Webb Traverse

[bekah]

At 6:18 AM -0700 4/22/07, Dave Monroe wrote:
>--- Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  ... an intentional red herring.
>
>Every time someone says something like this here, I
>gotta ask, why?  For what reason?  To what effect?  So ...


"Because of Einstein, we often call time the fourth dimension. 
Special relativity shows that time behaves surprisingly like the 
three spatial dimensions. The Lorenz equations show this. Length 
contracts as speed increases. Time expands as speed increases." - 
<http://www.jimloy.com/physics/4d.htm>


I hardly think the difference between the way the  world (including 
the use of clocks and stars and chronometers, etc.)  is measured in 
Mason & Dixon and the way it's treated in Against the Day is beyond 
Pynchon's awareness. 

It doesn't make  Against the Day  a "companion" work to Mason & Dixon 
(although I may have left that impression in a prior post).   But I 
do think time as a dimension for travel (and the action and 
characters in this book certainly do travel)  and specific dating is 
very important in AtD.   

Relativity may have a bearing on why certain details  appear to be 
somewhat anachronistic;  why characters seem to travel faster than 
things that can happen - or why some things happen faster than the 
characters move.   (See Lew's  new awareness re dynamite.)

There are more of these "errors" than we've discussed,  but in the 
current section the the Galveston hurricane (1900),  Rider Waite 
Tarot cards  (December 1909)  and "Child of the Storm" by Rider 
Haggard (1913) are not in their "correct" place,  time-wise or  in 
relation to the others.   Perhaps it's the stuff of the occult or 
perhaps it's relativity or perhaps they're simply anachronisms? 

Galveston Hurricane   <http://www.noaa.gov/galveston1900/> 
Rider Waite Tarot <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite_tarot_deck>
Rider Haggard "Child of the Storm"  <http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1711>


Instead of ignoring the anachronisms,  maybe we should pay attention 
and consider the dimension of time and relativity.   I wouldn't take 
the idea too far and I don't out-and-out discount the possibility of 
a red-herring  (why do authors do that or is it the reader who does 
it?)  but I do think that the possible relationship of  time, 
relativity and anachronisms are worth exploring.  

Bekah
What's with the  name Rider? 
(Oh - that's a reality check.)



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20070422/04bb04a2/attachment.html>