And this, in turn, can be very precisely timed. Petillon, following Pynchon, hones in on the exact moment as Marshall McLuhan: the launching of Sputnik. The stifling stasis of the Eisenhower late Modernist mirage essentially ended on this day.
"This came to an abrupt end in 1957 when America was jolted out of its complacency by the shattering news that the Russian Sputnik was orbiting the earth, and started waking from its drowsy, almost Edwardian languor. The Crying of Lot 49 is a record of that slow process of awakening, as new voices "humming out there," at first muffled and faintly heard, began to register."
As per McLuhan, nature and artifact became one with this launch. Collective human consciousness became externalized and identical with the body of the world. Heaven was finally married, in the garb of high technology, to Earth. And yet not unambiguously so. Was this the Day of Pentecost or the Fall of Babel? Was the satellite launched by the Empire or the Counterforce? Was it a triumph of information or entropy, ecstasy or paranoia? None can say.
groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com
