Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 12:57:57 +0100 (BST)
From: Willard McCarty <Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: the future of sloth
"Perhaps the future of Sloth will lie in sinning against what now seems
increasingly to define us -- technology. Persisting in Luddite sorrow,
despite technology's good intentions, there we'll sit with our heads in
virtual reality, glumly refusing to be absorbed in its idle, disposable
fantasies, even those about superheroes of Sloth back in Sloth's good old
days, full of leisurely but lethal misadventures with the ruthless villains
of the Acedia
Squad."
Thomas Pynchon, "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee".
(For the whole thing, see
<http://pete.pomona.edu/pynchon/uncollected/sloth.html">; for the San
Narcisco College Thomas Pynchon Home Page, "the profoundly unofficial but
widely collaborative Web page devoted to the work of Thomas Pynchon", see
<http://pete.pomona.edu/pynchon/>.)
WM
----------
Dr. Willard McCarty
Senior Lecturer, Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London
Strand
London WC2R 2LS
+44 (0)171 873 2784 voice; 873 5081 fax
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
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