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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Reading -- February 2003. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.
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Reading -- February 2003
by bucy at 8:36 pm EST, Feb 9, 2003 |
Just finished Pynchon's Vineland and
Barabasi's Linked Pynchon is brilliant. I'm also working on Gravity's Rainbow which is a lot less accessible. I enjoyed Vineland. I often found myself laughing out loud at some of the incredibly perverse notions he drops along the way. I didn't read too deeply into it but wouldn't be suprised if the whole thing was a fable about hippy-ism, etc, between the 60s and the 80s... Linked was an interesting, fairly light look at the evolving science of networks -- computer, human, financial or otherwise. Its really interesting that all of these things seem -- at first glance, anyway -- to have similar structure. Lots of pointers to the literature if nothing else. Still in progress: Gravity's Rainbow (Pynchon)
The Cichlid Fishes (Barlow) To buy (or not): Daniel Dennett has a new book out. I've found him to be pretty agreeable in the past but he seems to want to give us free will in this one. I'm skeptical. There's the new Gibson novel. Hunter Thompson has new book as well. Looks to be part autobiographical and part commentary on 9/11, etc, etc. Bruce Sterling has a new book out. Another "history of the future" or something ... wank wank. |
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RE: Reading -- February 2003
by Lost at 9:30 pm EST, Feb 9, 2003 |
Pynchon is incredible. I only wish he was more prolific. I too just finished Vineland, and it has me aching to get ahold of more Pynchon. I have yet to read Mason Dixon, and I'd love to get ahold of a copy... but its too damned expensive to have books sent here, and the local English bookstore refused to order me books last time I was there. "No orders till thursday." in the grand tradition of the classic Russian fuck you sign, "Closed for 15 minutes" (while I smoke and read). I found this quote in Vineland, and I thought some here might find it interesting. "If patterns of ones and zeros were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths? It would have to be up one level at least - an angel, a minor god, something in a UFO. It would take eight human lives and deaths just to form one character in this being's name -its complete dossier might take up a considerable piece of the history of the world. We are digits in God's computer, she not so much thought as hummed to herself to a sort of standard gospel tune, And the only thing we're good for, to be dead or to be living, is the only thing He sees. What we cry, what we contend for, in our world of toil and blood, it all lies beneath the notice of the hacker we call God." --Thomas Pynchon, Vineland |
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RE: Reading -- February 2003
by leed25d at 10:50 pm EST, Feb 9, 2003 |
bucy wrote: ]
] Pynchon is brilliant. I'm also working on Gravity's
] Rainbow which is a lot less accessible. I enjoyed
] Vineland. I often found myself laughing out loud at
] some of the incredibly perverse notions he drops along the
] way. I didn't read too deeply into it but wouldn't be
] suprised if the whole thing was a fable about hippy-ism, etc,
] between the 60s and the 80s...
] I've read GR half a dozen times over the years. One of my favorite images from Vineland is the one of the parrots who told stories ''of the coming of the white man, of the disappearance of the trees...'' The only Pynchon book which I haven't been able to get through is Mason and Dixon the typography makes it hard to read, I think, but I know that eventually I'll try again. |
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