GATE

[version]

all that sentimental stuff about Maxine and family i found offputting in the extreme

He got old and started a family. There's a clear before and after in his bibliography. He does V., Lot 49 and GR, disappears for seventeen years then reappears with Vineland and a much more sentimental tone.

 

[version]

I doubt you'd enjoy Bleeding Edge if you read it again. I think the first three are the only ones you'd warm to.

 

[version]

it's in Akira but if you read the thread you will see version has given over 100 examples of the appearance of this theme throughout all of popular culture, high art, myth and religion.

Harry Potter's another.

 

[Mr. Tea]

He was posting photos of his copy and it all looks like this.

I reckon anyone who reads a book like that - any book, but especially a Pynchon book - probably looks like this:

 

[version]

 

[Mr. Tea]

Is that a special copy with extra spacing between the lines to enable this kind of annotation?

 

[version]

I'm not sure. It might be an ARC or galley.

 

[version]

He's using a tarot card as a bookmark too.

 

[luka]

iv of swords

 

[luka]

 

[Mr. Tea]

He's using a tarot card as a bookmark too.

I'd be disappointed if he wasn't.

 

[sus]

That trope of "gifted" people being put into programs appears over and over in superhero stories. You can see something similar in stuff like Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Street Sharks and Biker Mice from Mars. It's always young people being recruited in some fashion, sometimes experimented on.

European nations have been doing this stuff since Enlightenment era, yeah? Pull in bright kids from the countryside, educate them in the capital. Sorta makes sense it would seep into the cultural fabric.

 

[sus]

Feel like nuclear age really plays a role in this too. Darwin + nukes = mutants with superpowers, naturally.

 

[linebaugh]

European nations have been doing this stuff since Enlightenment era, yeah? Pull in bright kids from the countryside, educate them in the capital. Sorta makes sense it would seep into the cultural fabric.

I’ve read a take on gravity’s rainbow that it’s a kind of reverse of the coming of age education novel trope where the kid from the colonies/country is sent to europe to receive a formal education

 

[linebaugh]

lack of memory of GATE - (we all did many many hours there, and it's very vague)

I remember GATE vividly. once a week in the portables out behind the school run by this low energy frogish looking woman mrs. traylor. I did a project on the origins of basketball and did another on my family tree where I misspelled my own name every time it was written.

 

[catalog]

This is the scariest thread on dissensus. My mum pulled me out of the state school system when I was 8 and I don't think English private schools did this, or at least I've no memory of it.

 

[catalog]