Very P, AtD stream: missing Freud and Einstein

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut wrote:

>  Remember the good plist discussions over the fact that neither Einstein nor Freud themselves appear in AtD,

there's at least one oblique reference to Freud: the phrase "the slow
return of the repressed" as Cyprian is delayed when walking across
Vienna, by a mass demonstration...
certainly one of Freud's most important concepts, and here expanded and aimed
at the polis (akin to Moss Gatlin's credo: today's scab is tomorrow's striker)

Einstein...hmmm... well AtD treats the whole Michelson-Morley experiment thing
- gives background and local color and has some fun with it,
as a thing-in-itself (which differs from every other account I've read of it,
where it's just a prelude to relativity.)  The dramatic consideration given the
aether and the highlighting of different mathematicians...all this in preference
to focusing on Einstein...so I guess I'm agreeing with those who say
Einstein and relativity in AtD are "conspicuous in their absence"


> [Barbara Tuchman on subject matter choice to give a sense of the times]
- "I also ruled out eccentrics, however captivating."
>

thank goodness Pynchon didn't!


-- 
-- "the problem with the deployment of frictionless surfaces is
that they're not getting traction."