VLVL the Movement WAS Re: Pynchon mention re rock, paper, scissors game

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/20/04 11:18:39 AM, lycidas2 at earthlink.net writes:

<< I disagree with his idea that VL is a parody of TV.  >>

Not "just" TV, but the culture of TV, and the endless
regression- the closed loop- that the dependence on TV
for entertainment and "reality" suggests. It's partly the 
flat screen. There is a parallel to the text itself: the
problem of making a flat medium three dimensional.

In M&D the method of parallax to calculate the size of
the earth becomes symbollic of Pynchon's use of the
past to obtain some perspective on the present, or 
something like that, I read in Postmodern Culture.

In Vineland, the means of creating "thirdness" from 
the two dimensional is more like holography, which,
appropriately enough, requires pulses of laser light.
(This use of holography as a "figure" for the technique
deployed in VL I'm going to claim as my own, although,
since I do not read much critical literature, I may be
unconsciously plagarizing. If so, my appologies.)

Interestingly enough, lasers require monochromatic
light- all of the same wavelength (called coherent).
The waves are "all in step." They are emitted by a
population of atoms from the source material which
are normally in a lower energy state but have been 
excited, by a process called "pumping." When the
population has become excited it is said to be "inverted."
For atoms, it requires something a little more abstract
than music in B flat major:

http://www.bartleby.com/65/la/laser.html

I don't know how no one alerted you, to this before,
but those carrier pigeons, "light pulsing in their wings"
may be beyond Zoyd's reach, but for the reader, they
are the first hints to look beyond the flat surface
of the narrative for a message with a little more depth.

respectfully