Two books, Monk & Time

[Jane Sweet]

http://ae.boston.com/books/

http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/22/reviews/010422.22davidst.html

Paul wrote:
In the same vein it seems probably to me that P would today
feel a tiny bit sheepish
about the way he portrayed an African American jazz musician
in that same first
novel. His view of Sphere seems only a bit less juvenile
than that of the college
boys. 

While I agree, McLintic is only a bit less juvenile, I think
this was what P intended.

McLintic is not immuned to the 20th century, the cross, all
its power coopted by a telephone pole?  Even his sympathetic
magic is going electric Bob Dylan. Cybernetics too.  The
influence of the sound man stochastic, feedback, statistics,
Roger vs the Priest in GR again, and the Hirch
letter--Leibniz according to Wiener, is the "Patron Saint of
cybernetics." So Sphere's song includes allusions to the
Jordan river Ecclesiastically and Flip Flop Set-REset, crazy
and cool in the same molecule. And although Sphere never got
all the way into the post war "cool" as others had, he is
now learning about the madness. He's learning from Paola,
that maybe one has to be crazy to love. Paola is not
juvenile, but she is a girl, a kid, a little girl, a little
kid. Why is she called a child by the others? Is this
because she is Paola, Paul? And the greatest of these is
charity (love)....