V-2nd - 2: clocks and mirrors

[alice wellintown]

I'm certain that the influence of Adams on early P has not yet been
fully recognized; the turn of the century fascination--one that is
evident in Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Williams (Paterson), Woolf,
Joyce...Adams other major modernists, is a profound impact on young P.
One critic, quoted in Dwight Eddins's Gnostic Pynchon, claims that P
lost his cherry to Adams. This, as Eddins notes, is a bit much, but we
can see how the central ideas of Adams, and, not only the Education
but Adams's other works, were on P's shelves as he wrote V.. The turn
of the century clock has a flying butress.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/kidd/sheeler/index2.html

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 11:47 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>>
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