainbow pictures is now up at this site:

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/zak_smith/title.htm

it is, i believe, the largest piece of art on the web--in terms of the raw amount of visual information available--each of the 755 pictures is more than life size.
-z

"the loudest yelps for liberty"

2005-04-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

Re: Samuel Johnson, this from the Times:

Slavery repelled him. He took a freed slave, Francis Barber, into his house, and bequeathed him the bulk of his estate. His opinion of Americans ("I am willing to love all mankind," he confessed, "except an American") stemmed partly from the colonists' doublethink about freedom and slavery: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?"

From Mason & Dixon, p. 696:

The Driver's Whip is an evil thing, an expression of ill feeling worse than any between Master and Slave,- the contempt of the monger of perishable goods for his Merchandise,-- in its tatter'd braiding, darken'd to its Lash-Tips with the sweat and blood of Drove after Drove of human targets, the metal Wires work'd in to each Lash, its purpose purely to express hate with, and Hate's Corollary,-- to beg for the same denial of Mercy, should, one day, the roles be revers'd. Gambling that they may not be, Or, that they may."

"clogged with belated thought"

2005-04-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

Dave Monroe quoting the Guardian re the late, great Saul Bellow, @ pynchon-l:

And he was always concerned with the modern self, the American self. It is usual to give writers like DeLillo and Pynchon credit for what seems the essentially postmodern insight that we are colonised, mediated, and finally oppressed by modern forms of knowledge - by television, film, advertising, the newspapers - and that this mediation has the effect of making our own mental activity somewhat self-conscious. But Bellow believed that public life drives out private life, and that this pressure on the private was a unique contemporary invention. His modern heroes are clogged with belated thought - they arrive so late in history, when there is too much too know, too much to bear, and no one speaks the same language....

violent prose

2005-04-06T07:54:00.000-07:00

via Heikki @pynchon-l:

"[...] Four years and a series of catastrophic world events later, the new production, Saturday, is here. It begins with its hero, the successful neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, gazing through the window of his house at what might well be another major calamity: A plane is flying over London, on fire. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow also famously opens with a burning projectile over London, and whether or not McEwan is alluding to it, the comparison is instructive. Pynchon: "A screaming comes across the sky." McEwan: "Above the usual deep and airy roar is a straining, choking, banshee sound growing in volume-both a scream and a sustained shout, an impure, dirty noise that suggests unsustainable mechanical effort," etc., etc. Pynchon's sentence contains no adjectives; McEwan's two clauses contain ten. The desired effect is vividness, proximity; the result is the opposite, with the adjectives muffling the screaming, so that it is no longer screaming but only screaming-that-is-being-written-about. Few contemporary writers are as fixated as McEwan on physical violence; yet no one's prose is less violent than his. [...]."

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/11521/index.html

"my Tithable"

2005-03-21T20:24:00.000-08:00

From: George Washington’s Slave Child? by Ed Pompeian, History News Network, 21 March 2005:

“Volumes tell how he fathered a nation. Only iUniverse let me tell how he fathered a slave,” proclaimed a two-page advertisement that appeared in the New York Times Book Review, on Sunday, February 20. The advertisement promoted Linda Allen Bryant’s I Cannot Tell A Lie. Published in 2004, Bryant’s book tells the story of how George Washington, the nation’s first president, fathered his one and only child through a slave. The headline was certainly eye-catching, as intended. But was the claim off the wall?

According to Linda Allen Bryant, Washington initiated a sexual relationship with a female slave named Venus around 1784. Her claim is based on her family’s two hundred year old oral history and on conspicuous evidence showing that the Washington family afforded special treatment to West Ford. Bryant, a direct descendent of West Ford, points to correspondence between George and his brother, John Augustine, to argue that George Washington visited his brother’s plantation in 1784, and that a gap in Washington’s personal diary that year could account for a sexual liaison during this visit.

Mason & Dixon, p. 572:

"Eeh!" Washington grabbing Mason.
"Colonel, Sir," twitching away, "'twould be far preferable,- "
"That voice, Mason! 'tis my Tithable, Gershom!"

