Chapter 3 Arrangement

[Wolfe, Skip]

One of the things (among many) that blows me away about this chapter is how 
Pynchon plays with the signal-to-noise ratio of the material (and with the 
reader at the same time).  By embedding the barest outline of a spy thriller 
in these 8 narratives he encourages us to extract the information from each 
one that helps us construct a "plot" of that thriller, in the process 
rejecting probably 75% of what's written.  This:

1. Forces us to impose order on what we experience by selecting just those 
parts that we think we need, or that reinforce what we believe the order 
should look like.  Interestingly, in Section I, Aieul the waiter does the 
same thing (p. 53, Bantam) when he makes up his own scenario to explain the 
scraps he sees and hears from the Englishmen.

2. Causes us to disregard the parts of the narrative that deal with the 
locals (we tend to focus on the bits of information about Porpentine, 
Goodfellow, et al and regard the narrators' talk about their lives as 
"irrelevant").  This sort of  puts us in the position of the colonials 
creating their own Europe in the occupied countries, and reinforces 
Pynchon's talk about colonialism in this, and other, chapters.

3. Is exactly what Stencil himself is doing -- investigating all sorts of 
historical data and extracting only the bits he thinks will help him in his 
quest for V.

4. Might make us think that that's what we're all doing all the time -- 
ignoring most of what goes on around us to try to make sense of the chaos.

5. Seems to be linked to the paranoia/anti-paranoia themes in _GR_.  Either 
we come to believe everything -- all this mass of information we're 
constantly bombarded with -- is related; or come to think that nothing is 
related to anything.

Anyway . . . just some thoughts.  Information theory seems to be something 
Pynchon is interested in, and this chapter suggests that, to a degree, at 
least, the "information" we get from any situation depends on what we're 
looking for.

     Skip Wolfe
     crw4 at nip1.em.cdc.gov