AtDtDA(28): Back on the Trieste Station ...

Mark Kohut markekohut at yahoo.com
Fri Apr 4 15:44:51 CDT 2008 

Dave puts down:
   
  "'Not to mention field-coefficients ...'"

Help!
__________________________________________________________________________

  I dunno if this is just oblique Kute Korrespondence or not.......but in V., TRP had an unusual use of field....'somebody being in one another's 'field'......which reminded me of this social
  psychologist more famous when TRP was younger named Kurt Lewin whose ideas were given/he gave the name "field theory" to............as my no-attention--span 'scholarship" remembers it, the notion, baldly, went sorta like this:....all psychology is interpersonal psychology and anyone's personal psychology is made up of the fields of others one is (emotionally?) connected to.......
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  

Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
  "Back on the Trieste station, no longer entirely welcome in Venice
..." (AtD, Pt. IV, p. 799)


"in a warren partially below street level"

Ref. to a specific, historical, maybe even existing location?


Bevis Moistleigh

Bevis Mostly? Bevis Wetly? Cf. Sir Bevis from Lang's Red Romance Book
around this time. Or a Twilight Zone story, Mr. Bevis 1960.

Or, see later in AtD, Bevis is an allusion to Beavis & Butthead.

Possibly, given what follows, an allusion to the Bevis Marks Synagogue
in London, oldest extant Jewish house of worship in Britain, but more
likely a reference to (p.800) Bevis, the Story of a Boy.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_792-820#Page_799

In the parlance of the twentieth century, this is an oddball. His name
is James B.W. Bevis, and his tastes lean toward stuffed animals,
zither music, professional football, Charles Dickens, moose heads,
carnivals, dogs, children, and young ladies. Mr. Bevis is accident
prone, a little vague, a little discombooberated, with a life that
possesses all the security of a floating crap game. But this can be
said of our Mr. Bevis: without him, without his warmth, without his
kindness, the world would be a considerably poorer place, albeit
perhaps a little saner. Should it not be obvious by now, James B.W.
Bevis is a fixture in his own private, optimistic, hopeful little
world, a world which has long ceased being surprised by him. James
B.W. Bevis, on whom Dame Fortune will shortly turn her back, but not
before she gives him a paste in the mouth. Mr. James B.W. Bevis, just
one block away from the Twilight Zone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone/Mr._Bevis
http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/mr.-bevis/episode/12617/summary.html

Beavis (b. October 28, 1979 in Highland, Texas) is a character on the
MTV series Beavis and Butt-Head....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beavis
http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/beavis_and_butthead/series.jhtml


"aboriginal limestone"

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

Secondary calcite may also be deposited by supersaturated meteoric
waters (groundwater that precipitates the material in caves). This
produces speleothems such as stalagmites and stalactites....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limestone#Description


ebonite

Ebonite is one of the earliest forms of plastic. A hard, rigid and
shiny resin, it was intended as an artificial substitute for ebony
wood. It is actually a very hard rubber first obtained by Charles
Goodyear by vulcanizing rubber for prolonged periods....

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


macchinette

Italian for small devices

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_792-820#Page_799


"the Glagolithic alphabet"

The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavic
alphabet. It was created by brothers Saint Cyril (827-869 AD) and
Saint Methodius (826-885 AD) in 855 or around 862–863 in order to
translate the Bible and other texts into Slavic.

The name of the alphabet comes from the Old Slavic glagolÅ­, which
means sound (and is also the origin of the name for the letter "G").
Since glagolati also means to speak, the Glagolitsa is poetically
referred to as "the marks that speak"....

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

Cf. p. 252 ...

The Glagolitic Alphabet is the oldest known Slavic alphabet (9th c.).
It originated as a tactic to lessen the dependence of the subjects of
the Prince of Greater Moravia on Frankish priests, who banned it but
could not suppress it; it played a similar role in preserving
Bulgarian independence from Byzantium. It appears to be a nexus of the
kind of simultaneous temporal and spiritual tasks the Chums of Chance
are now involved in. In this, it raises the issues first explored by
Pynchon in the "Tchitcherine in Kyrghizia" sections of Gravity's
Rainbow in which the introduction of a written alphabet causes immense
political and social change.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_243-272#Page_252


"gematria"

Gematria (Rabbinic Hebrew גימטריה gēmaṭriyā, from the Greek γεωμετρία;
English since the 17th century) is the numerology of the Hebrew
language and Hebrew alphabet, and is used by its proponents to derive
meaning or relative relationship. Several forms can be identified ...

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

Gematria Systems

http://www.mysticalinternet.com/gematria/index.php

Cf. ...

"Kabbalists who study the Rocket as a Torah, letter by letter ..."
(GR, Pt. IV, p. 727)


"a series of digits"

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

Main Entry: dig·i·tize
Pronunciation: \ˈdi-jə-ˌtīz\
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): dig·i·tized; dig·i·tiz·ing
Date: 1953
: to convert (as data or an image) to digital form
— dig·i·ti·za·tion \ˌdi-jə-tə-ˈzā-shən\ noun
— dig·i·tiz·er \ˈdi-jə-ˌtī-zər\ noun

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/digitize


"finding the limits they converge to"

The limit of a sequence is one of the oldest concepts in mathematical
analysis. It provides a rigorous definition of the idea of a sequence
converging towards a point called the limit.

Intuitively, suppose we have a sequence of points (i.e. an infinite
set of points labelled using the natural numbers) in some sort of
mathematical object (for example the real numbers or a vector space)
which has a concept of nearness (such as "all points within a given
distance of a fixed point"). A point L is the limit of the sequence if
for any prescribed nearness, all but a finite number of points in the
sequence are that near to L. This may be visualised as a set of
spheres of size decreasing to zero, all with the same centre L, and
for any one of these spheres, only a finite number of points in the
sequence being outside the sphere....

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

In mathematics, a series is the sum of the terms of a sequence of numbers....

[...]

A series is convergent if the sequence of its partial sums converges ...

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence#Mathematics


"'the look on your face,'" "'hysterical giggling'"

?


"'Not to mention field-coefficients ...'"

Help!

"'... eigenvalues, metric tensors--'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvalue
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Eigenvalue.html

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MetricTensor.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_tensor

Here, by the way, is where URLs are FAR more efficient than text (and
note symbols, characters, diagrams, illustrations, photographs,
animations as well; antihyperlinkism is the new logocentrism) ...



       
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