BDSL, 1

[Michael Bailey]

bandwraith wrote:
> Well, first there's the title. Something wonderfully upbeat about it- a
> transformation, if only in
> the imagination. Long live "Seems." Long live the conditional. Long live
> indefiniteness and
> uncertainty. L'hospital's Rule (really Bernoulli's on loan...) will help
> bridge the abyss, like the
> aid of an imaginary playmate, and allow passage, only to vanish once the
> crossing's been
> made, later in the novel.

wait, so you are saying that Gnossos becomes politicized, and the
mathematical analogue to that is
the indeterminate form (such as 0/0 or infinity/infinity or zero to
the zero power, or 1 to the infinity power)
-- having L'Hopital's Rule applied to it
(perhaps multiple times, it sez in Wikipedia)

>
> Farina brought out BDSL in  '65 or '66, late enough to be cognizant of The
> Weak Force's
> role not so much in causing, as prolonging the decay of subatomic particles-
> stretching
> it out, making it take longer than usual, mediating it,- allowing a change
> in flavor, in this
> case from a down quark to an up quark, causing a neutron to become an
> electrically
> charged proton, and using it as a metaphor, for Gnossos's transformation,
> and for
> the process of narration itself. Pynchon would copy this in M&D.

BDSL then is a lot deeper than I remember...

Great explication!

...I like the scene where he gets Extreme Unction for a hangover...




-- 
Yippy dippy dippy,
Flippy zippy zippy,
Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!
- Thomas Pynchon ("'Zo Meatman's Gone AWOL")