[photo source]

the war complex

2005-03-21T10:22:00.000-08:00

...from a University of Chicago Press new book email alert:

The War Complex by Marianna Torgovnick

Marianna Torgovnick argues that we have lived, since the end of World War II, under the power of a war complex--a set of repressed ideas and impulses that stems from our unresolved attitudes toward the technological acceleration of mass death. This complex has led to gaps and hesitations in public discourse about atrocities committed during
the war itself. And it remains an enduring wartime consciousness, one most recently animated on September 11.

Gravity's Rainbow, p. 645:

The Germans-and-Japs story was only one, rather surrealistic version of the real War. The real War is always there. The dying tapers off now and then, but the War is still killing lots and lots of people. Only right now it is killing them in more subtle ways. Often in ways that are too complicated, even for us, at this level, to trace.

red herring or highbrow beard?

2005-03-19T13:24:00.000-08:00

But the joke's on Hemingway. According to Lethem, men without women employ comic books to compensate for their absence. When his characters aren't listening to Frank Zappa and the Talking Heads, or dreaming up scenarios for interactive video games, or hiring out as "advertising robots" at the local Undermall, or destroying the world with air bags made of cabbages, they are thinking about Stan Lee and R. Crumb, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, and Captain America. If Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, Walt Whitman, and Carl Jung show up in "Super Goat Man," the most ambitious of these stories, they are really only red herrings or highbrow beards in an epic tale of an Electric Comics superhero from the Sixties who is reduced in the Eighties to teaching a college seminar on "Dissidence and Desire: Marginal Heroics in American Life 1955–1975."

...read it all: Welcome to New Dork, by John Leonard, New York Review of Books, 7 April 2005

swans sacred for V

2005-03-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

Swans were sacred to the goddess...because the V-formation of their flight was a female symbol, and because, at mid-summer, they flew north to unknown breeding grounds, supposedly taking the dead king's soul with them.

"Tyche and Nemesis"
Robert Graves
The Greek Myths: 1, p. 126

Leda and the Swan (16th century)
Paolo Veronese [CORBIS/Bettman source]

the pig as technology transmission vector

2005-03-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

The wild origins of the domestic pig:

The new findings show that domestication must have taken place in several different geographical regions in both Europe and Asia. Moreover, it is highly probable that domestication took place in many places within each respective region. This means that it was the technology for domesticating the wild boar that spread across the world, not domesticated wild boar as such.

The new study also clearly demonstrates that the DNA profile of European domesticated pigs is very similar to that found among today's European wild boar and is distinct from that found by scientists in Turkey and Iran. This contradicts earlier theories that the wild boar was never domesticated in Europe and that domestication took place in the Middle East.

V. | 16:

Yibble, yibble, Muslim pig.

that duck!

2005-03-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

Vaucanson's Duck

Necrophilia among ducks ruffles research feathers
by Donald MacLeod, Guardian, 8 March, 2005

The strange case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck pushed out the boundaries of knowledge in a rather improbable way when it was recorded by Dutch researcher Kees Moeliker.

It may have ruffled a few feathers, but it earned him the coveted Ig Nobel prize for biology awarded for improbable research, and next week he will be recounting his findings to UK audiences on the Ig Nobel tour.

Ducks behave pretty badly, it seems. It is not so much that up to one in 10 of mallard couples are homosexual - no one would raise an eyebrow in the liberal Netherlands - but they regularly indulge in "attempted rape flights" when they pursue other ducks with a view to forcible mating. "Rape is a normal reproductive strategy in mallards," explains Mr Moeliker.

As he recounts in his seminal paper, The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard anas platyrhynchos, he was in his office in the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, when he was alerted by a bang to the fact a bird had crashed into the glass facade of the building. "I went downstairs immediately to see if the window was damaged, and saw a drake mallard (anas platyrhynchos) lying motionless on its belly in the sand, two metres outside the facade. The unfortunate duck apparently had hit the building in full flight at a height of about three metres from the ground. Next to the obviously dead duck, another male mallard (in full adult plumage without any visible traces of moult) was present. He forcibly picked into the back, the base of the bill and mostly into the back of the head of the dead mallard for about two minutes, then mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force, almost continuously picking the side of the head.

