Inherent in Pynchon?

[Dave Monroe]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 7:55 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> One not only expects a Maas, not to mention a Bodine, to show up
> somewhere along the proceedings, but the "BLD" here, if not PI
> hisself, may well be an inverse Inverarity.  IV seems already an
> inverse Lot 49, so ...

Main Entry: vice ver·sa
Pronunciation: \ˌvī-si-ˈvər-sə, ˈvīs-ˈvər-\
Function: adverb
Etymology: Latin
Date: 1601
: with the order changed : with the relations reversed : conversely

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

vice versa
"with position turned"

Thus, "the other way around", "conversely", etc. Historically, vice is
properly pronounced as two syllables, but the one-syllable
pronunciation is extremely common. Classical Latin pronunciation
dictates that the letter C can only make a hard sound, like K; thus
Wee-keh Wehr-suh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_(S-Z)#vice_versa

Vice-versa
Meaning

The reverse of the previous statement, with the main items transposed.
It derives from Latin, with the translation being 'the other way
round' or 'the position being reversed', but is now fully absorbed
into English.

It is usually used to imply the complement of a statement without
expressing as much in words. For example:

"Fish can't live where we are most comfortable, and vice-versa".

Often mispronounced, as vie-sa ver-sa, and consequently misspelt as
visa versa. It should be pronounced vie-si ver-sa.

Origin

It is found in print quite early, as in Anthony Copley's An answere to
a letter of a Jesuited gentleman by his cousin, 1601:

"They are like to bee put to such a penance and the Arch-Priests
vice-versa to be suspended and attained as Schismaticall."

A similar term, 'arsy versy', has now become archaic. For example,
from Richard Taverner's Prouerbes or adagies with newe addicions,
gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus, 1539:

"Ye set the cart before the horse - cleane contrarily and arsy versy
as they say."

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/vice-versa.html

The hysteron proteron ("latter before") is a rhetorical device in
which the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens
temporally later than the second key word. The goal is to call
attention to the more important idea by placing it first....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteron-proteron

hysteron proteron

his'-ter-on pro'-ter-on  from Gk. hysteros, "later" and protos, "first"
("the latter put as the former")
praeposteratio, prepostera loquutio
preposterous

Disorder of time. (What should be first, isn't.) A kind of hyperbaton.

Examples
Put on your shoes and socks.
(not in that order, of course)
In the following example, the turning of the rudder logically precedes
the flight described, yet is mentioned after:
Th' Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,
With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder.
—Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra 3.10.2

Related Figures
Figures of Order
hysterologia

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/H/hysteron%20proteron.htm

Another technique that may be worth mentioning is Pynchon's extensive
use of the hysteron proteron -- a literary trope involving retrograde
motion, regression, or a reversal of cause and effect. At many times
in the story events are described in reverse order, a literary
slight-of-hand that works to pry our linear concept of Time from its
stubborn entrenchment. Journeys are imagined moving in reverse,
objects are mentally disassembled, and films occasionally run
backward. This tendency for reversal reaches its greatest
manifestation in the fall of the Rocket itself -- the fact that the
sound of its descent comes after its faster-than-sound impact is an
idea that stimulates an interesting variety of emotional responses in
the novel's many protagonists.

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_grintro.html

Weisenburger, Steven.  "Hysteron Proteron in Gravity's Rainbow."
   Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring
1992): 87-105.

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=97365501