Tidbits

[Andrew Dinn]

Ryan Douglas Kuykendall writes:

> I was reading a text on the history of the English language when I came 
> upon something interesting devoted to the discussion of words created 
> from the old.  Under the the Acronym section I found the term Women's 
> Royal Naval Service.  The acronym that the Brits created for the group, 
> around the first world war was, ha, ha, WREN.  This got me thinking that 
> it is quite possible that Victoria Wren in V. could just as likely be 
> "one of Victoria's Wrens," though I know historically I am off a few 
> decades.  The connection for me seems to be that if a WREN does naval 
> duty, then what better place to be stationed then Malta after World War 
> I.  

You could look up the sacrifice of wrens at the Winter Solstice as
described in Graves' The White Goddess. Don't forget to check out the
stuff on Robin Goodfellow at the same time (Who killed Cock Robin?).

> One other thing I would like to throw out is a response to a message 
> posted some two month's ago which has troubled me for quite a while.  I 
> am not sure who posted it,  but the gist of the message was that the 
> references to Ludwig Wittgenstein and the _Tractatus_ were superfluous to 
> the plot of V.  I think that this is incorrect, in fact I am willing to 
> assert that latter part of Wittgenstein's life served as the inspiration 
> for the novel.  Wo ho ho you must be saying.  Well, what I have to go on 
> is the following:

It was probably me who said this, if not I will support it. There are
two explicit references to LudWit in V as far as I know: a mention of
`family resemblances', a middle period Ludwit term (Yellow/Blue book)
and the opening line of the Tractatus (Die Welt ist alles dass der
Fall ist - The world is all that is the case), from Wittgenstein's
early period. I could see little point to the latter quote other than
a pun on `der Fall' and `the Fall' which is nothing to do with
Wittgenstein and all to do with Pynchon's take on Xianity. If Pynchon
takes a look at any of the Tractatus doctrines I would nominate
something other than the notion that we live in a world (only) of
contingencies all of which could have been different (although maybe
this ties in with his take on predestination). More important perhaps
I would have thought would be the sagen/zeigen distinction and the
consequent limitations on the utility and validity of explanations
e.g. apply this to Stencil. And I would not look to the Tractatus for
Wittgenstein's final word on explanations nor to V for Pynchon's.
Follow through to the Philosophical Investigations & Remarks on
Mathematics, in particular their sections on following rules, and
consider how these are taken up in Gravity's Rainbow. There is a much
better case to be made here for Pynchon applying Wittgenstein's ideas
(and I am not going to make that case here and now but one day).

The family resemblance idea is something which was made much of in the
50s and 60s as one of the few concepts from Ludwit's later works which
philosophers could understand and apply. It is incidental to the
thrust of his later work. So why did Pynchon mention it? Name
checking, I think, which, in the light of subsequent Wittgenstein
scholarship, sounds a bit crass.

Lets go to the later LudWit chronology then...

> 1.  Wittgenstein visited the United States only once in his life and the 
> year was 1949.
> 2.  Wittgenstein stayed with a friend of his named Norman Malcolm.
> 3.  Norman Malcolm was teaching at Cornell University at the time.
> 4.  The is a great deal of public uncertainty and a vast amount of 
> rumors dealing with who Wittgenstein was (like:  It was rumored that he 
> gave lectures while lying on his back).
> 5.  Thomas Pynchon attended Cornell University in 1953.
> 6.  From this, I propose that a variety of these rumors were probably 
> still circulating amongst some circles at the University, and that 
> Pynchon may have caught on.
> 7.  Wittgenstein was concerned with linguistics studies.  That's german 
> last name you fool, pronounced not with a [w] but with a [v] period.
> 
> Anything else?

Well, you could include the fact that LudWit gave away the millions he
inherited from his father after the war, including a sum donated to
Rilke allowing the man to publish. Notice that name in Gravity's
Rainbow? Kinda spooky, huh? Wittgenstein's father was a Viennese
engineer and millionaire. So was Walter Rathenau's father. Rathenau?
Isn't that kinda spooky too?

Pynchon would not have required LudWit's visit in order to know of the
man or his reputation. LudWit was arguably the most influential
philosopher of this century, twice. Anyway, none of the above
`coincidences' display any relation between Wittgenstein's philosophy
and Pynchon's writing. I assume we can take it for granted that
someone as well read as Pynchon knows *of* Wittgenstein, quirks and
all. The question is has he used his ideas? I think there is extremely
good evidence to support this view.

In brief, LudWit, like Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, is interested in
(to use a Kantian formulation of the problem, which I believe is
exactly the formulation they take up only to dissect) the difference
between `an a priori synthetic science of mathematics' and `an a
posteriori synthetic science of nature' (I would argue that an
interest in the notion of `a priori synthetic' knowledge is the
driving force behind all LudWit's work, early, middle and late). Both
LudWit and Pynchon are interested in the extent to which phenomena
determine systems of explanation and judgement or vice versa.
Wittgenstein's lectures on maths exited by Cora Diamond make this
motive abunantly clear. For Pynchon consider Stencil vs V, Pointsman
vs Slothrop, the Hereros rocket mysticism, Poekler's conversion from
neutral technician to engaged human being etc. Furthermore they both
come to the conclusion that the ground for the interplay of these
opposing forces must be something deeper than either experience or the
linguistic, mathematical, formal, conventional systems which grow in
tandem with experience. Actually, a prior consonance or correspondence
of activity on which subsequent expressions of humanity depend. In the
Investigations #242 Wittgenstein calls these Ur-correspondences `forms
of life'. Pynchon's many references to community, communion etc
identify the same grounding force. In this light you might consider
the Becker-Traverse reunion as signifying a radical reinterpretation
of the notion of `family resemblance' - as the correspondence of
activity and expectation around which a community of individuals can
be assembled and without which society and any individuality fragments
and decays.


Andrew Dinn
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there is no map / and a compass / wouldn't help at all