AtDTDA (37) p. 1060Tree of Diana

[Ian Livingston]

Hey, this is great stuff, Robin.  I hadn't come across any of this material
yet, but then I am doing most of my research like the dinosaur I am --
reading weighty tomes, and I'm miles from the nearest library.  I wonder if
I might find some more of this stuff eventually in texts.

What comes to mind in all this for me, though, is another one of those
nagging suspicions prickling at the edge of conceptual amalgamation.  That
is that Pynchon is starting to sound just a little more Transcendentalist
than I have been able to actually nail down anywhere before.  I wonder if
this holds any water or if I am barking up a Diana's tree?  It seems like it
dovetails nicely with the alchemical thread in TRP.

I recently found out that I am living very near lodes of mercury, by way of
a fun twist.

On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 6:19 AM, <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> "I remember that studio in Chicago. . . ."
>
> We first encounter Merle on page 13 but as an anonymous near-victim
> of a literal sandbagging. We find out his name on page 26—he turns out
> to be the Chum's first assignment. But we first encounter Merle Rideout
> as an anonymous photographer.
>
>           . . . .On the phone with Marge's publisher, he says
>           "Here's your quote. Thomas Pynchon loved this book.
>           Almost as much as he loves cameras. . . ."
>
> Photography becomes nearly an idée fixe in Against the Day. Much of
> Against the Day [a lot of Pynchon's writing in general] is concerned
> with the back-stories of science and technology. Merle Rideout's "take"
> on photography has much to say concerning Alchemy, Heremetics
> and the pervasive notion that the Earth is alive. The "life" and
> consciousness on earthly things—crystals, rocks, mountains, mine
> shafts—gets free play in AtD.
>
> From the Wikipedia:
>
>           Diana's Tree (Latin: Arbor Diana or Dianae), also known as
>           the Philosopher's Tree (Arbor Philosophorum), is a dendritic
>           amalgam of crystallized silver, obtained from mercury in a
>           solution of silver nitrate; so-called by the alchemists, among
>           whom "Diana" stood for silver. The arborescence of this
>           amalgam, which even included fruit-like forms on its branches,
>           led pre-modern chemical philosophers to theorize the existence
>           of life in the kingdom of minerals.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana's_Tree<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana%27s_Tree>
>
> As theoreticians of physics expand possible definitions of 'reality'
> during the era of expanding technology set down in AtD, we are drawn
> back into the concept of all things—rocks and stars included—being
> alive and conscious.
>
> Lew catches on to Merle's mindset:
>
>           "What you were saying about sending these pictures off onto
>           different tracks . . . other possibilities . . ."
>
>           "That's the constant-term recalibration, or C.T.R. . . "
>
> From the Pynchonwiki:
>
>           The reconstruction of the "primitive" (page 1049) entails
>           fixing a value for the constant term. The operator can
>           choose the "official" value and get Lew's "supposed-to-be"
>           life as output, or can choose a different value and track
>           some unofficial life. The machine can't tell the difference.
>
>
> http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1040-1062#Page_1050
>
> If 'everything connects', it is because it joined at the root, including
> those forks we did and didn't take.
>
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