More 'stupid' unsytematized connections in life w Pynchon's "vision"

[Mark Kohut]

i was thinking most of his satire of 'scientific' ways of understanding ourselves...

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon-l at waste.org
Cc: 
Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2011 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: More 'stupid' unsytematized connections in life w Pynchon's "vision"

On 8/20/2011 2:10 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>  Pynchon is, do we agree, anti-systemizing for living one's life?....anti-binary, anti-???

If everything's connected you got yourself a system.

However we don't suppose Pynchon is particularly paranoid in real life.

I don't think Pynchon has an EXAGGERATED focus on systems, such as you might find in autism. but his novels  testify to a whole lot of system thinking--about such things as cartels, conspiracies, chemistry, rocketry. At least one critic sees a kind of quasi-theological system doing battle with an equally powerful system of death. A Hegelian system perhaps. Also Kathryn Hume's analysis incorporates a mythological system.

Pynchon may well be against "The System".

P
>    A doctor's theory about the growth of autism in Americans....
> In the late 1990s, he'd come to believe that a common cognitive profile — a tendency toward what he called systemizing (focusing on systems and how they work), combined with noted deficits in empathy, or the ability to read and relate to others — existed both in people with autism and, to a much lesser extent, in many of their relatives
> 
> Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/08/19/could-the-way-we-mate-and-marry-boost-rates-of-autism/#ixzz1VargYFF9
>