The purpose of fiction, 822-826

[bandwraith at aol.com]

Mark:

"It would fascinate me to have you expound further on the
terrific phrase, "literary equivalent of the anthropic principle"...


OK. Bear with me. From the Wikipedia on "Indra's Net":

"Buddhist concepts of interpenetration hold that all phenomena
are intimately connected; for the Huayan school, Indra's net
symbolizes a universe where infinitely repeated mutual relations exist
between all members of the universe.[5] This idea is communicated
n the image of the interconnectedness of the universe as seen
in the net of the Vedic god Indra, whose net hangs over his palace
on Mount Meru, the axis mundi of Vedic cosmology and Vedic
mythology. Indra's net has a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, and
each jewel is reflected in all of the other jewels..."

And Wikipedia quoting Francis Harold Cook, from the same url:

"Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a
wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such
a manner that it stretches out infintely in all directions. In 
accordance
with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single
glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is
infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang
the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful
sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for
inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished
surface there are reflectedall the other jewels in the net, infinite in
number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one
jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an 
infinite
reflecting process occurring."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net

cf., M&D, p55:

  "Where's Bodine?"
   "Last I saw of him was out the end of the fore t'gallant Yard, with 
his
   Penis in the Jewel Block,- quite enjoying the Friction, to 
Appearance."

You may recall that this passage appears in the brief, and by now
notorious section, wherein "Boatswain (pronounced Bo'sun) Mr. Higgs
is makes a cameo? Notice also, please, that this section begins;

  Cheerily, Cheerily, then, Lads...

Which might ring a bell? I would say that it's a string hooking up
with the opening lines of ATD. Seafarers and Aeronauts, sea and
sky, the web is at least four dimensional. But Fender Belly
is grounding it, forcing it to be real, just like the Higgs Boson 
supplies
relative mass values to the nodes (particles) of the rigging (of 
reality).

Likewise, Bodine succumbs to

  "Mr Higgs's Obsessedness as to Loose Ends"

but in his own irreducible, individual and undeniably human way.

Without Bodine, the net lacks significance- an infinite regress of
self-reflecting jewels signifying nothing. Which begs the question:
Is the universe tuned just so- from the frequency of the smallest
planck-length string, to the huge expanses of space- rigged, so
to speak- in order to allow for us, and our Bodine-like self absorption?

Just my way of illustrating the Anthropic Princinple. A more
prosaic (and correct) explanation:

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

How that all relates to Bevis' appearance, disappearance and
reappearance after experiencing his own "ultraviolet catastrophe,"
and, how that might be an indication of p eavesdropping on
us all, as a metaphor for the Anthropic Principle- i.e., a literary 
version
of same, is gonna have to wait. Got some business.