Serendipitous V. annotation/allusion found

[Mark Kohut]

Dave posted this below. Entropy is alive in literature earlier than in Gaddis 
and Pynchon--
--Gaddis said (in that interview Erik sent around)---we both found entropy as a 
metaphor
early-----

"Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in the other.
Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for
disorder, entropy.  Man against Nature ... the battle of the
centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out
of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction.  All order
is doomed, yet the battle is worth while.
  "A trumpet, marked to sell for $2.49, gave the call to battle ..." (pp. 30-1)
 
And right before this para, there is this one:
"He found himself in the window of a pawnshop full of fur coats, diamond rings, 
watches, shotguns, fishing tackle, mandolins. All these things were the 
paraphernalia of suffering. A tortured high light twisted on the blade of a gift 
knife, a battered horn grunted with pain."
 
Remind anyone of the poignant listing of contents of cars ala Mucho in Lot49? 
reminds me very much AND
we have a battered horn here and a trumpet above.......

--Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608851h.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=coM3vzpyV54C&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAw#v

"... the novel is a black comedy, characterized by a dark sense of
humor and irony. Justus Neiland, among others, has pointed out the use
of Bergsonian laughter, in which 'the attitudes, gestures, and
movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that
body reminds us of a machine.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Lonelyhearts#Major_themes

"Miss Lonelyhearts plays an important role, as it is not just
mentioned, but discussed by two of the characters of Philip K. Dick's
The Man in the High Castle, Paul Kasoura and Robert Childan."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Lonelyhearts#In_other_literary_works