SLSL: ist der spatz in der hand besser als die taube auf dem dach?

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

                                                            re: "entropy"

 in the "introduction" pynchon spends more than 4 pages with criticizing his  
 own story yet does not even mention the worst thing about it: the  
 instrumentalization of the bird. the human characters might be weak but the  
 animal is simply a literary crashtest-dummy. this poor imaginary creature  
 appears dwelling in callisto's stinking hands, all through the story it's  
 nothing but a symbolic object to illustrate the entropy theme and in the end  
 the bird has to die to give the lame thing a tragic twist. now that's cheap!  
 the suggestion of callisto's caring sensitivity is, thus, far away from  
 convincing. it's just sentimental in the word's worst sense. "has the transfer 
 of heat ceased to work?" (p. 94). no, it never worked....
 
                                                  take care! kai 

 ps. my favourite sentence from the "introduction" is the following: "ignorance 
 is not just a blank space on a person's mental map." by the way: while our 
 hosts do quite a good job i wonder where all the people are who were, last 
 year, so eager in speaking up for SLSL.... oh, you're still there but do not 
 know what to write. yes, i thought so ---