MDMD(4) p.123 small re-write

[Paul Mackin]

The fractal "nature" of the California geography is kind of nicely
alluded to in Vineland, p.204:

"The shape of the brief but ledgendary Trasero County coast, where the 
waves were so high you could lie on the beach and watch the sun through 
them, repeated on its own scale the greater curve between San Diego and
Terminal Island, including a military reservation which, like Camp 
Pendleton in the the world at large, extended from the ocean up into
a desert hinterland."

				P.



jporter wrote:
> 
> >Matthew P Wiener responds to my query re. Eric's mention of Arcadia:
> >
> >>>>This also made me think of a Tom Stoppard play, Arcadia, in which
> >>>>one of the principal characters dreams of a math complex enough to
> >>>>explain real-world forms---a tree, a flower, a hillside [....]
> >>
> >>>Isn't this one of the things those chaos theory people are trying to do?
> >>
> >>Yes.  Tom Stoppard is quite explicit about this in his play.
> >
> >True: but is there someone on the list who knows a great deal more about
> >this than either I or Tom Stoppard, that's the question.  Because it would
> >be nice to have some intelligible light thrown on this topic [intelligible
> >to lay people like myself, that is], especially now that we're reading _M&D_
> >where "science" seems to come under so much criticism.
> >
> >Vaska
> 
> I think Bonnie Sufus, perhaps under her previous name which escapes me at
> the moment, was working on the "fractal structure of Vineland". Her work
> may have  appeared in *Pynchon Notes* or have been included in some other
> scholarly journal. I remember briefly discussing some references to
> fractals with her, off list. This had to be back in '94 or '95. Has anyone
> heard from Bonnie?
> 
> jody