A reality stranger than fiction

Fri Sep 14 07:38:01 CDT 2007

Unfortunately, I haven't read AtD yet - it's the only Pynchon novel that
I haven't. My bookshelf is currently taking the burden for me while my
bedside table cowers in anticipation. I've had it since it first came
out here in the UK and I'm actually pretty keen to read it but might
wait for the paperback. (All this "deep reading" is making the book seem
ever-more intriguing and appealing.)

I would suggest, from what I have read of Pynchon, that the whole idea
is to be "on a crest" or at least level with one. Once you've
accumulated a mountain of historical details (as Pynchon has) you only
need to have the strength, stamina and oxygen to scale it, reach the
peak and perhaps a whole topography of folds and crests is visible. If
that isn't all stretching a metaphor too far :-)

Guy

PS> Hope you don't mind me copying the list in - it was a bit of an
afterthought but I'm interested to see if any one else has anything to
add to this train of thought. Unfortunately, I haven't read any Gibson
either.

________________________________

From: Mark Kohut [mailto:markekohut at yahoo.com] 
Sent: 13 September 2007 17:27
To: Guy Ian Scott Pursey
Subject: RE: A reality stranger than fiction

YES!......thanks much........I too remember it but not as well as you
nor where to find it

nor how f'in' great is the expressed idea via TPS....

gonna memorizt it now (if I still can)

Do you think part of the meaning of AtD, with the larger time frame  in
which the characters actually act (even without counting the time
travellers), is to be "on a crest"

of history and see it all more completely?

mk

Guy Ian Scott Pursey <g.i.s.pursey at reading.ac.uk> wrote:

	"Perhaps history this century [...] is rippled with gathers in
its fabric such that if we are situated [...] at the bottom of a fold,
it's impossible to determine warp, woof or pattern anywhere else. By
virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are
others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which come to
assume greater importance than the weave itself and destroy any
continuity. [...] Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things would be
different. We could at least see." (V., pp.155-156)

	I remember when I first read it - blew me away.

	Guy

________________________________

	From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org
[mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Mark Kohut
	Sent: 10 September 2007 23:13
	To: Dave Monroe
	Cc: pynchon -l
	Subject: Re: A reality stranger than fiction

	TRP has something---in V.? GR?---about the "folds" of history
very like, no?

	Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote: 

	A reality stranger than fiction
	Angela Bennie
	September 7, 2007

	WILLIAM GIBSON HAS a nodal theory of history. It is a little
like the
	astronomers' string theory but with knots in it.

	There are certain points in history, Gibson says, where the
world
	switches course, "where all the balls in the game move and
settle in
	new positions". These nodal points are rare, he says, and quite
random
	and they might not even be recognisable as significant when they
	occur.

	Their causes and effects can even seem quite mysterious
afterwards.
	But whatever the circumstances of the event, the only thing that
is
	really clear to him is that, having reached the node, or the
blip in
	the historical course of human affairs, the world is set on an
	irreversibly different course.

	September 11, 2001, he says, was one of those events. "In some
ways
	September 11 was the true beginning of the 21st century," Gibson
says.
	He's speaking from Chicago late in the afternoon, one of his pit
stops
	in a gruelling tour across the United States to promote his new
book,
	Spook Country.

	"And at this point it is still perhaps only our narrative. But
the way
	we have responded to it is changing things for other people in
the
	world, too. So it is now becoming part of their narratives and
their
	narratives will have different versions of the cause and its
effects
	of the event.

	"So it is like this seismic shock, one whose waves are still
moving up
	the time line. At its epicentre is 9/11."

	What he doesn't say is that this seismic shock changed the
course of
	his writing, too....

http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/a-reality-stranger-than-fiction/2007/09
/06/1188783376158.html

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