Hystories/Chaos Theory

[Daniel O'Hara]

With regard to the suggestion that an 'Important Science', chaos theory,
is conspicuous by its absence from M&D, may I suggest that if Pynchon was
as concerned about the ampersand as the list latterly believed, he may
have used it to imply said science.

The double curl of the ampersand (turn your copy through 90 degrees to get
the full effect) is precisely the shape a fractal generator tends to throw
up initially. I presume that the green halo (as evidence of scanning) only
serves to exaggerate the resemblance. Little wonder, then, that Pynchon
required a tailor-made ampersand. Incidentally, the ampersand`s shape also
brings to mind Hanjo Berressem`s use of Lorenz attractors as a structure
for Vineland; and that reminds me of the request for information about
Bonnie Lenore Surfus. Her paper was entitled 'Strange Attractors in
Vineland'. She submitted it for consideration at the Warwick conference,
but was unable to attend. I believe it has been published, but I have a
draft copy if whoever wanted it will let me know who they are...

But on to Jan`s criticism`s of 'Hystories': I`d query the objection to
"medecine as literary/cultural criticism", or illness as metaphor, as
Susan Sontag put it. There`s nothing wrong with using medical praxis as a
blueprint for criticism. But this (probably) isn`t what Jan`s getting at.
However, I`d just want to add that, apart from reading the Sontag book,
one could do worse than look at the criticism written about T.S.Eliot for
an analysis of hysteria that's slightly more historically aware. Showalter
asserts that hysteria is Freud`s thing, as Jan notes, but doctors in
England were diagnosing hysteria long before Freud had been translated.
English versions didn`t arrive until the Thirties, and even then were
largely ignored. Eliot`s poem 'Hysteria' is a prime literary example of
the non-Freudian approach to hysteria, owing most (presumably) to his own
treatment abroad; and Wyndham Lewis observes that Auden and Isherwood were
just about the first writers in English who came "out of Dr. Freud`s
cabinet". 

Dan O`Hara