(105) The shows alluded to in Vineland include talk-shows, game-shows, sitcoms, cop-shows and cartoons. For an exhaustive list of references cf. McHale, p. 286, note 4. BACK
(106) More examples of weird docudramas can be found in McHale, p. 116. BACK
(107) "In this respect, if in no other, Pynchon is a verisimilar realist, for he faithfully represents Americans doing what Americans do more often, perhaps, than they do anything else, namely watching TV." McHale, p. 116/117. BACK
(108) McHale, p. 117. BACK
(109) N. Katherine Hayles, "'Who Was Saved?' Families, Snitches, and Recuperation in Pynchon's Vineland". Critique 32:2 (Winter 1990), p. 77-92. Here p. 77. BACK
(110) Gravity's Rainbow appeared in 1973, Vineland in 1989. In between Pynchon published some articles in the New York Times, some blurbs for book jackets, and a new edition of Slow Learner to which he wrote a rather personal introduction. These were nothing but tidbits for the ever hungry Pynchon industry which needed something more substantial to keep itself going. BACK
(111) David Cowart, "Attenuated Postmodernism: Pynchon's
Vineland".
Critique
32:2 (Winter 1990),
p. 67-76, p. 71. BACK
(112) McHale, p. 121. BACK
(113) Wallace, "E Unibus Pluram", p. 156. BACK
(114) Deborah L. Madsen, The Postmodernist Allegories
of Thomas Pynchon. New York: St Martin's Press 1991,
p. 132. BACK
(115) Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken 1975. "In all developed broadcasting systems the characteristic organisation, and therefore the characteristic experience, is one of sequence or flow. This phenomenon, of planned flow, is then perhaps the defining characteristic of broadcasting, simultaneously as technology and cultural form." (p. 86) BACK
(116) Williams, p. 87. BACK
(117) Williams, p. 90. BACK
(118) Williams, p. 91/92. BACK
(119) cf. Tichi, "Television and Recent American Fiction", p. 119. BACK
(120) Tichi, "Television and Recent American Fiction", p. 120. BACK
(121) ibid. BACK
(122) Klepper, p. 219. BACK
(123) McHale, p. 135. BACK
(124) McHale, p. 133. BACK
(125) McHale, p. 134. BACK
(126) McHale, p. 137. BACK
(127) cf. p. 327: "Prairie liked to imagine herself as [...] a figure of grace, no matter what hair, zit, or weight problems might be accumulating in the nonfantasy world. On the Tube she saw them all the time, these junior-high gymnasts in leotards, teenagers in sitcoms, girls in commercials learning from their moms about how to cook and dress and deal with their dads, all these remote and well-off little cookies going 'Mm! this rilly is good!' or the ever-reliable 'Thanks, Mom,' Prairie feeling each time this mixture of annoyance and familiarity [...]." BACK
(128) As Carol Shloss writes in her book In Visible Light, there was a common view held in the middle of the last century which stressed the purely mechanical connection between what was in front of the camera and the ensuing image on the light-sensitive plate: "[W]hat is most interesting about the early attitudes toward photography [...] is their almost uniform failure to regard the photographer as an active participant in, and shaper of, procedures and events." (Carol Shloss, In Visible Light: Photography and the American Writer, 1840-1940. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press 1987, p. 32) The first appellations of daguerreotypes indicate that they were understood to be imprints of nature itself: Joseph-Nicephore Niepce, a precursor to Daguerre's, called his pictures "heliographies"; Daguerre referred to his daguerreotypes as "sun pictures"; the English inventor William Fox Talbot named his first book of photographs The Pencil of Nature; and Francois Gouraud, the man who brought photography to America, summarized the photographic process with the words "Nature impresses an image of herself." For further information on the early discourse of daguerreotypie cf. Beaumont Newhall, Geschichte der Photographie. München: Schirmer/Mosel 1989, chapters 1-5. BACK
(129) Hayles, p. 83. BACK
(130) This "naivete" in regard to the revealing power of photography is again reminiscent of the early discourse on the medium. Holgrave, the daguerreotypist in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851), expresses this view most clearly: "There is a wonderful insight in heaven's broad and simple sunshine. While we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would venture upon, even could he detect it." (Seymour L. Gross (ed.), Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables. An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Essays in Criticism. New York/London: Norton 1967, p. 91) There is not much difference between Holgrave«s "secret character" and the corruption which 24fps hope to capture in their films. This alone betrays their rather naive take on the medium. BACK
(131) Hayles, p. 83. BACK
(132) cf. Shloss, p. 42 for a description of the chemical process of daguerreotyping. BACK
(133) Hayles, p. 85. BACK
(134) Hayles, p. 87. BACK