ATDTdA : 12 "My Native land is not a country" #1, 326

[Keith]

On Jun 27, 2007, at 9:14 AM, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

          Keith:
          He may be critiquing science as monotheism and offering
          up a polytheistic view. I doubt he'd throw out the scientific
          method as part of the whole.

          Robin:
          Tesla's description of his vision of the transmitting tower
          has many parallels with Rilke's experience of 'receiving'
          the Duino Elegies, and Pynchon is deliberately undermining
          the sceintific method in the process, as he does many times
          in AtD and all his other books.

          Don't know about your reading of the man's work, but my  
take is that Pynchon
          puts a lot more faith in deep nudges from far elsewhere  
than in the scientific
          method. I mean statistically speaking, in terms of karmic  
enterprise and what
          sort of characters have what sort of outcomes in his books,  
real magic trumps
          scientific enterprise. In Against the Day, in particular,  
there's all sorts of
          little moral tales based on older fairy tales.

Keith: Did you see my post from earlier this week?

From: Keith <keithsz at mac.com>
Date: June 25, 2007 7:49:45 PM PDT
To: Masochistic Devotees <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: AtDTDA (12) "And your mind is mo-ving slow" [326:36 - 327:25]

And it also points to the source of ideas and inspiration for both  
art (Pynchon) and science (Tesla) as being something other than the  
conscious mind and rational deduction and intent. Tesla did not get  
the tower idea by sitting down and following a flow chart of rational  
ideation. Tesla in the text states that the "real tower" is the one  
that appeared in a vision (in one of the amazing limestone caves  
[327:9] in the Velebit range which was a good locale for visionary  
experiences [326:38-40]) and the outer manifestation and its  
construction are all theater [327:20-21] with the finished project  
compared to psilocybin ("steel cap of fungoid aspect"):

http://www.teslascience.org/archive/descriptions/WP001.htm

http://www.divinorum.org/Mush%20Hautla.jpg

"Still there are parts of it I can't believe I wrote. Sometime, in  
the last couple of decades, some company of elves must have snuck in  
and had a crack at it." [_Slow Learner_, 'Introduction,' 22:21-24]

--------------------------------------

I don't think he's an aether/oar kind of a guy. More of a both/and.

I think it is more likely that *you* "put a lot more faith in deep  
nudges from far elsewhere than in the scientific method."

My bet is that Pynchon sees the importance of both, but is nudging  
things in the direction of the visionary because scientific  
rationalism has made things too one-sided. One could make a case that  
his use of "T.W.I.T." says something about what he thinks of being  
too one-sided in the other direction.