ATDDTA (6) 178-179

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Mike Bailey:

>the dean emeritus of the p-list, Andrew Dinn, once posted
>a recommendation that all and sundry make a little
>bookmark with numbers on each line, to make it easy
>to find line references.
>As a detail-oriented writer, can we assume Pynchon
>doesn't do that or something like it while composing?

God is in the details in Pynchon's work, but I very much doubt that Pynchon 
is counting lines as he's composing, and I very much doubt that he would 
deliberately go out of his way to have a casual reference to 86'd placed on 
p. 186 of Vineland. Typesetting (or, in this computerized day and age: 
composing) a book is a complex business: Change a line or paragraph here or 
there, and page numbers will shift all the way down the line.

AtD was probably written by Pynchon as an ordinary Word document (o-or 
perhaps even on that typewriter he used for his McEwan letter!), and since a 
manuscript page looks nothing like a finished book page, the author has no 
way of knowing on which page number of the finished book specific sections 
of his manuscript will turn up. When Pynchon hands in his manuscript, the 
designers of the book start considering which font to use, which font size, 
how many lines per page, etc., etc. They have to strike a balance between 
readability and economical considerations, especially in a long book like 
AtD: Paper is expensive, so how many words can they squeeze on to a page 
without putting unreasonable strains on the readers' eyes (or how many pages 
can they squeeze into the book without putting unreasonable strains on the 
readers' wallets or their own profit)? Remember all the times the page count 
of AtD shifted before publication? A lot of tweaking going on, and I'm 
pretty sure that tweaking wasn't motivated by any numerological concerns:

Let's say for the sake of the argument that Pynchon intended that lovely 
little tête-à-tête between Reef and the dog to appear on exactly page 666. 
There are two ways this could come about: the hard way, and the hard way:

-With an electronic manuscript, experienced book composers could with quite 
a bit of tweaking ensure that the scene appeared exactly on that page, but 
that would mean that important choices like font, font size, number of lines 
per page etc. would have to be determined by the wish to have Reef and the 
dog on that exact page. It would also mean that other numerological codes in 
the novel would be shot to hell, since it would be practically impossible to 
have, say, five important numerological references coincide with five 
specific pages in such a huge book, without actually changing the 
manuscript. And this leads us to the second hard way:

-In order to have specific scenes appear on specific pages, Pynchon would 
have to rewrite/reshuffle his book after having received a typeset version 
from the book designers. In that version, the scene with the dog and Reef 
might appear on page 679, and Pynchon would have to shuffle his scenes back 
and forth to make them coincide with the desired page number. He would have 
to break up the flow of what he had written and rearrange the text, writing 
new transitions, etc., in order to preserve those all-important 
numerological references. Can you really see him doing that? I can't.

Let's finally take a look at that 86'd reference from Vineland, which seems 
to be 'significantly' placed on page 186. First of all, I can't see what's 
so significant about it: 86 and 186 are two different numbers, after all. 
For the numerological reference to be really significant, it would have to 
occur on page 86, but there's no reference to 86'd on that page. As it turns 
out, however, there easily could have been, if Pynchon had really wanted to: 
On p. 86, Flash tells Frenesi that a number of people have mysteriously 
vanished from the computer. Frenesi says to Flash:

"Now tell me about who isn't on the computer, that's making you so crazy."

If matching page numbers with certain numerological (or just number) 
references is so important to Pynchon, why not change that sentence into:

"Now tell me about who has been 86'd from the computer, that's making you so 
crazy."

Now THAT would have been elegant, and one wonders why Pynchon let such an 
opportunity pass...

I'm not saying that there aren't any numerological concerns in Pynchon's 
novels, but I AM saying that the idea of deliberately placing certain 
numerological references on certain pages, and even certain lines, is both 
extremely impractical and extremely unlikely. Just my 2 cents (and if you 
print this e-mail out, I'm sure that "2" will appear on page 2....)

_________________________________________________________________
Del dine store filer uden problemer på MSN Messenger:  
http://messenger.msn.dk/