From: "Personal" <maiantwo-AT-northernnet.com>
Subject: Re: DROMO: how many dromologists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 17:41:23 -0600


How about a slow reading of "Speed and Politics"? Seems like an appropriate
place to start.


-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Silverstone <dlsilver-AT-bu.edu>
To: dromology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
<dromology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: Sunday, February 21, 1999 1:12 PM
Subject: DROMO: how many dromologists does it take to change a lightbulb?


>
>-->and if someone really wanted to start some kind of discussion....
>
>
>
>hmmm, that seems to be the concensus doesn't it, but where to start?
>
>er... well... [throat-clearing sound effects up]  i'd also appreciate some
>goodies on virilio. after all the posts that have come these last days,
i've
>been surfing round the net, ordering books and scratching my head in what
is
>amounting to my finest hour of procrastination.  i might never have to face
>my work again!
>funny that jeremy should mention Mao II since I'd just started reading it
>this weekend before reading your message... not very far through as yet,
but
>i will hopefully be able to post some comments on it as i go... what is
that
>book Speed and Politics that you mentioned?  Surprise surprise, my library
>doesn't have it!
>
>maybe i could start by laying out what has drawn me into this
>dromologicarena in the first place?  That might begin to get us going.
>it was really some thoughts about the high modernists that got me
started --
>the relations between modernism and the city have been hammered out ad
>nauseam, but in my opinion not the most frequent question (by those in
>english departments anyway) asked is one of the literary representation of
>an architectural / physical reality... so, how does Joyce/Woolf/Eliot/*name
>you favourite canonised modernist here* represent Dublin/London etc... That
>may well be an interesting question to think about, but what I wanted to
ask
>is more like -- what are the structural relations between the two -- the
>city and the fiction/poetry.  Are there mutually reflecting
>drives/principles going on in both?  More specifically, say, does the
>creation of a modern, high speed tram network in Dublin end up offering a
>whole new way for one to construct a novel?  Does the perspective of the
>modern town planner get co-opted (/ force its way) into the novel and start
>to wield linguistic power as well as physical?  Can we say that the london
>tube becomes a creative influence in writing Woolf's novels?  And then,
does
>it work the other way too...?
>Now i don't think that these are questions that we can really answer in too
>definite a way.  i wouldn't want to propose that  twenty six percent of
>Ulysses is directly attributable to the trams, and sit down feeling smug.
>but i do think that it would be interesting to start thinking about the
>(mutual?) structural influence of (/between?) speed on narrative technique.
>hence my happiness to find this field they call dromology with a figurehead
>they call virilio and a bunch of people who have (wittingly or not, sadeq!)
>signed up for the list...
>i have a virilio book (the art of the motor) winging its way to my door
>right now, so i'm hoping that will prove interesting.  i also found a great
>book called "Speed: Visions of an Accelerated Age" which springs from an
>exhibition of the same name held in London some time last year. lots of
>pretty pictures and articles (virilio among them, but many more...).
Again,
>as i wade through it i'll let you know what jumps out...
>I'll leave it there for now.
>really glad to see that I am , after all, far from being the list's sole
>member!
>cheers,
>daniel.
>
>