bomb-end-gaddis, erik burns, 7/24/95

[jporter]

My memory of The Recognitions is a bit hazy, but Carpenter's Gothic is
still quite clear. (And thank you for bringing up Gaddis again.) It is
quite accessible. I recall a reviewer in the NY Times Book Review section
describing one of its character's as Gaddis' "strong seer" and another as
his "weak seer, " I can't remember that lady reviewer's name, but she
tipped me off.  Sure enough, the whole marvelous book appears to be based
on the prevailing structure of quantum mechanics: strong force, weak force,
virtual characters that materialize and de-materialize out of thin air,
always maintaining symmetry with eachother...And isn't quantum theory a
carpenter's gothic, shamelessly cobbled together out of expediency, oftimes
without the proper underlying theoretical basis, in order to make
observations "fit?" If anything, Gaddis' use of science as a metaphor is
even more sublime then Pynchon's: less clever, but more hidden and darkly
elegant.

 The Carpenter's Gothic metaphor for quantum reality contrasts nicely with
the prevailing metaphor for 19th century scientific truth: the gleaming
"Crystal Palace," constructed by the straightforward logic of Newtonian
mechanics (Cf. Dostoyevsky's "Notes From Underground" where Dostoyevsky
shatters the "Crystal Palace" vision of a rational society).

 Gaddis spares no one, either. Simony, forgery, expedience, there is no
objective reality to which one can cling. Everyone tumbles. All value is
relative.  But the center holds. There is gravity, after all, if only that
supplied by the reader.

Pynchon seems to pay homage, albeit obliquely, to Gaddis in the following
paragraph:

"....when the big houses framed all in redwood had gone up and legendary
carpenters had appeared descending from rain-slick stagecoaches, geniuses
in wood who could build you anything from a bowling alley to a Carpenter
Gothic outhouse" Vineland, p. 26, Little Brown, 1990.

Those were the days.....

jp


p.s,: give me a few days to compare the endings of GR and The Recognitions.