There were diet faddists who styled themselves Lightarians, living on nothing but light, even setting up labs they thought of as kitchens and concocting meals from light recipes, fried light, fricaseed light, light á la mode, calling for different types of lamp filament and colors of glass envelope, the Edison lamp being brand new in those days but certainly not the only design under study.
**********
"Lightarians"
Being that I was raised on In Search Of and, later, the Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series (not to mention dozens and dozens of pulp paperback books about myths, legends, paranormal activity, Oak Island pirate treasures, and more), I figured the whole "Breatharianism" movement was something that sprang out of the '60s and '70s New Age need to find a better (meaning, at the time, more simple and natural) way to live. Pynchon's "Lightarians" aren't exactly the same thing as "Breatharians" but are definitely an offshoot of the same drive. Here's a bit from the Wikipedia entry on "Inedia" which closely links the two movements:
The 1670 Rosicrucian text Comte de Gabalis attributed the practice to the physician and occultist Paracelsus (1493–1541) who was described as having lived "several years by taking only one-half scrupule of Solar Quintessence". In this book, it is also stated that "Paracelsus affirms that He has seen many of the Sages fast twenty years without eating anything whatsoever."
I don't know exactly what a "Solar Quintessence" might be but sounds to me like he was eating light!
"light á la mode"
Being that these faddists are only eating light, I'm guessing this recipe wasn't a plate of ice cream sitting next to a candle and actually meant to be "eating light in the popular style." I don't know what that was in 1887. Maybe the bit following ("calling for different types of lamp filament . . .") was a direct continuation of the "á la mode" bit, meaning the "popular style" meant eating light from trendy lamps and current colors in style.
"Edison lamp"
No comments:
Post a Comment