"Rather startled, I watched this scene from close quarters behind the window until 19.10 hours during which time (75 minutes) I made some photographs and the mallard almost continuously copulated his dead congener. He dismounted only twice, stayed near the dead duck and picked the neck and the side of the head before mounting again. The first break (at 18.29 hours) lasted three minutes and the second break (at 18.45 hours) lasted less than a minute. At 19.12 hours, I disturbed this cruel scene. The necrophilic mallard only reluctantly left his 'mate': when I had approached him to about five metres, he did not fly away but simply walked off a few metres, weakly uttering a series of two-note 'raeb-raeb' calls (the 'conversation-call' of Lorentz 1953). I secured the dead duck and left the museum at 19.25 hours. The mallard was still present at the site, calling 'raeb-raeb' and apparently looking for his victim (who, by then, was in the freezer)."

Mr Moeliker suggests the pair were engaged in a rape flight attempt. "When one died the other one just went for it and didn't get any negative feedback - well, didn't get any feedback," he said.

His findings have provoked a lot of interest - especially in Britain for some reason - but no other recorded cases of duck necrophilia. However, Mr Moeliker was informed of an American case involving a squirrel and a dead partner, although in this case it is not known whether the necrophilia observed was homosexual or not as the victim had been run over by a truck shortly before the incident.

Mason & Dixon, p. 374:374:

"Agreed, you must consider how best to defend yourself,-- wear clothing it cannot bite through, leather, or what's even more secure, chain-mail,-- its Beak being of the finest Swedish Steel, did I mention that, yes quite qable, when the Duck, in its homicidal Frenzy, is flying at high speed, to penetrate all known Fortification, solid walls being as paper to this Juggernaut.… One may cower within, but one cannot avoid,-- le Bec de la Mort, the…'Beak of Death.'"

"together they are a long skin interface"

2005-03-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

New Technology to Use Human Body As Digital Transmission Path, PhysOrg.com, 22 February 2005:

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) is pursuing research and development of an innovative Human Area Networking technology called RedTacton that safely turns the surface of the human body into a data transmission path at speeds up to 10 Mbps between any two points on the body. Using a novel electro-optic sensor, NTT has already developed a small PCMCIA card-sized prototype RedTacton transceiver. RedTacton enables the first practical Human Area Network between body-centered electronic devices and PCs or other network devices embedded in the environment via a new generation of user interface based on totally natural human actions such as touching, holding, sitting, walking, or stepping on a particular spot.

Gravity's Rainbow, p. 121

Together they are a long skin interface, flowing sweat, close as muscles and bones can press, hardly a word beyond her name, or his.

"I'd rather be a pig than a fascist"

2005-03-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

Porco Rosso

Totoro and the culture of fear, Orcinus, 1 March 2005:

The past week or so, I've been enjoying the recent American releases of two of anime master Hayao Miyazaki's earlier films, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Porco Rosso. Like all of his work, they're both wonders to watch. Nausicaa, his first film, is a worthy variation on Dune as a kind of biological fable, while Porco Rosso is an amazing piece of work for those (like me) who have a love of well-crafted flying sequences. It also has a line for the ages: "I'd rather be a pig than a fascist."

Gravity's Rainbow p. 555:

William must have been waiting for the one pig that wouldn't die, that would validate all the ones who'd had to, all his Gadarene swine who'd rushed into extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but by trust for men, which the men kept betraying … possessed by innocence they couldn't lose … by faith in William as another variety of pig, at home with the Earth, sharing the same gift of life.…

a sewer rat in love

2005-02-28T09:30:00.000-08:00

Molls Who Have It Their Way With a Gang of New York by Janet Maslin, New York Times, 28 February 2005:

"Metropolis" follows an upward trajectory, literally rising from the sewers to the Brooklyn Bridge's towers. And it manages to be carnal and scatological at any height. "Generally, sewage runs thin and gray, not half as bad as you'd think," Ms. Gaffney explains, as the sewer system becomes central to a Whyo heist scheme. And as for Frank, an expert on these underground tunnels, after he is smitten by Beanie: "When he saw a rat in the sewer now, he thought of it as a happy rat, as a sewer rat in love."

