V-2nd - 2: Summary, Part II

[alice wellintown]

Klaus Benesch
Technology Writ Large: The Machine, the Body, and the Text in
Melville's Shorter Narratives



http://weberjournal.weber.edu/archive/archive%20B%20Vol.%2011-16.1/Vol.%2014.3/14.3Benesh.htm


On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> On Jul 2, 2010, at 10:51 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>
>>> Part II opens with more clock imagery.  The Whole Sick Crew's having a
>>> party that proceeds like an inanimate clock, unwinding, "seeking some easing
>>> of its own tension, some equilibrium."
>>
>> Isn't this a rehash of "Entropy"? And, given the importance of the
>> role entropy plays in CoL49 (such a short time later), it might
>> relate. Is the party scene representative, perhaps, of social,
>> communication entropy? Parties, after all, are rarely hotbeds of
>> ideas. The steady temperature outside in the story (37 degrees) as the
>> scene inside shifts without advancing is pretty clearly adapted here.
>> I don't know--is the clock a symptom / symbol of social entropy? Is it
>> fair to consider communication entropy a part of P's mindset at the
>> time he wrote this?
>
> Think about what "Inherent Vice" is all about in light of this. I'm sure
> that working at Boeing gave him lots of insider information on the early
> development of computers and information theory.
>