4 Thomas Pynchon Quotes on Metaphor

Thomas Pynchon quotes on metaphor

11. In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton. In the nineteenth century, with Newtonian physics pretty well assimilated and a lot of work in thermodynamics going on, man was looked on as a heat engine, about 40 per cent efficient. Now in the twentieth century, with nuclear and subatomic physics a going thing, man had become something which absorbs X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons.

23. Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit. Where he can fall on his slender prey roaring as loud as he feels like, and guzzle her blood with open joy. Eh? Where he can just wallow and rut and let himself go in a softness, a receptive darkness of limbs, of hair as woolly as the hair on his own forbidden genitals.

57. If America was a person,- and it sat down,- Lancaster town would be plunged into a Darkness unbreathable.

59. 'If the U.S. was a person,' he later became fond of saying, 'and it sat down, Columbus, Ohio would instantly be plunged into darkness'