The Rule of Phase Applied to History: Vidal, Adams, and Pynchon; a 1976 essay

[Mark Kohut]

"The Rule of Phase applied to History" comes from Adams' "Degradation of the Democratic Idea", I believe.....

It is now incoherent when read--and maybe was by TRP when he read it YET 
can provide a deep metaphor to a very intelligent writer deepening his vision of history, Life, the world, etc.

I think the 'phases of history' notion, is sorta often trumped by coherent historians who have found different ages, axial lines, etc. in history.

However, for a novelist such as TRP, I think the notion may have deepened his way of looking at WHAT MATTERED in History from his perspective on being human. [Is this clear?)

Which is to say, I do think,-- and it has informed my inadequate reading and posting--TRP has a deep artist's vision of 'phases of history' : Some examples:  When
the known (Western) world was whole.
 When it may have started to fragment.
[Enlightenment?]
Seen in the year 1870 from early to late---when V. was born---and when electric streetlamps started. 
Not to mention what M & D's year plus means--for America---and the world?



--- On Thu, 10/2/08, Henry <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Henry <scuffling at gmail.com>
> Subject: The Rule of Phase Applied to History: Vidal, Adams, and Pynchon
> To: "'Pynchon Liste'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008, 12:42 PM
> No doubted noted previously, but new to me, and so perhaps
> to others:
> http://atomicrazor.blogs.com/atomic_razor/2008/10/the-rule-of-pha.html
> 
> "I had been reading Gore Vidal's seminal New York
> Review of Books essay on
> the New Novel, 'American Plastic: the Matter of
> Fiction' and arrived at the
> section on Thomas Pynchon. Vidal didn't have much time
> for the other
> American writers working the manner of the roman nouveau,
> such as Donald
> Barthelme and John Barth, but he saw something in Pynchon,
> partly Pynchon's
> refusal to sell out to the academic world and secure a cosy
> sinecure for
> himself in some liberal arts college in New England and
> partly Pynchon's
> interest in and use of science and scientific metaphors in
> his novels."
> 
> "Henry Adams is not an obscure writer.
> Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres and
> The Education of Henry Adams are available in Penguin
> Classics (or certainly
> were). The Education of Henry Adams contains the essay
> 'A Law of
> Acceleration' as Chapter 34. The notion of exponential
> accelerating change
> is important to the idea of the Technological Singularity
> and it is
> interesting to note that here we have the idea initiated by
> as mainstream
> thinker as one could hope for."
> 
> "But it is a second essay 'The Rule of Phase
> Applied to History' mentioned
> by Vidal as a prime influence on Pynchon that Adams fully
> crystallised the
> idea of the Technological Singularity in terms of the
> notion of the phase
> change - ice, water and steam are all forms of H20, but
> their physical
> natures are radically different, even if controlled by the
> same laws of
> physics and thus intimately connected through the
> principles of
> thermodynamics. Adams saw the phases of history as linked a
> similar way."
> 
> If GR=Chemistry, M&D=Astronomy, and ATD=Physics, then
> how about the others
> (or has this already been covered :-)
> 
> If you liked this message, then please have a look at my
> blog,
> http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/henrymu 
> 
> HENRY M
> Information, Media, and Technology Management Consultant