Entropy

[Terrance]

Robert, this is excellent. Thanks so very much. 

Jbor wrote: 


Also see John Simons, 'Third Story Man: Biblical Irony in Thomas
Pynchon's
  "Entropy"', _Studies in Short Fiction_ 14.1, 1977, pp. 88-93.

  [...] Our understanding of the Saul-Miriam sections of 'Entropy' can
be
  further illuminated through a discussion of the symbolic function of
their
  names. Clearly Pynchon is using the Hebrew names for the apostle Paul
and
  the Virgin Mary with some definite purpose in mind. [...]
  Saul's behavior is, I believe, meant to be a parody of a Biblical
text,
  specifically _Acts_ 20. [...]
  Saul is an ironic parody of Paul in Pynchon's story, and in that story
he
  appears not as an apostle of the new Christian religion, but rather as
a
  spokesman for the new science of decline and decay in the twentieth
century.
  (i.e. "entropy") [...]

  Interesting essay, discusses Wiener's _The Human Use of Human Beings_,
  Tanner's chapter on P. in _City of Words_, and Henry Adams' Virgin and
the
  Dynamo.

____________________________________________________________________________

Biblical Irony. Although I can't quite make the connection to Acts 20
and I'm always reluctant to put too much weight on Pynchon's use of
names (why not King Saul, Saul Bellow, etc.?), Saul/Paul is an important
figure for P and his stories are important to both V. and M&D. The fact
that God changed Saul's name to Paul at conversion is an interesting
thing to consider nonetheless. Of course, Mary the Virgin is a central
figure in much of Pynchon's work, but how the name connects with
Saul/Paul is not at all apparent to this reader. 

In "The Small Rain" the biblical irony is quite clear. The biblical text
alluded to is obvious. The irony has to do with the fact that the
parable Jesus tells to his friends is about communication. In that tale
the nick names are more telling than the names imho--Little Buttercup
(we never learn her name), Lardass and Plowboy. 

Well, Pynchon is quite the American tall-tale teller--a postmodern
postironic parader of pornographic and parodic parable, a twister of
dreams and history,  bogus citations and anachronisms. 

 

"Along through the book I have distributed a few anachronisms and unborn
historical incidents and such things, so as to help the tale over the
difficult
places.  This ideas is not original with me; I got it out of Herodotus. 
Herodotus says, 'Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest
do not
happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the
conscientious
historian will correct these defects.'" 

	--Mark Twain 
 

 Of course, there is no such passage in Herodotus.