Deflating Hyperspace

[Robert Mahnke]

I've been very conscious in reading M&D and now AtD of the extent to which
Pynchon tries to capture the sense of what was current in the respective
periods in which those two books were set.  What I don't recall is whether
this was something he did in his other books, particularly Gravity's
Rainbow.  (The other three were set more or less contemporaneously with when
he wrote them.)  It's been years (many years) since I read GR -- does
someone remember this better than I do?

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Daniel Harper
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 11:37 AM
To: Tore Rye Andersen; pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Deflating Hyperspace

On Sunday 01 April 2007 02:18, you wrote:
>From this link:
>
>
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0702&msg=115688&sort=author
>

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Another possible explanation for Einstein's absence can be that Pynchon in 
AtD tries to write from within the paradigm of the years he's describing. In

2007 it is abundantly clear how important a figure Einstein was, but in the 
years before WWI it was not so clear. In M&D Pynchon also wrote more or less

from within the paradigm of the 18th century, representing all the crackpot 
theories of the era as just as valid as the ones that eventually held up. 
Pynchon of course knows how things turned out, and by sly anachronistic 
references he points to later scientific developments (including chaos 
theory in M&D), but those references are for his readers, not his 
characters, who blunder happily along inside the horizon of knowledge 
defined by their age. In AtD Pynchon includes a couple-three offhand 
references to the theory of special relativity, and we 21st century readers 
immediately recognize their importance, but his characters don't.
Pynchon doesn't render the past *as* past, but as the present that it once 
was, and in that present Einstein wasn't the towering figure he is today, 
which may be another way of explaining his notable absence from AtD.

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