ATDTDA (5.4) - Bad Ice After Midnight

[Carvill John]

The members of the Vormance expedition - "an international spectrum of 
motive and eccentricity" - are now introduced, and we're reminded of who is 
paying for the trip and why (Vibe focused on the "railworthiness of the 
terrain," one of a great many instances of the railroad theme). After which, 
things do not delay in turning mathematical. There's a lot of talk about 
space, time, dimensions, etc. I wish I understood more of it. I wish some 
scientifically minded p-lister would contribute some kind of ATD Math 
Overview. Monte?

Meantime, if you missed it before, there's this article, part of a work in 
progress:

http://adaptivecomplexity.blogspot.com/2007/01/science-of-light-space-time-and-vectors.html

Highly recommended.


Some important points, math-wise, from this section of ATD include:

- the opposition between the Quaternionists and the Vectorists, which seems 
to be another manifestation of the old Pynchon duality between the analog 
and the digital.

- more mentions of 90 degree angles, which I am convinced will play a role 
in our eventual 'understanding' of ATD, particularly in grasping the nature 
of the underlying structure(s) that we as readers suspect are there but 
cannot quite perceive at present, which puts us ahead of those reviewers who 
wrote ATD off as a sprawling mess.

- the philosophical side of mathematics: "...achieving eternal return as 
simply, or should I say complexly, as that."

- the linking of mathematics and religion ("those of the Quaternionist 
faith").

There's the suggestion that the particular strain of Iceland Spar to be 
found in these parts is "the sub-structure of reality. The doubling of the 
Creation.." and that it's no coincidence that "its curious advent into the 
world occurred within only a few years of the discovery of Imaginary 
Numbers, which also provided a doubling of the mathematical Creation."  
Speaking of religion, this 'Creation' business reminds me also of the 
possible Garden of Eden resonances in the Constance Penhallow portrait 
paragraph, and the second meaning of 'Malus', i.e. the genus of the apple.


This is all mixed in with numerous mentions of ice, appropriately enough 
since we've travelled from the 'White City' to the white wastes of the 
North. There's the notion that ice may be in some way 'alive', firing up 
another Pynchon theme, the animate vs. the inanimate. It's suggested that 
the ice may be "trying to express some argument of its own," there is "bad 
ice," and "icefields which sought as if with conscious malevolence to take 
the unwary down like quicksand, without warning". We hear, in one of the 
last few biographical details about Constance Penhallow, that as a girl she 
attended a class in school where "the topic of study would be Living 
Creatures. 'I suggested ice. They threw me out of class.'"

Now, doesn't that sound a bit extreme? Surely if it was only a category 
mistake, a girl wouldn't be thrown out of class? Unless she was touching on 
some sort of raw nerve or taboo? Something that shouldn't ever be 
mentioned...

There's more foreboding, with the sun coming up "a baleful smear in the 
sky," and more about the naming of (and not being able to name) things, that 
smear assuming "the appearance of a device immediately recognisable yet 
unnameable, so widely familiar that the inability to name it passed from 
simple frustration to a felt dread, whose intricacy deepened almost moment 
to moment...its name a word of power, not to be spoken aloud, not even to be 
remembered in silence."

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to the easily recognisable object? Or is it 
as mysterious as the unnamable anti-stone?

The sky is described as "neutral-density" gray - another photographic term. 
And it wouldn't be a key ATD episode without explicit mention of light. The 
Vormance Expedition's alienist (every expedition has to have one), Otto 
Ghloix - an anagram? reminds me of ghoul - explains that "One who cannot 
come to terms with teh, one must say *sinister unknowability* of Light, 
projects an Aether, real in every way, except for its being detectable," to 
which an unnamed wag replies, "Seems like an important property to be 
missing, don't you think?"  Which may be another reference to religion?

There are echoes of Vineland in the 'Hidden People', and what may be - 
someone should check - the first mention in ATD of the 'Trespassers'. And 
there's some sort of link between ice, light, and alternate worlds:

"For this is not *only* the geographical Iceland here, it is also one of 
several convergences among the worlds, found now and then lying behind the 
apparent, like these subterranean passages beneath the surface, which lead 
among the caves of Iceland spar, blindly among crystals untouched, perhaps 
never to be touched, by light."

It sometimes seems as if there are too many 'key episodes' in this book to 
leave room for anything else, but this Icelandic segment is, even by ATD 
standards, thick with significant passages. Somewhere in here, just one 
refraction beyond our understanding, could very possibly reside the 'key' to 
the question of what is 'real' and how the various 'worlds' or 'dimensions' 
of the book interact:

"Iceland Spar is what hides the Hidden People, makes it possible for them to 
move through the world that thinks of itself as 'real', provides that 
all-important ninety-degree twist to *their* light, so they can exist 
alongside our own world but not be seen."

So, a few more questions:

1. It's a 'big ask', but what do we think about how all the math, light, and 
ice tie together?

2. Is all this stuff about a possible consciousness in the ice directly 
connected with the 'Figure' which the Vormance Expedition eventually brings 
back with them?

3. Can there be any argument that, even in a book so heavy with nodal points 
where themes interconnect, this is one of the most crucial of key episodes?

4. Mere speculation of course, but is it possible that Pynchon wrote this 
Vormance section either first or last? This is just a hunch, but it has the 
feel, to me, of having been written either right at the start, as a kind of 
jumping off point for all the BIg Themes, or right at the end, as a sort of 
bonus bag of clues for the dedicated reader. And I can't help thinking of 
those reports that ATD was delayed for last-minute author edits.....


Cheers
JC

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