MDDM Ben Franklin

[Terrance]

 After a while, even Pynchon felt compelled to pull himself down off the
pile science and math of books and assert that he was and is only an
author of american fiction. Thomas Moore (an entire book on GR) does a
fairly good job of demonstrating that P has not written scientific
theory disguised as fiction. 

That being said, some very fine critics, with expertise that far exceed
Mr. Pynchon's, have written some wonderful critical books. Eddins of
course, on the Gnostic stuff. 


http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/townsend/avenali/hayles_top.html

She also finds holism and reflexivity in certain narrative strategies
shared by such writers as Lawrence, Nabokov, and Pynchon. Dismissing the
idea that there is a direct relationship between science and culture,
Hayles argues instead for "a field notion of culture, a societal matrix
and a climate of opinion" in which some questions become interesting to
pursue, and some models--like that of the holistic field--come to be
compelling to people working in radically different disciplines. 

In Hayles' second book, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary
Literature and Science (Cornell University Press, 1990), she
interrogates what she argues is a profound epistemological shift in
Western culture: a disruption in the order/disorder duality.




"Vincent A. Maeder" wrote:
> 
> Yes, I agree with that analysis. The prime example for me is the GR
> character Hilbert Spaess (spelling?)
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bandwraith at aol.com
> I do not think that it is possible to demonstrate how physics is "brought
> to bear" at the structural level of the text, which might be akin to a
> physical description of thought. Rather I think that Pynchon has
> characters, or other elements of the text, represent or symbollize
> concepts from theories like quantum mechanics, complexity theory,
> molecular biology, etc., in a nearly completely independent and
> unobtrusive way to the more literal interpretation of the "goings-on"
> of the plot. My ear is somewhat tuned to hear these riffs. That
> they should be there at all- the plot works just fine without them-
> I find to be quite amazing and have no easy answer for. It is a bit
> of a dilemma for me, because it is difficult to make others, not
> so inclined, to see this in the text, or care much about it, given
> the massive amount of other allusions, historical details, etc.,
> all at least as important, that need to be unearthed and discussed.