The WreckIgnitions Read...another chance

[Richard Ryan]

Let's also keep in mind that Camilla's present presence - although
she's already dead as the novel begins - is, like her contrived
virginity, one of the first fictive counterfeits we encounter.  Early
on, Gaddis embroils us in the Liar's Paradox - which is to say that
post-modern fictions typically begin with the phrase: "What you are
reading now is false..."

On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 8:44 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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
>>
>
>



-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Come see VTM's new production!
www.kingstheplay.com