CoL 49 (5) Nefastis [PC 83/87]

[Robin Landseadel]

Oedipa decides to tool down Telegraph and check out the Nefastis  
machine.

Charles Hollander finds a great deal of import in the name John  
Nefastis:

	In The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon writes with a spooky
	reluctance, as if certain things can not be spoken of, as if they
	had no name, as if the naming of historical names will go on
	only through cognate and metaphor, corruptions and low puns
	which might contain high magic. Indeed, one character is
	named John Nefastis, “nefastus” meaning nefarious, and a
	cognate, “nefandous” meaning not to be spoken of.

	Pynchon's Inferno
	http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

In the design of "The Crying of Lot 49 "What is not to be spoken of"  
works as a form of black magic. Heresy is the key word here.

	"Help," said Oedipa, "you're not reaching me."

	"Entropy is a figure of speech, then," sighed Nefastis, "a
	metaphor. It connects the world of thermo-dynamics to the world
	of information flow. The Machine uses both. The Demon makes
	the metaphor not only verbally graceful, but also objectively
	true."

	"But what," she felt like some kind of a heretic, "if the Demon
	exists only because the two equations look alike? Because of
	the metaphor?"

What if the quests developing in this story come out of a personal  
fascination with heresy? What if the central, unspoken, character is  
William Pynchon? Pynchon's religious/heretical references are  
certainly "Catholic" in their universality. The historical importance  
of heresy in the New World is a constant in Pynchon's writings. Soon  
after Oedipa's encounter with the Nefastis Machine, she will witness  
more heresies, located in the general region of the word "Trystero/ 
Tristero" and by the sign of the muted posthorn. Oedipa's value  
systems are in the process of flying apart. Once Oedipa gets out of  
her tower, she finds out that what used to be noise has turned into  
signal.

My take on the Slow Learner introduction is that OBA is indirectly  
writing about "The Crying of Lot 49."

	Because the story has been anthologized a couple-three times,
	people think I know more about the subject entropy than I really
	do. Even the normally unhoodwinkable Donald Barthelme has
	suggested in a magazine view that I had some kind of
	proprietary handle on it. Well, according to the OED the word
	was coined in by Rudolf Clausius, on the model of the word
	“energy” which he took to be Greek for ''work-contents.'' Entropy,
	or "transformation -contents" was introduced as of examining
	the changes a heat engine went through in a typical cycle, the
	transformation being heat If Clausius had stuck to his native
	German and called it Verwandlungsinbalt instead, it could have
	had an entirely different impact. As it was, after having been
	worked with in a restrained way for the next 70 or 80 years,
	entropy got picked up on by some communication theorists and
	given the cosmic moral twist it continues to enjoy in current
	usage. I happened to read Norbert Wiener's The Human Use of
	Human Beings (a rewrite for the interested layman of his more
	technical Cybernetics) at about the same time as The Education
	of Henry Adams, and the "theme" of the story is mostly
	derivative of what these two men had to say. A pose I found
	congenial in those days - fairly common, I hope, among pre-
	adults - was that of somber glee at any idea of mass destruction
	or decline. The modern political thriller genre, in fact, has been
	known to cash in on such visions of death made large-scale or
	glamorous. Given my undergraduate mood, Adams's sense of
	power out of control, coupled with Wiener's spectacle of
	universal heat-death and mathematical stillness, seemed just
	the ticket. But the distance and grandiosity of this led me to
	short-change the humans in the story.
	Slow Learner, 12/13

Maybe the author's general take on things shifted by 1984. In Vineland  
the personal—which is political anyway—is presented as more important  
than the political. There really isn't all that much to the character  
of John Nefastis—a shirt with Polynesian themes, a taste for Hanna- 
Barbera cartoons and a mindless horny lunge for Oedipa. He's also an  
unreliable source for a lecture on thermodynamics and information  
sorting.

	For John Nefastis (to take a recent example) two kinds of
	entropy, thermodynamic and informational, happened, say by
	coincidence, to look alike, when you wrote them down as
	equations. Yet he had made his mere coincidence respectable,
	with the help of Maxwell's Demon.

