MDDM Ch. 56 Vortex

[O.SELL at telda.net]

I'm not that sure if you can say that so definitely.
What did P. write in somewhere in GR:
"Coincidence, another fairytale word."

Carving my way through Gertrude Stein has showed me that there are hardly any "lexical coincidence(s)" in High Literature, though in the present cause I cannot give evidences of any kind.

I'm not going to say something on what "publicdomain" (Terrance?) has written because I simply don't feel "monitored" by Robert.

On _Tarr_:
http://www.gingkopress.com/_cata/_lite/wl-tarr.htm

Otto

> Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2002 07:32:53 +1100
> From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: MDDM Ch. 56 Vortex
> 
> It's perhaps fairer to cite the whole thrust of the original poster's point.
> As Brian McCary mentioned, "the primary reference is Descartes", and any
> suggestion that there is a deliberate allusion to Wyndham Lewis or Vorticism
> as a movement in 20th C. abstract art on Pynchon's part isn't really borne
> out by the context of the reference in the novel. From the earlier post:
> 
>     [...] But Emerson, a
>     Newtonian, would have been slagging off the Cartesian
>     opposition. Under vortex we have, M17, 1 a In Cartesian theory: any of
>     the rapidly revolving collections of fine particles supposed to fill
>     all space and by their rotation account for the motions of the
>     universe; the whirling movement of such a collection of particles, usu
>     in pl M17, b Physics A rapid motion of particles round an axis; a
>     whirl of atoms, fluid or vapour [contrast that with earth, water, air
>     and wind]. The Vorticists being the Continental school of philosopher
>     scientists under Descartes and then Leibnitz, the English camp, under
>     Newton, supporting an alternative theory of indivisible Atoms. Both
>     camps, assuming as a first principle that Nature abhorred a vacuum,
>     had to account for how space was filled by matter, yet still left
>     enough room for it to move around. The vorticists assumed these whirls
>     of varying sized lumps of matter whose swirling motions added up to
>     the gross motions of objects at our coarser level of perception. The
>     Atomists assumed matter reduced to minimal size components which were
>     free to move around in open space. They accounted for the filling of
>     this absolute space by assuming a propertiless substance called the
>     ether which filled the space but through which atoms could freely
>     move. [...]
> 
> Vorticist artworks and Wyndham Lewis are interesting in and of themselves of
> course, but I don't quite see that there's a case to say that they are
> relevant here, or to Pynchon's work in general. To my thinking the use of
> the term "Vorticism" is nothing more than a lexical coincidence.
> 
> best