Deflating Hyperspace

[Joseph T]

On Apr 1, 2007, at 12:55 AM, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

> There be nothing so absurd but that some philosopher
> [or cosmologist? -M.G.] has said it.
> -Cicero

While mildly intriguing the first or 2nd time around, I find the  
infinitely multiplying universe theory to be semi-infinitely  
unbelievable and almost entirely useless .  It is untestable in terms  
of science and uncontrollable in terms of fiction or thought.

  For example if Lew is dynamited into another universe, or entered a  
new universe in his earlier memory loss, which estranged him from his  
wife,these are transitions into a new way of seeing which is  
equivalent to a new universe, but it's a transition which leaves him  
visible and accountable within the universe of the novel. Lew's  
transitions and his unusually fictive interaction with the world( the  
weird  bomber, the mayo attack) seems to me to have to do with more  
common experiential stuff that the writer is dealing with : the way  
"fiction" interacts with "reality", (the way fiction interacts with  
other fiction, and the way reality interacts with other reality).

Trying to strictly separate fiction from reality is like trying to  
separate the human condition from the human imagination.This gets one  
well into some deep doodoo because imagination brings us the  power  
of language, magic chants that don't stop bullets, guns and bullets  
to kill magic chanters,  submarines and blimps,other magic chanters  
with weapons more powerful than ours, the future, the past, the  
possibility of going and taking a swim followed by a nice nap, and  
dreams while we nap. Fiction drives colossal forces at this point.   
If everyone believes Saddam Hussein is some great threat to America   
it doesn't really matter if it is fact or fiction, the results are as  
real as a cluster bomb or an IED.

I personally think Pynchon is less interested in coordinating  a sci- 
fi multiverse than in exploring this very real interaction between  
fiction and reality. For me one of the overwhelming effects of TRP's  
writing is to break up historic stereotypes and myths and remoteness  
and make both history and the present moment feel as real as  a  
lightning storm or  or a slavers sales pitch and  as unpredictable   
as quantum particles. His work resonates with real and unresolved  
motives and forces ( spiritual,physical,whatever.. imaginary,  
mathematical,sentient rockish, dumb jokish)which play out on a human  
and on a grand scale.

I am not saying that Pynchon is disallowing interaction with other  
worlds. Maybe evil is a kind of alien force , maybe we have visitors  
from the future, maybe karmic forces are as substantive as  
earthquakes or wars, but in his world and in mine a lightbulb, a  
mechanical duck, or a dog are representatives of other universes as  
real and mysterious as any.