V-2nd - 2: clocks and mirrors

[Ian Livingston]

On Sun, Jul 4, 2010 at 6:23 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes, I think to what you say. In my glossing, the mention of
> a 45* angle--sharp angles, unlike curves are bad tropes in Pynchon in general--
> which our author did not have to put in there, shows a bad vision for her, a
> human
> being taking in this clock, mirror and window....
> ,
> When I said the human was missing in the mirror, I meant that Rachel could
> not see herself at that angle and that left only the clockwork universe in the
> mirror,
> perhaps an image of the mechanistic, deterministic 20th Century---we are in the
> middle of
> it here---with humans missing from it, so to speak.
>

Yes, that is pretty much where I was headed. Then, as I was
contemplating your response, it occurred to me the image might be that
subtle after all. Humans are everywhere in the cosmopolitan view, but
their humanity is missing; they are objects whose souls are of no
importance to the observer. In Skinnerian (Pavlovian) psychology, one
need merely tweak the mechanism to alter the way it operates: psyche
is not a part of psychology, only the organism, which can be altered
by outside force. Utopia is possible through scientific manipulation
of the individual. Skinner was pretty popular at the time, I believe,
being resident at Harvard as the reigning deity of the era. He was
pretty bright, but, as Wilber says, no one is smart enough to be wrong
all the time. He offered up some interesting and worthy ideas that
work along with the shit that makes so many people hate him.

Wikipedia on Skinner's best-known works:

Skinner is popularly known mainly for his books Walden Two and Beyond
Freedom and Dignity. The former describes a visit to a fictional
experimental community  [33]  in 1940s United States, where the
productivity and happiness of the citizens is far in advance of that
in the outside world because of their practice of scientific social
planning and use of operant conditioning in the raising of children.

Walden Two, like Thoreau's Walden, champions a lifestyle that does not
support war or foster competition and social strife. It encourages a
lifestyle of minimal consumption, rich social relationships, personal
happiness, satisfying work and leisure.[34]

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner suggests that a technology of
behavior could help to make a better society. We would, however, have
to accept that an autonomous agent is not the driving force of our
actions. Skinner offers alternatives to punishment and challenges his
readers to use science and modern technology to construct a better
society.
[edit]

Now doesn't that resonate of a clockwork orange? Is that also implied
in this image of Rachel in Shoenmaker's office? Behaviorism v depth
psychology seems to be a significant debate in Pynchon. Perhaps one of
the possible points for applying Zizek's parallax. I could get lost
down that rabbit hole, though, and haven't the time to write on it
now, so I'll just throw it out there for anyone else who might be
looking at Zizek these days and get back to it later.



