Some thoughts on ATD

[kelber at mindspring.com]

What is it "about"?

Saying what any Pynchon book is "about" is a daunting task.  If I had to describe what GR was "about" I'd say, simplifying greatly:  The psychosexual anxieties brought about by living in the shadow of the bomb.  The central image:  the parabola, which traces the path of a missile,  the intensity of an orgasm over time, the actual plot development of GR, and so much more.  The protagonist: Slothrop  The anatagonist:  The military-industrial complex.  The subtext:  The Cold War

My take on ATD (and I hope others will respond in kind):

The central image of ATD seems to be the split image caused by Iceland spar.  Duality.  Two of the chapters are Iceland Spar and Bilocations.  Many of the characters are doubled:  Werfner-Renfrew, Deuce-Sloat, Vibe-Walker, Nigel-Neville.   Light is opposed to dark/night throughout the book.  The dual particle-wave nature of light was being developed in this time period.

The portrayal of anarchism seems to fit in with this duality.  The book starts in Chicago, not long after the purported anarchist bombing at Haymarket Square.  Webb Traverse, two of his sons, and various of their friends and acquaintances are introduced as (bomb-chucking) anarchists.  While we could quibble over how sympathetically they're portrayed, it's clear that Pynchon doesn't mean them to be seen as bad guys, on the level of Scarsdale Vibe.  Sympathetic bombers of yesteryear are the terrorists of today.  This is a double view of bomb-chuckers, and a double-edged morality seems to be another expression of duality in the book.

TRP has probably been working on various parts of the book for most of his writing career.  Still, the final assembly occurred after 2001.  He was living in New York on 9/11.  The sequence where the Thing from the North destroys the city reads like an eyewitness account of what was going on in NYC that day.  So I think that 9/11 is a subtext for ATD.  Here's the dilemma for people who consider themselves progressive:  We honor the People's History of class warfare, wobblies, anarchists, people who the powers-that-be of the day thought of as terrorists.  We can imagine that the people we call terrorists today, al-Qaeda sympathizers might have a similarly romantic view of themselves.  How do we reconcile these two attitudes?  Duality.

ATD, of course, is not just about duality.  Chaos (the root of gas, WWI, gas warfare, and, again, anarchism) and borders (the subversion of indigenous culture by modernity, which was taking place during this time period, and is represented in the Mexico and Bulgaria sequences).  Also three dimensions and triple relationships are present (Lake-Deuce-Sloat representing the xyz coordinates, Yashmeen-Cyprian-Reef representing the ijk coordinates?)  ALso four dimensions (time travel).


The closest thing to a protagonist:  The Chums of Chance.  Antagonist?  Scarsdale Vibe, representing our old friend, the military-industrial complex, but in a larger sense, there is no antagonist.  Once you let dual morality out of the bag, we're as much the enemy as the next guy.


Anyone care to pipe in about what they think ATD is "about"?

Laura

Although