'No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow'

[Dave Monroe]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:27 AM, Rob Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:

> Like Janos says, it's absolutely a case of "it's either real or it's not,
> you can't decide". Like the good postmodernist text that it is these things
> are deliberately indeterminate in Lot 49 ( ... of course, you could say the
> same about the questions of Hamlet's madness or the Ghost's existence in
> Shakespeare's Hamlet). Ultimately, though, it's not a question of either/or.
> Both possibilities (coincidence, deliberate allusion) are valid, and are
> meant to be valid.
>
> The flip side of this, for the reader (and for Oedipa), is to adopt a
> strategy of 'cognitive dissonance' to let both possibilities, mutually
> exclusive though they are, co-exist ... 'to be able to believe two
> contradictory truths at the same time ... a way to transcend opposites - as
> if some aberrant form of Zen Buddhism.' (1984 'Intro' x).

On the one hand ...

"Whereas the 'either/or' claims to mark decisive choices between
immutable terms (the alternative: either this or that), the
schizophrenic 'either ... or ... or'  refers to the system of possible
permutations between differences that always amount to the same as
they shift and slide about."

http://books.google.com/books?id=WvvQfxvGfpYC

... and on the other (?) ...

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind
simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

http://www.orwelltoday.com/doublethink.shtml