Pynchon / Nabokov / Borges / Mathematics

[James Conley]

Has anybody observed any explicit mathematical patterns in 'V'? Pynchon was 
strongly influenced by Nabokov's 'The Real Life of Sebastian Knight' and this 
book is dripping with numerical patterning. I KNOW Pynchon knows everything 
(except maybe the difference between a parabola and a section of an ellipse) 
but I haven't seen much any evidence of mathematical sequencing. In the 
Nabokov book the initials of many of the main characters are in inverse 
alphabetic order (e.g. Claire Bishop). There are also a series of patterns 
based upon the intervals 2 and 3 (like a chess knight, get it?) which keep on 
somehow ending up related to the sequence of the alphabet. Nabokov also does 
this kind of thing in 'Pale Fire' and I can't help but thinking there must be 
some of this sort of thing in Pynchon. 

Borges is the real master of this sort of thing and I also wondered if 
anybody had observed any overt Borgesian influence (especially 
mathematical) on any of Pynchon's work. 

Finally, anybody got any opinions on Kurt Godel, formal logic, artificial 
intelligence and/or 'The Crying of Lot 49'? 

Jim.