>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: kelber at mindspring.com; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sat, July 3, 2010 11:44:14 AM
> Subject: Re: V-2nd - 2: clocks and mirrors
>
>> ....Rachel, at the eangle she is standing, a badshit
>> Pynchonian angle, does not see herself....the human gone.....
>
> Are you setting up the lower node of the V here as the badshit angle?
> As I see the scene, Rachel sitting in the chair looking up at the
> mirror and the clock, she would represent the lower node. In CoL49 the
> bad shit is the excluded middle, that which makes possible the
> dichotomy of two poles separated by an imagined void, such as good v.
> bad = black v. white with no shades between the extremes. Us v. Them.
> etc.... Is Rachel, as a JAP, excluded from the world? That doesn't
> ring true for me. Is she excluded for some other reason? Or is the
> mirror itself the lower node of the V? If the mirror world counted,
> would that reconcile something between the seer and the seen (clock)?
>
> Uh, Saturday morning. Not really awake yet. Should practice restraint,
> but the question itself seems intriguing.
>
> On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> A little more speculative bloviating on the clock scene.
>>
>> Some associations first.  Remember the endless mirror-images image in Genghis
>> Cohn's room in Lot 49?
>>
>>
>> Elsewhere in Pynchon, mirrors looked into seem to imply self-awareness-- or
>> narcissism if the gaze is constant.
>>
>>
>> Here Rachel asks if "only the mirror world counted"...., as she reflects
>>whether
>>
>> the cosmetic changes are all that
>> matter, that make one feel their 'ill fortune' might be
>> reversed.................
>>
>> In a bit of serendipity, I have been browsing in a book on the writers of
>> Pynchon's time and kind and the writer, one Cooper,
>> does a couple-three paragraphs on the mirror-image motif in writers from
> Borges
>> to Barth and Nabokov and others.......
>> He sorta argues it does mean awareness of what it shows alluding to the Lot 49
>> image and Barth writing of a character
>> who says that all he can see is his own head in a mirror---shows Barth's focus
>> on a playful individualism,
>> he sez, not history herein and how later in the sixties in Lost in the
> Funhouse
>> he has a funhouse mirror to show the crazy
>> distorted reality of the world and self......
>>
>> Kinbote in Pale Fire sometimes has to rely on the reflection of a "kindly
>> mirror"..with Nabokov, the mirror could suggest the mind and the
>> mind's need to see itself reflected in all things.......to remake external
>> reality in its own image...
>>
>> Later, Robert Stone tries to see crazy America is Hall of Mirrors, I
>> remember....
>>
>> Bloviating sum-up: the mirror projects the demonic clockwork universe, Adams'
>> Dynamo, out to the Street, the world...[Let the clock
>> enter your head....remind of a mini-crystal palace?......which is explicitly
>> demonic.......Rachel, at the eangle she is standing, a badshit
>> Pynchonian angle, does not see herself....the human gone.....and wonders if
> the
>> superficial self one can see when looking in the mirror
>> is all there will be "till death stopped the heart's ticking".....Is it all
> "an
>> imp's dance under the century's own chandeliers......???
>>
>> Imp: see Poe's Imp of the Perverse.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imp_of_the_Perverse
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Sent: Wed, June 30, 2010 11:47:59 AM
>> Subject: Re: V-2nd - 2: clocks and mirrors
>>
>> I agree, Mark.  One gets the feeling that Pynchon's describing a specific
> clock
>> that he either saw in a museum, or perhaps read about.  Any theories?  I
>> couldn't find any on-line images of a 19th century clock remotely resembling
>>the
>>
>> one he describes, although the more ornate images I found seemed to be French
>>in
>>
>> origin.  Such an ornate clock mechanism seems kind of anachronistic for the
>>turn
>>
>> of the century (unless it was the turn of the previous century).  The first
>> electric clock was patented in 1840, and that must have been the wave of the
>> future in clock design by the turn of the century.
>>
>> Is Pynchon counterposing the ornate mechanics of the clock not just to the
>> animate, but possibly, nostalgically, to the rising electronics industry (in
>> which he was immersed)?  The advantage of a mechanical clock is that you can
>>see
>>
>> how it works.  If you're not an electronics tech (or even if you are) you have
>> to take the workings of an electronically-driven device at faith.  Later in
> the
>> book, Pynchon describes music transmitted by a transistor radio.  Will have to
>> think more about this when we get to that passage.
>>
>> LK
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>>Sent: Jun 29, 2010 7:39 PM
