COL49 "God" and quanta

[Paul Mackin]

Very interesting. Incidently a  person also can carom intransitively--a woman
can go caroming around the room at a party, say. To the observer, usually a
man, it looks almost as if she is being propelled by some external force (of
course she is not) Don't conversations, too, carom in a way that can be taken
as intransitive. Individual sentences are striking and bouching off each other,
yet taken as a whole the conversation  is neither acting on an external object
or being acted upon. But there is a whole lot of caroming going on. Well, I'm
not sure. But I agree the whole thing suggests cosmic intrusions of some sort.

                P.
jbor wrote:

>     The can knew where it was going she sensed, or something fast enough,
>     God or a digital machine, might have computed in advance the complex web
>     of its travel; but she wasn't fast enough, and knew only that it might
>     hit them at any moment, at whichever clip it was doing, one hundred
>     miles an hour. (24)
>
> Probably the most interesting verb (gerund, actually) in the novel is on p.
> 23, where the can of hair spray "continued its high speed caroming."
>
> carom n. U.S. 1. n. a cannon at billiards  2. v.i. make carom; strike and
> rebound off (abbr. of *carambole* fr. Sp *carambola*, a sour greenish fruit,
> from Portuguese, from Marathi *karambal*)
>
> A cannon in billiards, I believe, is the shot in which the cue ball is
> caused to contact one object ball after another. The latter sense (from the
> OED), the intransitive verb, is considered disreputable by traditional
> grammars in that it allows the possibility of random and
> independently-achieved momentum on the part of the ball/s. The point is that
> as an intransitive verb does not have to take a direct object, it is the cue
> ball (or the aerosol can, in Pynchon's metaphor) which is nominally the
> active participant in any sentence using the verb "to carom".
>
> I think Pynchon has deliberately chosen to make a gerund from the
> intransitive verb here. The place where the can caroms (to ... ) is thus
> (grammatically, physically, relativistically) indeterminate, i.e. in time
> and space. The can is the subject of the sentences which describe its path,
> and it is being propelled by "the great outsurge of pressure" caused by "the
> stuff" inside the can "atomising". The particles, in other words.
>
> Later on, as Oedipa ponders the ever-accumulating manifestations of the
> Trystero post-horns, there's mention of "intrusions into this world from
> another, a kiss of cosmic pool balls," adding yet another slant to the
> debate. (86) Aye caramba!
>
> best