AtDDtA(16): Into the Map

[Dave Monroe]

   "The cryptic civilian had placed the Itinerary beneath an
optically-perfect sheet of Iceland spar, deployed various lenses, and
made some fine adjustments to the Nernst lamps.  'Here it is, lads.
Have a look.'" (AtD, Pt. III, p. 437)


"cryptic civilian"

Again, why a civilian?  And a passenger, rather than a crew member?
Why is he "cryptic," "his status on the ship ... unclear" (p. 436)?

Hm ...

"... speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics
come heavily into play when choosing jobs."

http://www.whysanity.net/monos/clerks5.html


"Iceland spar"

126; [...]"The Book of..." 133; "paramorphoscopes of" 250;
Schieferspath, 305-06; Zombini's, 355; aka espato or espanto, 375;
double-refraction, 375; 387; 391; 437

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/birefringence/index.html

http://www.nagt.org/files/nagt/jge/abstracts/Kristjansson_v50n4p419.pdf

http://www.galleries.com/minerals/carbonat/calcite/calcite.htm

http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm

Cf. ...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Pynchon-Against-the-Day.jpg

"You know, Bruce, those high school biology texts with centerfold
transparencies, first the skeleton, and then the muscles...well this
is the technique I use for writing." Don't ask me to explain that
statement, other than the reference to the layers. It also sounds
almost like the way a wafer (silicon chip) is made: layer upon layer
and each layer with encoded metallurgic pathways that spell out "yes"
and "no" according to how the electrons interact on the subatomic
level. (Forgive me. I am not a scientist or an electrical
engineer...so...just a picture here of how Ervin set words down layer
upon layer, transparency upon transparency.)

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_biography.html


"Nernst lamps"

An electric lamp consisting of a short, slender rod of zirconium oxide
(ceramic) in open air, heated to brilliant white incandescence by
electrical current. It was developed by the German physicist and
chemist Walther Nernst (1864-1941) in 1897 at Goettingen University.
In 1905 he formulated the third law of thermodynamics, and in 1920 he
received the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nernst_lamp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Nernst

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_437


"a skyship application as a range-finder and navigational aid"

Iceland spar was and is used for optical equipment and during World
War II it was a strategic mineral as it was used for the sighting
equipment of bombardiers and gunners....

http://www.galleries.com/minerals/carbonat/calcite/calcite.htm

Cf. ...

The Light over the Ranges (AtD, Pt. I, p. 6)

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25#Page_1


"a long and fateful plunge into the map"

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that
the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the
map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those
Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds
struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and
which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations,
who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears
had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some
Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of
Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are
Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all
the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658

https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/f2d03252295e0d0585256e120009adab?OpenDocument

http://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/bu/people/bs/borges.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science

Allusion to the Map/Territory relation—the relationship between symbol
and object. Coined by Alfred Korzybski, "The map is not the territory"
is a related expression meaning that an abstraction derived from
something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g., the
pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone; one's opinion
of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is not that person; a
metaphorical representation of a concept is not the concept itself;
and so on. Here, the (abstract) map itself could be a guide to a
spiritual quest or to conquest.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_436


"revealing the terrain at finer and finer scales"

A fractal is an object or quantity that displays self-similarity, in a
somewhat technical sense, on all scales. The object need not exhibit
exactly the same structure at all scales, but the same "type" of
structures must appear on all scales....

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Fractal.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
http://hypertextbook.com/chaos/
http://classes.yale.edu/fractals/
http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/frac/
http://www.kcsd.k12.pa.us/~projects/fractal/
http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/fractint.html

And speaking of time travel (as we were[n't]) ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9507&msg=2134


"as in dreams of falling, where the dreamer wakes just before impact"

See, e.g., ...

http://health.discovery.com/centers/sleepdreams/universaldreams/falling.html

http://www.dreamprophesy.com/falling-dreams.html


Maps, dreams, again, cf. ...

"If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor
adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes
of fiction."

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day_description

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0607&msg=102374