Abstract

'''[O]ur Bible is Nature, wherein the Pentateuch, is the Sky,'" says Charles Mason, former Assistant to the Astronomer Royal, at the end of Mason & Dixon (772). Besides its theological implications, this statement also describes Pynchon's poetics. Anyone who has read a single page of his novels knows what inexhaustible quarry of metaphors nature is for him, as rich as the Bible (or Shakespeare) has been for so many English-writing authors. But nature provides Pynchon with metaphors (so many that they do indeed '''jump into your Arms'" [773]) only thanks to the ceaseless mediation of science and Technology (with or without the capital T). And ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in the form of the World Wide Web, with its endless metaphorical possibilities, elegantly embodies the fundamental literary principle of intertextuality.

How to Cite:

Rossi, U., (2003) “The Harmless Yank Hobby: Maps, Games, Missiles and Sundry Paranoias in Time Out of Joint and Gravity's Rainbow”, Pynchon Notes , 106-123. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.56