Entropy Again

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

OUTRSPACIA writes:
> 
> One can argue that if GR describes anything, it is a dying universe.

What absolute bullshit. 
(Mind you, what I write is currently influenced by two hellish animals 
(a puppy and a kitten, both around four months old) running around my 
desk. In fact, the kitten just ran _over_ the desk, tyoing in a fluent paw 
pl;hy[;./////////////////////////////////.  I don't know what it means.

>  Throughout the book, people, places, events and things are truncated,
> disordered, disintegrating. They're dying. The word and the idea of "entropy"
> is more than trendy, thanks to Pynchon, it's utterly appropriate, for the
> book and the world in which we readers live. Fear and  paranoia, other
> Pynchon themes are easily at home in such a world.
> 
> So if the central theme is entropy, it must also be death.

I'm getting a little tired of this. Let the man speak for himself, again:
      Remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone 
with What you felt stirring across the land ... it was the equinox ... green 
spring equal nights ... canyons are opening up, at the bottoms are steaming 
fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, 
dope-perfume, a hood of smell ... human consciousness, that poor cripple, 
that deformed and doomed thing, is about to be born. This is the World just 
before men. Too violently pitched alive in constant flow ever to be seen by 
men directly. They are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, 
transputrefied to oil or coal. Alive, it was a threat; it was Titans, 
was an overspeaking of life so clangorous and mad, such a green corona  
about Earth's body that some spoiler had to be brought in before it blew the 
creation apart. So we, the crippled keepers, were sent out to multiply, to have 
dominion. God's spoilers. Us. Counter-revolutionaries. It is our mission to 
promote death. The way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the 
Creatures. It was something we had to work on, historically and personally.
To build from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as 
life, holding down the green uprising. But only nearly as strong. Only nearly, 
because of the defection rate. A few keep going over to the Titans every day...
                                                               (GR, 720).

Where is there more life than here, there? And if you see death, where does it 
originate? The law of entropy? Hmm?

> If you buy the idea that entropy equals death, then you either give up, or
> you put some tolerable face on existence, which is what TRP has done with GR.
> 
> He's painted a bleak world, but he's done so in an almost absurdist manner.

He's painted an absusrd world, but has done so in the most cheerful 
manner....

> He's made the dying universe as entertaining as it is haunting. 

The universe ain't dying, chum. We are.

>                               Seems like
> he's going to make the best of it, take advantage of it while it lasts --
> which could be a gazillion years, unless we manage to end it all ourselves
> before entropy fulfills its grim promise.

No grim promises, no intent or purpose or plan - when will people 
learn to jettison that irritating little concept of  'meaning' from the 
laws of nature?

hg
hag at iafrica.com