TRP Themes

Aaron Yeater AYEATER at ksgrsch.harvard.edu
Thu Feb 29 13:29:34 CST 1996


> Loss of order and control for TRP is mostly a positive thing, since it 
> implies a break with Their assembly-line mind-set, which is 
> ultimately based on the model of cause = death, effect = life, which 
> is not even scientifically correct since it implies a time reversal - 
> which is impossible anyway as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (yes, the 
> entropy one) teaches us. (Thus it isn't science which is 'bad'. but 
> their pseudo-scientific misuse and misapplication of it, a la Pavlov 
> in GR)

I'm not sure I agree that disorder in TRP is a good thing in and of 
itself, even "mostly"...disorder at first implies in his work a 
breaking away from them and their plots, and then it suggests that 
the plots themselves are crumbling.  but inevitably, the breakdown 
of 'macro' order, in which individuals are merely pawns in the 
system, gives way to solipsism, (which i think is the final state of 
Slothrop) in which there is no "They" of any kind, only one mind, 
imagining the world--the transition between these two poles, of 
conspiracy (where the subjective voice isn't a reality, but a product 
of systemic manipulation)) vs. paranoia (where the subjective voice 
is the only reality) is where the action is in TRP, and he is 
unwilling or unable to commit to either as "true states of 
being"...interesting, isn't it, for a "post-modern" author, how 
ontological TRP is...
***********************************************************

Aaron C. Yeater
Staff Assistant
Web Master
Innovations in American Government Program
http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/~innovat/
Cambridge, Massachusetts




More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list