V., p. 120, 124:

They were entering Fairing's Parish, named after a priest who'd lived topside years ago. During the Depression of the '30's, in an hour of apocalyptic well-being, he had decided that the rats were going, to take over after New York died. Lasting eighteen hours a day, his feat had covered the breadlines and missions, where he gave comfort, stitched up raggedy souls. He foresaw nothing but a city of starved corpses, covering the sidewalks and the grass of the parks, lying belly up in the fountains, hanging wrynecked from the streetlamps. The city - maybe America, his horizons didn't extend that far - would belong, to the rats before the year was out. This being the case, father Fairing thought it best for the rats to be given a head start - which meant conversion to the Roman Church. One night early in Roosevelt's first term, he climbed downstairs through the nearest manhole, bringing a Baltimore Catechism, his breviary and, for reasons nobody found out, a copy of Knight's Modern Seamanship. The first thing he did according to his journals (discovered months after he died was to put an eternal blessing and a few exorcisms on the water flowing through the sewers between Lexington and the East River and between 86th and 79th Streets. This as the area which became Fairing's Parish. These benisons made sure of an adequate supply of holy water; also eliminated the trouble of individual baptisms when he finally converted all the rats in the parish. Too, he expected other rats to hear what was going on under the upper East Side, and come likewise to be converted. Before long he would be spiritual leader of the inheritors of the earth. He considered it small enough sacrifice on their part to provide three of their own per day for physical sustenance, in return for the spiritual nourishment he was giving them. [....] one of the apocrypha dealt with an unnatural relationship between the priest and this female rat, who was described as a kind of voluptuous Magdalen. From everything Profane had heard, Veronica was the only member of his flock Father Fairing felt to have a soul worth saving. She would come to him at night not as a succubus but seeking instruction, perhaps to carry back to her nest - wherever in the Parish it was - something of his desire to bring her to Christ: a scapular medal, a memorized verse from the New Testament, a partial indulgence, a penance.

Kirghiz Light

2005-02-19T14:42:00.000-08:00

Ink helps drive democracy in Asia, BBC, 19 February 2005:

The Kyrgyz Republic, a small, mountainous state of the former Soviet republic, is using invisible ink and ultraviolet readers in the country's elections as part of a drive to prevent multiple voting.

....The ink is sprayed on a person's left thumb. It dries and is not visible under normal light. However, the presence of ultraviolet light (of the kind used to verify money) causes the ink to glow with a neon yellow light.

At the entrance to each polling station, one election official will scan voter's fingers with UV lamp before allowing them to enter, and every voter will have his/her left thumb sprayed with ink before receiving the ballot. If the ink shows under the UV light the voter will not be allowed to enter the polling station. Likewise, any voter who refuses to be inked will not receive the ballot.

....see "Kirghiz Light" in Gravity's Rainbow@ Amazon.com index

"this octopus was not in good mental health"

2005-01-23T14:43:00.000-08:00

A huge octopus emerges from the ocean, wraps an oversized tentacle around the waist of a young woman, and proceeds to drag her into the sea. This memorable episode from Thomas Pynchon's vast and surreal novel, Gravity's Rainbow, has a happy ending, however, owing to the intervention of Mr. Tyrone Slothrop, who first unavailingly beats the molluscan monster over the head with an empty wine bottle. Then, in a stroke of zoologically informed genius, he offers the briny behemoth something even more alluring than a fair maiden: a crab. It works, suggesting that this particular octopus conforms, at least in its dietary preference, to the norm for its species. We learn, nonetheless, that "In their brief time together, Slothrop formed the impression that this octopus was not in good mental health."

It isn't entirely clear where the creature's mental derangement lies. After all, it behaved with a reasonable degree of healthy, enlightened self-interest in seeking first to consume the young lady, and then forgoing her for the even more delectable crab. Yet nature writer David Quammen may have been onto something when he pointed out that octopi generally - not just Pynchon's fictional creation - might be especially vulnerable to mental disequilibrium, if only because one of their distinguishing characteristics is having immense brains. Mental strain is probably not unknown among animals, but there seems little doubt that it is particularly well-developed in the species Homo sapiens, whose brains - like Pynchon's octopus - are especially large, and whose strain, is correspondingly (and regrettably) great.

This essay will argue that one of the major themes of evolutionary biology - the conflict between individual selfishness and group altruism - is paralleled by a comparable theme in literature, and that each usefully illuminates the other.

