Ärsyttävä lainausmerkintä
Tässä merkinnässä ei sinällään ole sisältöä, onpahan vain lainaus Thomas Pynchonin loistokirjasta V (jolla ei ole mitään tekemistä sarjakuvan tai elokuvan kanssa). Pynchon on ehkä yksi parhaista elävistä kirjailijoista.
The Crew produced nothing but talk and at that not very good talk. A few like Slab actually did what they professed; turned out a tangible product. But again, what? Cheese Danishes. Or this technique for the sake of technique - Catatonic Expressionism. Or parodies on what someone else had already done?
So much for Art. What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could ser forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
“Mathematically, boy,” he told himself, “if nobody else original comes along they’re bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?” What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
It scared Eigenvalue, sometimes. He would go and in back and look at the set of dentures. Teeth and metals endure.
Thomas Pynchon: V. Bantam Books 1963. pp. 277.
