Back to V-2nd, Chap 8, p 225

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Description of a party Benny attends, a party that just happens 'without anyone
> quite realizing it", very like the one in "Entropy".
>

my theory about the use of entropy in the story Entropy, is that the
key phrase in the technical definition is that it happens when you
have a closed system.

The distinction between the hothouse upper room and the street is
shattered by the broken window in Entropy (I think I recall...) and
while this relates directly to the bit in GR about how industrial
capitalism strives to brighten its little piece of the pie regardless
of the deleterious effects on the whole system, one might also
consider that the hothouse upper room is suffering the effects of
entropy even before the window's broken, and that the larger system
just by virtue of being larger will contain more temporary stays
against entropy (and the long run is just a series of short runs),
such as the craftsperson who will probably be called and whose
presence may spark, by virtue of his and/or her rippling muscles as he
fixes the window, some renewal of passion between the lovers?  Also,
it's presumptuous, but I'm inclined to assert that Pynchon was being
disingenuous as to his motives in choosing 37 degrees as the
temperature of entropy but I'm way overextended in my calls on
lit-crit credibility, too many points on my poetic license to drive
that idea any further right now...

> Then: outside the party, so to allude to Entropy, in the real world the next
> day, on the Street, the Mideast crisis of 1956 and Grace Kelly's marriage
> and 'their [leaders'] private versions of history showed up in action. If a
> normal distribution of types prevailed, they did.....
>


The Mideast Crisis, huge, multifarious, important; Grace Kelly's
marriage, a bit of pageantry which from a rational point of view would
be by comparison rather trivial...
And yet, since it synchs up with a Mideast ceasefire, it's probably a Good Thing

"If a normal distribution of types prevailed, they did."
Are we reasoning back from events?  that is, given the stuff going on
in the world, it's clear that a normal distribution of types prevails
among leaders - that is, the known personality types fall within a
range that contains personalities which would typically build
world-views that spur action causing the wars, crises, and so forth...

what I would like to know: where is the reference containing the list of types?
Kraft-Ebing?

I like the sidelong reference to 5,000,000 stories in the naked city,
(although in the show it was 8 million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_City_%28TV_series%29)   one of
those quality tv shows from back in the day...

> Stencil fell outside the pattern...Should have, like his father, been "inclined
> to action."........vegetative....lackadaisical in being
> He Who Searches for V..................Stencil, entropic here?
>
> Stencil = very like Benny here?
>

this is an interesting direction and such a good
rumination...gathering my wits (slim pickings) to try to unpack that
toward the end of the week...


-- 
- "After all, Salaam and Shalom are only slight different spellings of
 a word that means the same thing in Arabic and Hebrew.
Which translated into English means peace be upon you." - Norman Spinrad