ATD SPOILER p 262-269

[Monte Davis]

Spoilers whole book































> I'm not sure I'd go so far and connect the threesomes with 
> traditional and non-traditional spaces...  Extra credit for using 
> scientific and mathematical terminology in such loose, 
> "metaphorical" ways that no mathematician can recognize your 
> meaning, while impressing the Literature Department with your 
> scientific prowess.

> However, you've put your finger on the comparison I think is 
> important.

And along the way, you've put another finger on what will be a big issue for
the whole book. Rather than lumping all metaphoriical uses together, I'd
emphasize Pynchon's *range* from loose to tight metaphor. As I noted before,
Iceland spar<->bilocation is at the loose end: crystal brefringence goes
back to 1669, and no physicist of the 1890s would have thought there was
anything especially mysterious or woo-woo about it. So it's purest poetic
association to link that to Zombini's doubled volunteers, Renfrew/Werfner,
and other kinds of twinning in the book. Likewise, "phosgene" is only
etymologically related to light: whatever game P is playing with the
Interdikt iline across the Balkans, in *our* world phosgene was a poison
gas, period -- not a source of, or in any intersting way I know of connected
to, annihilating light.

At other times he can get a lot of useful and meaningful work out of a
tighter metaphor: in GR, for example,  the contrast between the cluster of
associations around the dynamics *before* brennschluss (acceleration,
control/feedback, technical virtu', freedom) and those of the the dead
kinematics *after* brennschluss (parabola, immutable ballistic law, fated
impact) is brilliiantly exploited all through the book.

I think Pynchon knows when he's doing one vs. the other; I think he uses the
variety of characters around The White Visitation and around T.W.I.T in AtD
specifically to draw our attention to the difference and the range between.
But all too often the Literature Dept. can't tell the difference, because
they simply don't know enough science and technology to know which parts of
the Weird Science of 1890 proved fruitful (e.g. imaginary and complex
numbers as a prosaic, everyday tool in electrical engineering), and which
were dead ends (broadcast power). Doubtless we'll be heariing lots more
about Tesla's underappreciated -- or better yet, suppressed -- genius from
people who don't know the difference between a resistor and a rectifier.