AtDTDA (12) Everybody Must Get Stone Gravity 339

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

         Keith (Quoting an obscure but nonetheless vitaly 
          pertinent original source (or at least an early surviving 
          treastise on Alchemy. . . .

          Of the Ferment, and the Modes, Conditions,
          Properties, and Conversion  brought about by it.

               Of the ferment, which is the great secret of our 
          Art, and without which it cannot attain its goal, the 
          Sages speak only in the very obscurest terms. . . .

I had some sense back there of Merle's alchemical inclinations, but---as that
realm is alien to me---no way of knowing what these allusions to light falling
into matter, this act of coagulation. It will be some time before I can really
absorb the import of the documents you so graciously supplied, but it looks 
like the shift of alchemy during the age of quantum theory is one of those
zeitgeist shifts so often noted in TRP's works. I suspect it wouldn't hurt me 
one little bit to read this here copy of Jim Dodge's "Stone Junction" that's 
staring me down right about now. Pynchon practically outs himself from the 
broom-closet in his intro to "Stone Junction."