The tension between individual and group may also shed light on another longstanding evolutionary conundrum: Why do people have such big brains, bigger even than our hungry octopus? There has been no shortage of possible answers, including the possibility that humanity's oversized intellect has evolved as a means of facilitating communication, tool use, making war on our enemies and/or defending our friends, attracting and keeping mates, or dealing with predators as well as prey. There is even the prospect that the human intellect might be a by-product of sexual selection, comparable to the peacock's flamboyant tail feathers. Here is yet another possibility, suggested by the self/group tension: Maybe human beings owe their mental adroitness to the peculiar pressures of keeping a very complex social life in adaptive equilibrium. This possibly hare-brained schema for explaining our human-brained selves has at least one virtue: It speaks to a long-standing question in ethics, which is also illuminated - at least in part - by evolutionary biology: How to navigate the conflicting demands of personal selfishness and social obligation?

Moreover, the question of individual versus group generates a useful way of looking at one of the most pervasive yet elusive themes in literature: the dilemma of self-assertion in a world that often calls for precisely the personal abnegation that our genes are generally primed to reject. This conflict between self and others, selfishness and altruism, the needs of the individual and those of society, has a long pedigree in the world of stories, as well as an equally potent basis in the world of life. Homo sapiens is a social creature. So, when people battle to make their way, as individuals, within a larger social group, they are doing something that all social species do (often in remarkably similar ways). Human beings are simply more aware of it than is the average prairie dog or pumpkinseed sunfish. And so, people not only live through these dilemmas, they write about them.

This essay, accordingly, suggests that when writers explore one of their favorite themes - the ever-present struggle between the individual and the larger group - they are recreating a parallel, and fundamental theme of biology.

As difficult as it must be for any creature to balance its various competing demands (to eat or sleep, attack or retreat, eat a damsel or a crab, etc.) such choices are probably most confusing in the social domain. For as hard as it may be to predict the vagaries of weather, for example, the vagaries of one's fellow creatures have to be even more complex, confusing, and stressful. And when it comes to negotiating a complicated and difficult social life, human beings are in a class by themselves. Clearly, our remarkably over-sized brains do not satisfy themselves with simply meeting the contingencies of daily life. Human neurons are obsessed with confronting all sorts of difficult issues, mostly of their own making. Small wonder that so many people, like Pynchon's octopus, are stressed.

And small wonder, as well, that so much fiction revolves around the conflicting demands of self versus group, selfishness versus altruism, callow youth versus responsible adulthood, individual needs versus society's expectation: it is a conflict that may well reside, literally, in our genes....

....read it all: Biology Lurks Beneath: Bioliterary Explorations of the Individual versus Society by David P. Barash, Department of Psychology, University of Washington.

L.S.D.

2005-01-23T08:43:00.000-08:00

From Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies:

On Wednesday at 12 noon EST, MAPS offered its first live internet audio broadcast of our celebration of Albert Hofmann's 99th birthday. Dr. Rick Doblin, president of MAPS, and a panel of prominent scientists spoke to Albert live in Switzerland about the renewal of psychedelic research and their work....To listen to the conference call, go to: http://www.maps.org/conferences/ah99/ah99b.mp3

The Crying of Lot 49, p. 111:

There is me, there are the others. You know, with the LSD, we're finding, the distinction begins to vanish. Egos lose their sharp edges.

The structure of lysergic acid diethylamide. The diethylamide group is shown in red and the indole ring in blue.

oneirine lives

2005-01-19T19:13:00.000-08:00

Gumpelmann. A Psychiatric Novel

Publisher's information

In this brilliant comic novel Karl Koehler paints a nightmarish picture of his former psychiatric colleagues and their drug studies.

Gumpelmann, an alter ego of the author, confronts an all-powerful psychiatric establishment intent on pushing through its agenda at all costs. In this instance it is the drug oneirine - first described in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow—that psychiatrists believe holds the key to developing the ultimate paranoid mouse.

Who then could better describe the sexual humiliations and numerous forms of never-ending dependency originating in a clinic with an academic dog-eat-dog mentality primarily geared to doing the bidding of the drug companies than a psychiatric insider?

A funny, corrosive and entirely absorbing novel written in the subversive tradition of American postmodern literature, which could just as well have been entitled "Sex, Drugs and Doo Wop."

