Thanks and

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Part of the question is whether being unreal or ideal is a good thing or a bad thing.  If Math, Time and Anarchism don't or can't exist in the real world, we're still able to make use of them.  There may be no Yz-les-Bains or any existing anarchist realm, but the anarchists who fought in the Spanish Civil War, for example, were real.  I think TRP is equating the ideal with the spiritual here.  I don't find it helpful to think of anarchism or Marxism or mathematics as forms of religion -- they lose their purity, somehow.  But there's definitely a thread of spirituality running through ATD, variously taking the form of math, anarchism, peyote visions or indigenous cultures.  The mature Pynchon?  The aged, fearful-of-death Pynchon?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>

>
>Laura,
>   
>  Well, we--I---try to overcome the "too personal' interpretation.....yea, my addendum to the Thanks was too much about me...sorry............but Mctaggart and other maths' thoughts are
>  in the p-list (and p-wiki) public space as well.
>   
>  We try to see with all we've got......... Of course I may be misinterpreting Yashmeen's remark by overinterpreting it.....I'm just one of the blind guys feeling the elephant..........but
>  it is Pynchon and everything connects?.........and why a McTaggart joke in this discussion
>  of anarchism?......Why not 'mad dog' Russell, Reimann, or a negative numbers joke?-----which might show she doesn't believe it could work----needing 'imaginary' numbers...
>   
>  I'm still believing, for the moment, that Yashmeen's put-down of conceptual, perhaps 'ideal' anarchism with McTaggart links McTaggart's concept that time is not linear "which is usually obvious common sense"----to quote AtD in the line immediately before it--  with anarchism as non-planning....
>   
>  And I think it relates deeply to math and time themes...........still being worked out.
>   
>  I was deepended by your hosting---as everyone should have been, I hope. Want to explore more the surrealism/revolution link...I think this section is crucial for touching bottom on some of TRPs deepest feelings about anarchism, of course, revolutionary change, revolutionary action, therefore his historical Leftism, therefore his sense of humans in History---how free, how hopeless----he seems to offer ...more (somehow) in AtD than in GR, say, yes, at least (or is that so obvious as to be ridiculous)?
>   
>  I guess I see the maths section as a metaphor for ...something else.....more than you do.
>   
>  The characters and their spiritual changes in the Balkans section seem more basic to me.
>   
>  Later,
>  mark
>   
>   
>   
>  
>
>kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>  Mark,
>
>You really seem to have taken the reference to McTaggert on a very personal level. Far from being accusatory here, I'm interested in why this is such an issue for you. How did the reference in this anarchist context change your perceptions of McT? I saw the passing reference to him as Yashmeen's dismissal of anarchism -- as maybe no more real than McT's concept of Time.
>
>The whole Yashmeen, Cyprian and Reef in the Balkans sequence was the hardest part of the book for me, mostly because it's the most spiritual. Frank in Mexico, peyote visions or not, is material and pragmatic:
>"If I shoot Person X, Y will result." Reading the Balkans section (both first and second times around) made me anxious, because I suspected the whole thing was a metaphor to complex mathematics beyond my understanding. Math, in this case, being Yashmeen's religion, and a highly spiritual undertaking. ANd we're heading into Cyprian's spiritual conversion. Between spirituality, math and math-as-spirituality, this is very tough going.
>
>Laura
>
>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Mark Kohut 
>. 
>> 
>> major parts of this book make one rethink one's initial feelings when one has a 'revision' of original perceptions. Here, that was mcTaggart for me...whom I saw thru establishment eyes
>> and now think was stupid about therefore....Pynchon sees him differently (in AtD), I now think....
>> 
>> So, maybe I need to revise some other attitudes to the maths section, the math characters.
>> Relearning that McTaggart was a kind of Hegelian, I remember this:"that most of Hegel's arguments come down to puns on the word 'is.'"-----which certainly applies to McT's notions of time...and was uttered by "Mad Dog" Russell, whom I thought was thoruoghly dissed by
>> OBA.......still thinkin'
>> 
>> O well, next read, best read.
>> 
>> And given the "revolutionary" section you hosted, I stumbled upon this by Trotsky, we all remember him, who according to Andre Breton co-authored the Surrealist Mnifesto with him---and, of course, surrealism was a mind-chaging discovery by OBA, he wrote in 'Slow Learner": 
>> 
>> Trotsky: "f the revolution in the interests of developing material production is obliged to set up a centralized, socialist system, so must it at the same time, and from the very first, establish and assure an anarchistic regime of intellectual freedom".....
>> 
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>> , 
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