vv2 Earth on a string

[jbor]

I think that the analogy between the sun controlling a planet's motion (as
if on a string) and the hand controlling the yoyo is the important point of
this; the connection is made explicit in the neologism "apocheir" on the
model of "aphelion" in the following sentence I think. I guess that in a
godless universe the earth is like the sun's yoyo. Ahab to Starbuck:

    "What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
   cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands
   me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and
   crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready
   to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?
   Is Ahab, Ahab? It is I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the
   great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one
   single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this
   one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God
   does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I? By
   heaven, man, we are turned around and around in this world, like yonder
   windlass, and Fate is the handspike. ..." [Ch. 132 'The Symphony']

(cf. Profane's attempt to extinguish the sun & Ahab's similar fancy in eg Ch
124 of *Moby Dick* and elsewhere; also cf. both Profane as the Old Testament
God casting imaginary lightning bolts from the mast of the Susanna Squaducci
and Ahab's similarly indomitable godlike pretensions and vanity; and esp.
cf. Ahab's rumination on the "dark side of the earth" and its "other side,
the theoretic bright one" which "seems but uncertain twilight" to Ahab in
Ch. 127, with all the mirror-world and mirror-time stuff in this early part
of *V.*)

I can also see the side-on yoyo motion as Don describes it but I have the
same visualisation problems with the mirror, and the viewing vantage (where,
in relation to the sun and the planet, and the mirror-plane, let alone the
movement and reflection of it all, is the observer supposedly situated?) But
maybe this (problem of?) indefinite *perspective* in respect of
visualisation and interpretation is *precisely* the issue that Pynchon wants
to draw the reader's attention to here.

best

----------
>From: Don Corathers <crawdad at one.net>
>To: "'cj hurtt'" <cj6 at casco.net>, "'p-list'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: RE: vv2
>Date: Tue, Oct 17, 2000, 5:39 AM
>

> A question I'd like to throw out for anybody who has a better visual
> imagination and sense of spatial relationships than I do.
>
> On page 35:
>
> "If you look from the side at a planet swinging around in its orbit, split
> the sun with a mirror and imagine a string, it all looks like a yo-yo."
>
> Easy enough to visualize looking at a planet swinging around in its orbit.
> If you were precisely positioned in the plane of the orbit, the planet
> would look like it was shuttling back and forth, left to right to left. The
> only difference in the passages would be that in one direction it would
> pass behind the sun and in the other it would pass between the sun and the
> observer. (I'm guessing we're supposed to ignore scale for the purposes of
> this image.) But "split the sun with a mirror"? Where does the mirror go,
> and how is it oriented to the observer?
>
> This seems at least modestly important because it connects the ideas of the
> yo-yo and mirror-time, of which we're seeing a lot in these early chapters.
> I suppose we could just take Mr. Pynchon's word for it that he could design
> a solar system with mirror that would produce this effect. But the image
> probably shouldn't be as hard to visualize as I'm finding it. Any thoughts?
>
> Don
>