About the Author

Karl Koehler was born in Manhattan in 1935, grew up in the Bronx and, after studying at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, completed his medical studies in Innsbruck. After finishing his psychiatric residency in Cornell, Heidelberg and the State Hospital in Marburg, he became a Privatdozent in Heidelberg; later he accepted an appointment as head of Social Psychiatry at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Bonn. He is presently living in retirement with his wife in the Bonn-Cologne area.

Published in German. Thanks to p-list Otto for the heads-up.

Beethoven, Hansel & Gretel, V-2, paedophilia

2005-01-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

Israeli opera signs up Buchenwald production:

ERFURT - The New Israeli Opera Tel Aviv will participate in the controversial staging of Beethoven's prison-based opera "Fidelio" at the site of Buchenwald concentration camp, German organisers of the production announced on Tuesday.

The 14-year-old opera company, under the general direction of Hanna Munitz, will provide musicians and singers for the production, scheduled for 2007 at the Nazi death camp site near Weimar in eastern Germany.

The controversial production is the brainchild of Giancarlo del Monaco, guest artistic director of the new Erfurt Opera House.

Del Monaco, 61, son of famed tenors Mario del Monaco, currently is embroiled in another controversy involving a production of German composer Engelbert Humperdinck's much-loved 1893 opera "Hansel And Gretel".

The Erfurt production, which premiere's next weekend, shifts the story from a fairy tale forest witch's cottage made of candy to a sinister metropolitan red-light district where children are abducted and held as sex slaves for paedophiles.

The sandman of the original libretto is transformed into a cocaine-sniffing procurer who hands over child abductees to the "witch" who, in del Monaco's production, is a seemingly respectable clergyman.

As he has with the "Fidelio" production, del Monaco has defended his "Hansel And Gretel" production, saying the original story by the Brothers Grimm was designed to make children wary of strangers promising them sweets.

"Underlying the libretto is a tacit comment on paedophilia, violence and sexual abuse of children," del Monaco said in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"I am not attacking the church, but only attacking the church's continued denial that such things have gone on and continue to go on," he told dpa.

"Fidelio", Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera, is a story of political repression, unjust imprisonment and eventual dramatic liberation.

Gravity's Rainbow, p. 50:

How Pointsman lusts after them, pretty children. Those drab undershorts of his are full to bursting with need humorlessly, worldly to use their innocence

see also:

Beethoven in Gravity's Rainbow @Amazon.com index

Hansel and Gretel in Gravity's Rainbow @Amazon.com index

deathmarch

2005-01-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch: Our First Few Steps..., a group reading of the novel, underway at cecil vortex. "All are welcome."

a madman dreams of space conquest

2005-01-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

Download be damned, can't resist the Rocket. Image from Comic Book Bondage Cover of the Day, "the web's foremost reference site for bondage covers on mainstream comic books."

urban gorilla

2005-01-07T07:59:00.000-08:00

Through the use of posters, stencils, stickers and apparel, we aim to rally skateboarders and artists alike to "Reclaim The Streets!"

... read it all: The Urban Guerilla Projekt - An Explanation, at the always-interesting Wooster Collective.

Gravity's Rainbow, p. 368:

Well, what it is--is? what's "is"?--is that King Kong, or some creature closely allied, squatting down, evidently just, taqking a shit, right in the street! and everything! a-and being ignored, by truckload after truckload of Russian enlisted men in pisscutter caps and dazed smiles, grinding right on by--"Hey!" Slothrop wants to shout, "hey lookit that giant ape? or whatever it is. You guys? Hey . . ." But he doesn't, luckily. On closer inspection, the crouching monster turns out to be the Reichstag building, shelled out, airbrushed, fire-brushed powdery black on all blastward curves and projections, chalked over its hard-echoing carbon insides with Cyrillic initials, and many names of comrades killed in May.

Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?

There is a long folk history of this figure, the Badass. He is usually male, and while sometimes earning the quizzical tolerance of women, is almost universally admired by men for two basic virtues: he Is Bad, and he is Big. Bad meaning not morally evil, necessarily, more like able to work mischief on a large scale. What is important here is the amplifying of scale, the multiplication of effect.

Contact Information:		John Buettner, Director of Media Relations 410-810-7408 jbuettner2@washcoll.edu
Sending Institution:		Washington College
Story Date:		May 20, 2006
Keywords:		Marshall Shord, Sophie Kerr Prize, literature, award, Washington College