Pynchon mention

[pynchonoid]

March 15, 2003
Art That Transfigures Science
By ALAN LIGHTMAN

[...] It is not easy to portray science in art and
also to maintain the integrity of the art. Pitfalls
abound. To my taste, nothing demolishes a novel, a
film or a play faster than a pedantic tone. For me,
the power of art is in its ability to make an
emotional connection. As soon as the viewer or reader
feels that she is getting a lecture in Physics 101,
that magical connection is destroyed. What the novel
or play has to offer is a journey with a fellow human
being, a search for meaning in our baffling world. We
may eventually get to the brain, but we go first to
the stomach, or the heart.

In Thomas Pynchon's novel "The Crying of Lot 69," the
meaning of the second law of thermodynamics and its
dismal decree that all information inevitably crumbles
away is made vivid by a woman named Oedipa, who
wonders how many men have slept on a sailor's burning
mattress, how many lives lost forever. In the film "A
Beautiful Mind," the precision of John Nash's
mathematical mind forms an unsettling counterpoint to
the confusion in his hallucinatory illusions.

When the science is integrated so that it is part of
the human drama, part of the beauty and mystery of
human existence, then science and art have achieved a
perfect harmony.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/15/arts/design/15LIGH.html>

...enjoy!

-Doug


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