The WreckIgnitions Read...another chance

[Erik T. Burns]

the key to understanding Gaddis' view of determinism is the phrase "the
unswerving punctuality of chance", which is originally from Thomas Wolfe's
"Look Homeward, Angel" but which Gaddis adopted, wrapped in swaddling
clothes, and repeatedly offered to the world.

the phrase is present in all 5 of his novels.

here is a great essay on the subject:
http://www.williamgaddis.org/critinterpessays/comnesaporetics.shtml

here is a fun article on WG that mentions the phrase: http://bit.ly/hyh8Ve

here's the full note from the gaddis anotations site:

*223.3] The unswerving punctuality of chance: *a phrase appearing near the
end of Thomas Wolfe's *Look Homeward, Angel* (1929)

"Then I of yours the seeming, Ben? Your flesh is dead and buried in these
hills: my unimprisoned soul haunts through the million streets of life,
living its spectral nightmare of hunger and desire. Where, Ben? Where is the
world?"

"Nowhere,' Ben said. "*You* are your world."

Inevitable catharsis by the threads of chaos. Unswerving punctuality of
chance. Apexical summation, from the billion deaths of possibility, of
things done. (Scribner softcover edition, p. 520)

Gaddis told Steven Moore he heard the phrase used by a fellow Harvard
classmate in the 1940s; it appears in all five of his novels: *R* 9.5, *JR*
 486.1, *CG*233.3, *FHO* 50.34, 258.4, *AA* 63.1. *– Travis Dunn*




On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Speculatin' ain't sure......5 times we get a reference to chance...
> but it may mean Fate---not chance at all them Greeks tell us...
>
> So, just a deeper patterning of determinism?...
> what kind of determinism, conceptually?
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
> To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; pov at ix.netcom.com
> Sent: Sun, April 3, 2011 9:16:00 PM
> Subject: Re: The WreckIgnitions Read...another chance
>
> Not sure about this, Mark.  You're saying there's an
> anti-deterministic thread that gets started early in TR?
>
> On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 7:40 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 3?...saerch inside this book function tells me there are 5 FIVE uses
> > oc chance including in an Odysseus allusion Chance called Fate.....
> > which riddles another spin on the deterministic notion............
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> > To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Sun, April 3, 2011 7:32:03 PM
> > Subject: The WreckIgnitions Read...another chance
> >
> > Okay, three times we get a reference to chance in this first section. An
> > anti-determinism idea in this doctrinally-infused presentation of
> religion in
> > culture. [fill in your
> >
> > own determinism, religious Calvinism or science,]].......
> >
> > God does not play dice with the universe---Einstein....I remember some
> >Barthelme
> >
> > story playing with
> > this concept.............
> >
> > Chance or Necessity? one of THE touching-bottom questions
> > ...a later, early 70s book by a French scientist, Monod, I think.....
> >
> > C.S. Pierce, American philosopher has one of the strongest arguments for
> the
> > existence
> >
> > of chance in the universe.......to oversimplify, of course, he says it is
> the
> > only way anything new
> > could ever enter the cosmos...and, something new must or else it would
> never
> > HAVE ever changed....
> >
> > From Stanford Ency of Philosophy:
> > What Peirce calls his “tychism,” which is his anti-deterministic
> insistence
> >that
> >
> >
> > there is objective chance in the world, is also intimately connected to
> his
> > fallibilism. (Tychism will be discussed below.)
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Richard Ryan
> New York and the World
> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
> Come see VTM's new production!
> www.kingstheplay.com
>
>
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