The WreckIgnitions Read...another chance

Mon Apr 4 19:44:43 CDT 2011

Which leads right to the narrator and his omniscience? If that is what it is. 

We get a statement about Camilla's past---preferred masquerades if---in the 
present of the funeral. In the first para.
And then a line about the future, that is, the way this episode was 
remembered.['referred to it afterwards']

And those are just the first two paragraphs...........

________________________________
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com>
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Mon, April 4, 2011 8:36:47 PM
Subject: Re: The WreckIgnitions Read...another chance

I had seen that gloss on the phrase but that intelligent article needs to be 
come back to (by me at least, if not you who
am more expert)...

"nswerving punctuality of chance"...wow, that Wolfe could sing, eh?  Love that 
phrase....

Now, (from the article) what a justification for our Read, eh? 
"hat writing is all about is what happens on the page between the reader and the 
page. . . .What I want is a collaboration, really, with the reader on the page 
where the reader is also making an effort, is putting something of himself into 
it in the way of understanding, in the way of helping him to construct the 
fiction I am giving him."

So, the question circles back...if Chance equals Fate within the cosmos, ala 
them Greeks, then for our cast of characters to have been hit by chance five 
times already is to say---is it?---that they are,per Ryan,in a very determined 
world....Greek tragic-like?....as naturalistically determined as THAT 

end of the realistic novel--which Gaddis ain't writ here---ala Norris or Deiser, 
Zola, etc.....in a different vein.

And/or as overdetermined as a Calvinistic universe? Whatever our characters do, 
fates are sealed, we're just seeing it worked out....

LOOK at how fate strikes Camilla and younger Wyatt, etc....already in chap 1?  

(I know these answers need more than one chapter to show themselves one way or 
another)

________________________________
From: Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; 
pov at ix.netcom.com
Sent: Mon, April 4, 2011 5:49:39 PM
Subject: Re: The WreckIgnitions Read...another chance

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, CG233.3, 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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