Deflating Hyperspace

[Paul Mackin]

On Apr 1, 2007, at 9:14 PM, Robert Mahnke wrote:

>
> 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?

In the realm of "science," behaviorism and behavior modification  
certainly stand out (rocket science obviously too) though the  
behavior-modification part may have more properly belonged to the  
post-war era. Of course Pynchon jazzed the  methodologies up  
considerably. I don't think anyone  actually would have taken  
Pavlov's later speculations on psychology  seriously  in the forties,  
brilliant as the man had been as an experimental physiologist..  And  
the differences between Pointsman's and Roger's approach to things  
were often quite fanciful as I read  them. GR treats behaviorism  
like  AtD treats mathematics. Takes them places they can't really go.  
But, heck, it's fiction.

But where Pynchon REALLY showed his understanding of the WWII "scene"  
is in his evocation of how it felt to be a civilian or a not-actually- 
fighting military person engaged in the war effort (as just about  
everyone was in one way or another). The talk--the "nervous in the  
service" and "don't you know there's a war on" go around-- is  
absolutely pitch perfect. When I read the book it was hard for me to  
believe that  Pynchon had not been there.  He had been alive of  
course but a child.  I had been old enough to later judge how  well P  
had gotten it all down. P brought back much I had forgotten. GR won  
me over as a Pynchon supporter. I can now forgive him for anything.

P.



>
> -----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
>>
>
> ===BEGIN EXCERPT=====
>
> 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.
>
> ===END EXCERPT====
>
>
>