V---2nd Epilogue

[Mark Kohut]

MB:
However, I want to also return to 1859 as the year of Riemann's
hypothesis, which is underlined by the title of Stencil's paper: The
Situation as an N-Dimensional Mishmash.

N-dimensional - highly suggestive, redolent of Riemannian implication

Another connection absolutely brand-new to me....1859 & Reimann that is
but I will suggest this using Stencil's paper:

Riemann's hypothesis, using an imaginary number is Bad Shit in Pynchon's world--
I take this reading from clues in Against the Day.............but as Pynchon 
seemed
to feel it here in V. .............

We live inside three dimensions, within Time, and that is where our humanity 
lies--or should--
so N--Dimensions are the Bad Shit of living as a spy, by informing, by being a 
tourist---a kind of
time travel & water, etc...

I also might argue with the use of the word 'nostalgia' re Pynchon here since 
that word implies
a sentimental desire to go back, to relive, a time you already lived 
through............

Pynchon can not really be nostalgic for a time a hundred years before he 
lived..I think it is
part of his vision of the ideal good life (if certain of those values/conditions 
could have continued into the present)
 which got diseased, as stated, by things from 1859 on.....


----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, March 16, 2011 8:56:11 PM
Subject: Re: V---2nd Epilogue

Mark Kohut wrote:
> MB:
> "I also believe that the choice of 1859 as the year Sidney Stencil
> discerned some sort of disease entering the world was because he
> himself was born that year (he mentions "sixty years on the go"
> (543-44))"
>
>
> NICE deducing....New thought to me.....YES!.....But it is because TRP
> chose him to be born then?..........
>

well, what I was originally thinking was it's a form that his
self-loathing takes, that he thinks that he himself is the disease.
But he really isn't that kind of thinker.

> when the disease started............when capitalism "took off" way beyond
> small merchant, farmer, village size?.....

so that his nostalgia for a simpler time embodies the theme Pynchon chose?
That's possible, and certainly nostalgia crops up plenty.

However, I want to also return to 1859 as the year of Riemann's
hypothesis, which is underlined by the title of Stencil's paper: The
Situation as an N-Dimensional Mishmash.

N-dimensional - highly suggestive, redolent of Riemannian implications.