Some thoughts on ATD

[Bekah]

That was totally great, Laura,  and I can't think of a  thing to  
add   ...     except perhaps ...

For me,  after the basic plot and so on,  AtD  is all about narrative  
history - the uses and abuses of metaphor - from Chums of Chance to  
Ludlow (most everything else is somewhere between).   It's a work of  
irreverent revisionist history/ meta-history in a fictional format.

  The anarchist Webbs (rational / fictional) and Chums of Chance (non- 
rational / metafiction)  work their way through the math and  
physics / meta-math / metaphysics and some technological issues of  
the day to avenge their father's death and prevent the US homegrown  
Bad Vibes (and others)  from taking over the world.  It's a dirty job  
but somebody's got to do it - writing the history, that is.

Perhaps these are just more examples of the dualities you mentioned.

Bekah

On Sep 1, 2008, at 12:28 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> 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
>
>
>