	Now here was Oedipa, faced with a metaphor of God knew how
	many parts; more than two, anyway. With coincidences
	blossoming these days wherever she looked, she had nothing
	but a sound, a word, Trystero, a to hold them together.
	PC 87

What if the author is only using this particular arrangement of words  
because of visual similarities, the sounds of the words, an intent  
more poetic and evocative than political? What if it's just a metaphor  
of god knows how many parts and it's Just Oedipa's that she's caught  
up in it?Sounds like a weird po-mo form of theater of cruelty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Os_sDDDXro

Oedipa dreams of escaping her tower. She wants to believe:

	How wonderful they might be to share. For fifteen minutes more
	she tried; repeating, if you are there, whatever you are, show
	yourself to me, I need you, show yourself. But nothing
	happened.
	PC 86

In this scene, Oedipa is all wrapped up with a machine that supposedly  
reads intent [links to one's psychic powers] and offers up the  
possibility of limitless energy. It seems in some ways like  
Scientology and in others like Black Ops research for a U.S.  
government agency analogous to the White Visitation. On a certain  
level, it gives off whiffs of the emerging neopagan and "New Age"  
movements:

	Nefastis smiled; impenetrable, calm, a believer. "He existed for
	Clerk Maxwell long before the days of the metaphor."
	PC 85

We might question who we're dealing with after a quick perusal of the  
local environment

	"Watch the picture," said Nefastis, "and concentrate on a
	cylinder. Don't worry. If you're a sensitive you'll know which one.
	Leave your mind open, receptive to the Demon's message. I'll
	be back." He returned to his TV set, which was now showing
	cartoons. Oedipa sat through two Yogi Bears, one Magilla
	Gorilla and a Peter Potamus, staring at Clerk Maxwell's
	enigmatic profile, waiting for the Demon to communicate.
	PC 85

Yogi Bear is cross-marketed as a cereal shill and anti-tobacco spokes- 
bear. Clearly, this bear helps define John Nefastis' credibility as a  
spokesperson for the Nefastis machine and as an expert on the subject  
of entropy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viJqk-NIPag&feature=PlayList&p=BDFD01E603DC58F7&index=17

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rb53WNgLDI&feature=PlayList&p=BDFD01E603DC58F7&index=19

And yet, and yet and yet. . .

I used to hang out with some of the High-End Audio designers/ 
developers in Berkeley, and it might have been something in the air or  
the water or maybe even the ley-lines that run from the Campanile—the  
Sather Tower—down Telegraph Avenue. But I believe. In high-end audio  
there is a scientific mumbo-jumbo/religious experience coupling,  
language that gets downright alchemical sometimes and there is also  
that unbridgeable divide between those who can hear the difference and  
those who can't. Tubes vs. Transistors. BiPolars vs. MOSFETs. Direct  
Drive vs. Belt Drive. Ivor Tiefenbrun vs. the World. And all designers  
and developers were aware of weird phenomena at sensory thresholds  
that could explain "psychic" behaviors. It was not so much a question  
of what you are listening TO but knowing what to be listening FOR.  
Just like with the sensitives, you had to be tuned-in.

Oh yeah, and the Bay Area is full of psychics.

Those with knowledge of the world of IT understand just how important  
Maxwell's little sorting demons really are.

On Jun 18, 2009, at 10:02 PM, Henry Musikar wrote:

> JK, or "J-K" flip flops aren't sandals, but rather the most  
> elementary of
> digital components, and would have been available, perhaps on sale, in
> Silicon Valley, CA.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics)#JK_flip-flop
> "The JK flip-flop is therefore a universal flip-flop, because it can  
> be
> configured to work as an SR flip-flop, a D flip-flop, or a T flip- 
> flop."
>
> Universal flip flop!

	But had Clerk Maxwell been such a fanatic about his Demon's
	reality? She looked at the picture on the outside of the box.
	Clerk Maxwell was in profile and would not meet her eyes. The
	forehead was round and smooth, and there was a curious
	bump at the back of his head, covered by curling hair. His
	visible eye seemed mild and noncommittal, but Oedipa
	wondered what hangups, crises, spookings in the middle of the
	night might be developed from the shadowed subtleties of his
	mouth, hidden under a full beard.
	PC85

Which brings us back to the shrink. Those of you that have already  
read the book know [flash forward] that the first place Oedipa goes to  
after her "mind blowing" experiences in San Francisco & Berkeley are  
the offices of the good Dr. Hilarius. Oedipa goes off on her little  
adventure thinking any potential  problem can be solved with a visit  
to the shrink. If the Shrinks Flips, what then?