>>>To: kelber at mindspring.com
>>>Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>Subject: Re: V-2nd - 2:  clocks and mirrors
>>>
>>>I'm still puzzling before I bloviate BUT....
>>>
>>>I think the fact that it is a turn-of-the-century clock is somehow very
>>>important.
>>>
>>>
>>>Henry Adams always sez:
>>>"In 1900, the continuity snapped". --Henry Adams
>>>
>>>And we know how important that time in history is to TRP....
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>----- Original Message ----
>>>From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
>>>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>>Sent: Tue, June 29, 2010 4:43:54 PM
>>>Subject: V-2nd - 2: clocks and mirrors
>>>
>>>After the off-putting navy-boy antics and human-car love scene in Chapter One,
>>>here's what Chapter Two offers:
>>>
>>>Pages 40-41 (Harper Perennial)
>>>
>>>"Directly across the room from Rachel was a mirror, hung high on the wall, and
>>>under the mirror a shelf which held a turn-of-the-century clock.  The double
>>>face was suspended by four golden flying buttresses above a maze of works,
>>>enclosed in clear Swedish lead glass.  The pendulum didn't swing back and
> forth
>>
>>
>>>but was in the form of a disc, parallel to the floor and driven by a shaft
>>which
>>>
>>>
>>>paralleled the hands at six o'clock.  The disc turned a quarter-revolution one
>>>way, then a quarter-revolution the other, each reversed torsion on the shaft
>>>advancing the escapement a notch.  Mounted on the disc were two imps or
> demons,
>>
>>
>>>wrought in gold, posed in fantastic attitudes.  Their movements were reflected
>>>in the mirror along with the window at Rachel's back, which extended from
> floor
>>
>>
>>>to ceiling and revealed the branches and green needles of a pine tree.  The
>>>branches whipped back and forth in the February wind, ceaseless and
> shimmering,
>>
>>
>>>and in front of them the two demons performed their metronomic dance, beneath
> a
>>
>>
>>>vertical array of golden gears and ratchet wheels, levers and springs which
>>>gleamed warm and gay as any ballroom chandelier.
>>>
>>>Rachel was looking into the mirror at an angle of 45 degrees, and so had a
> view
>>
>>
>>>of the face turned toward the room and the face on the other side, reflected
> in
>>
>>
>>>the mirror; here were time and reverse-time, co-existing, cancelling one
>>another
>>>
>>>
>>>exactly out.  Were there many such reference points, scattered through the
>>>world, perhaps only at nodes like this room which housed a transient
> population
>>
>>
>>>of the imperfect, the dissatisfied; did real time plus virtual or mirror-time
>>>equal zero and thus serve some half-understood moral purpose?  Or was it only
>>>the mirror world that counted; only a promise of a kind that the inward bow of
>>a
>>>
>>>
>>>nose-bridge or a promontory of extra cartilage at the chin meant a reversal of
>>>ill fortune such that the world of the altered would thence-forth run on
>>>mirror-time; work and love by mirror-light and be only, till death stopped the
>>>heart's ticking (the metronome's music) quietly as light ceases to vibrate, an
>>>imp's dance under the century's own chandeliers ..."
>>>
>>>This is why we obsess over Pynchon, is it not?  Intricate passages, not always
>>>so easy to parse, that sends our minds in multiple directions.  There may have
>>>been a few in his Slow Learner collection, but this is certainly the first and
>>>finest that the world got to sample.
>>>
>>>V. is full of mirror and clock and clock-in-mirror imagery.  The story opens
>>>with the elaborate sun sliced by a mirror image (although I still have
>>>difficulty with that one:  I understand the image of the sun bisected by a
>>>plane, but if that plane is a mirror, embedded in the sun, what's being
>>>reflected where?).  Later, one of the V. versions will have a false eye with a
>>>clock imprinted on it.  What does she see when she looks at the clock in the
>>>mirror?
>>>
>>>The above description of the mechanized clock certainly sends me on flights of
>>>fancy.  But Pynchon's emphasizing the mechanistic aspects - the demons have no
>>>free will, on this side of the mirror, at any rate.
>>>
>>>
>>>The mirror reflects the mechanized clock with its pre-determined demons, but
>>>also the tree outside the window, moving with apparent freedom in the wind.
> Do
>>
>>
>>>these images of not-free and free cancel each other out in the mirror world.
>>>
>>>Proposed:  Clocks in Pynchon=mechanistic=lack of free will = bad.
>>>
>>>Mirrors=good?  They're rigid glass (owlglass?) but silvered over so that they
>>>invite us to escape into other realms.  Are they free will or just a passage
> to
>>
>>
>>>free will?
>>>
>>>Laura
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "liber enim librum aperit."
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."