rubrics (I like that word), wrecking crews and hugfests

[Joseph Tracy]

On Nov 25, 2009, at 11:53 AM, Ray Easton wrote:
>
>
> Does Pynchon offer us a critique of "the linear mental structure of  
> cause and effect"?  Yes, with that I agree.
>
> The occult provides an elaborate and esoteric view of the world, as  
> does modern  physics.  Some human beings use the world view offered  
> by the occult in an attempt make sense of the world, just as some  
> others employ the rational, scientific view in the same attempt.   
> Does the author endorse any such alternative to rationality?  I see  
> no evidence for that in the texts.  What I do see in the texts is a  
> critique of the occult world view, and other such alternatives, as  
> trenchant as the one he offers of "rationalist" thought.
We may well have different definitions of "the occult", but I have  
never found something coherent enough to call an "occult world view".  
If, in talking about an occult world view you are talking about  the  
possibility that  non rational dimensions exist and some of the  
properties of these dimensions  correspond with the practices and  
skills and metaphoric descriptions offered by spiritual, magical,  
religious and cultic disciplines; and if you are further saying  
Pynchon categorically rejects all such phenomena and insight as  
delusional and useless,  I think that gets much dicier. You use the  
word endorse. Does Pynchon endorse any such alternative to reality.   
One might ask if Pynchon or anybody else fully  endorses any reality.  
I would only say he includes in his fiction  a non rational/ mystical/ 
mythical/supernatural dimension very extensively and interestedly   
 From V to IV, he creates parallel worlds and invests them with  
tremendous vitality. These parallel worlds are as much a catch all of  
the human imagination as the real world and they are in the same way  
as the real world a vessel for the ludicrous and the sublime and much  
between. In essence he treats this dimension with a genuine  
democratic interest, some things are laughable, some sinister,  some  
inexplicable and mysterious.
>
> My only small contribution to the AtD read was the observation that  
> the actual content of the mathematics in AtD is irrelevant to the  
> novel.  There's no secret, hidden, below the surface meaning to  
> fact that the characters discuss the zeta function, say, rather  
> than some other obscure and esoteric bit of modern mathematics.    
> Any mathematical concept will do, so long as it is obscure and  
> esoteric, so long as it is the sort of thing that can be obsessed  
> about, so long as it possible for human beings to see it as the  
> sort of thing that can hold some most secret and important  
> meaning.  What matters in AtD is not the mathematics, but that the  
> characters are doing mathematics and the way they go about doing it.
The content of mathematics do seem important in this aspect. They  
are, like the Michelson Morley experiment, tools that are redefining  
the physical world or that are on the cusp of a radical redefinition.  
This is a prelude to Einstein, a new mapping of spacial dimensions.   
It would be very strange if people were not intensely passionate  
about this process, even as it is terribly sad that they seem willing  
take sides rather than see where the math leads. Pynchon is also  
asking us to think about the parallels in politics, The battle lines  
forming as the world of monarchies and imperial boundaries shakes and  
readies for bloody combat with emergent political arrangements.
> Pynchon does not write about mathematics.  He writes about human  
> beings doing mathematics in an especially obsessive way.  There is  
> no hidden meaning to the mathematics.  Everything is on the surface.
>
>
> In an entirely similar way, it seems to me that Pynchon does not  
> write about the occult, he writes those obsessed the occult.   He  
> does not write about conspiracy theories, but about those obsessed  
> with conspiracy.
You are right that P writes virtually  nothing about conspiracy  
theories  but he writes a lot about conspiracies, both real  
historical conspiracies and fictional conspiracies. The P characters  
that become obsessed with those conspiracies did not start out with  
or show any interest in  "conspiracy theories" but encountered actual  
conspiracies of powerful people to take advantage of the less  
powerful , often themselves.. What is a conspiracy but a plot to  
seize what is not yours. In that sense conspiracies play a prominent,  
constant and possibly determinative role in human history.   Example  
from TRP: In VL none of the counter culture characters are obsessed  
with the conspiratorial , unconstitutional plan to round up  
dissidents  and put them in secret detention centers before this  
happens , because they don't know about it.  The reality is that such  
plans were really  made under Nixon and Reagan along with lists of  
some to be rounded up, and  the Rex 84 plan may still exist in some  
form.  Pynchon points us to this actual conspiracy against the  
constitution which he even gives its real name, by inventing a  
fictional enactment of detention.

He is pointing not to vague fascistic tendencies , not to theories  
about the secret abuse of power  , but to actual  conspiracies  
verified in Congressional hearings.. That he builds books around such  
political and cultural conspiracies indicates to me that he considers  
these to be important realities, realities that are shaping our world  
and are worthy of our attention and consideration.  It takes very  
little research to discover that the mindset and people that planned   
secret detention camps in the US  sponsored the  enactment of these  
and worse plans and methods in Chile and other places south of the  
border.

> There are no hidden, "deeper" meanings in these cases either.   
> Everything is  on the surface.
I don't know what you mean by deeper meanings but a great deal of  
TRP's historic, political  and cultural references are not obvious  
and require some thought , imagination or research to discover . Such  
discoveries do enrich the metaphors and themes of his work.  In this  
way Pynchon  also encourages an alternate cultural and historic  
literacy that has powerfully enlarged some reader's frames of  
reference.  Surfaces are also very important. Everything we know  
about surfaces we know because of depths and everything we know about  
depths we know because of surfaces.
>
>
>
> The notion that these hobbyhorses are anything but hobbyhorses, the  
> idea that Pynchon writes about such thing in order to point us  
> towards some truth  in which he believes -- this is, to Richard  
> Fiero's description, a trap.  A trap deliberately laid for us by  
> the texts, to be sure, but still a trap.
.We really can't prove one way or the other if P is "pointing us  
toward some truth he believes or not" ; I suspect, for example, that  
he is a sincere vegetarian, and sees other species through an inter  
species broadening of his ethical lens.  But what he does as a writer  
is make an authorial case for that point of view and leaves the  
implications of the case up to the reader. I am not a vegetarian but  
I see strong evidence that P is not neutral on this. I think his  
argument is well made and along with other writers on the topic and  
my personal and family deliberations, it adds to my own consideration  
of the issues.

the idea that all meaning making is a trap created by language is a  
philosophical position that Pynchon neither endorses nor refutes,    
to insist that Pynchon is deliberately laying this trap seems as  
paranoid
as the supposed paranoia of  secret meaning making it refutes.  The  
whole thing hinges around the implications of entropy. I see 2  
unanswered questions in this regard. 1)What wound up the winding down  
universe, and 2) is there any evidence of anti-etropic  forces that  
are simply not measurable by scientific means. Bucky Fuller posed the  
idea that cosciousness is such a force.



>
> Ray

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