oedipa's dance with the demon

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

  in his col49-companion from 1994, j. kerry grant included a long note (pp. 
  81-95) on the words "two distinct kinds of this entropy", which is the 
  elaborated version of something he first published in "pynchon notes" 28/9 
  (1991). lots of useful stuff on "entropy" and about nefastis's maxwell's demon 
  machine. in the end (94f) grant offers a really interesting interpretation:

 " ... in the light of these more or less negative approaches to nefastis and  
his machine, we might want to go back for a moment to the first mention of the 
engineer, which seems to suggest that there is at least some reason to regard 
him in in a sympathetic light. 'john's somebody who still invents things', 
stanley koteks tells oedipa, indicating that nefastis is to be counted among 
those 'really creative enginneer(s)' who would be stifled by the patent-grabbing 
policies of yoyodyne (h85.14). in a world where originality, uniqueness, and 
difference are likely to be the only means of salvation in the face of an 
increasing tendency toward uniformity, such a person is surely someone to be 
valued. perhaps the gods to whom nefastis 'unspeakable' are in fact the gods of 
corporate america, the stultifying powers whose monopolistic control of the 
means of communication is one of the novel's prime targets.

 in fact, one of the most frequently repeated interpretive moves involving 
nefastis invention may help us to see it as a more positive figurative device 
[for latour: a non-human being, socialized by science. kfl]. mangel was among 
the earliest of those who assert a symbolic connection between oedipa and the 
demon: 'just as the demon, by sorting the molecules, gains informations about 
them, so oedipa shuffles through countless people and places, gathering 
information about the elusive trystero' (197) [anne mangel: maxwell's demon, 
entropy, information: the crying of lot 49. triquarterly 20, winter 1971, pp. 
194-208]. the importance of this association lies in its implicit recognition 
that oedipa, like the demon, needs to receive some form of energy from outside 
herself if she is to escape the confines of her tower. the revelations that seem 
to be about to burst through to her constitute a potential source of energy, 
'intrusions into this world from another', in the words of jesús arrabal, the 
exiled anarchist (h124.23). the cycling machine, with its seemingly miraculous 
openness to the flow of information from outside, thus constitutes an image of 
some power as oedipa learns the danger of closed systems, and as she grows to 
understand the significance of pierce's advice to 'keep it bouncing' (h178.30n).

 although oedipa is unable to confirm that the machine is anything other than 
the hallucinations of a 'sincere nut', she is not as dismissive of nefastis as 
some readers. her scepticism is in part the product of her fear: 'in her colon 
now she was afraid, growing more so, that nothing would happen'. she feels that 
there is something potentially 'wonderful' in nefastis belief in his machine, 
just as she will envy the drunken sailor his glimpse of 'worlds no other man had 
seen' (h129.22). her sense of distress at the inaccessibility of the information 
coded in the mattress is anticipated here as she senses her inablity to tap into 
a potentially huge energy source in her own brain."

 
       similarities to actual debates are, of course, purely accidental ...

 kfl