Webb Traverse

[Mark Kohut]

Let me throw out another half-baked, barely heated notion re space and time and M & D and ATD.
   
  Arguably, simplistically, in M & D, pynchon is exploring how the space/land/place of America, America's ideals went very wrong....
   
  Arguably, simplistically. in ATD, pynchon is exploring when in time the whole world, History, the dominant West, went very wrong.
   
  MK

bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
        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.)
  

  

  

  



       
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