Icelandic Spar, doubleness, wha?

[Ian Livingston]

I have heard it said somewhere, probably often, that language is a
tool for selecting out patterns of perception. As you say, Joseph, we
find ourselves moved to grapple out the bad shit that excludes middles
so that we can groove in the righteous inclusiveness of it all later.
I also agree that Pynchon invites us to puzzle over these questions so
that we find our patterns ourselves (preferably not the cactus-induced
variety in this case) so that we are better able to apply them with
personal conviction. Well, maybe that's an intention, maybe it's just
a casual outgrowth of superior art. Great art has always functioned
so: it provides allure, rather than the codified compulsion of state
sponsored education. Then, maybe I have here opened up a binary
between inspiration and belief. But I think I will argue my way out of
it by suggesting that both offer shades of meaning within the greater
continuum of conviction. I am convinced that right action can bring
about progressive change, but only because I have repeatedly seen the
postulate work in the microcosm, and there are ample referents in the
history of the macrocosm.

On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 5:40 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> I am with you Ian. I am posing the questions because that is part of what I see Pynchon doing . My own sense is similar to yours that Pynchon prefers a fuller spectrum whether from coal tars  or starlight.   We end up with a lot of binary tools, language  codified in base 2. Algebra is balancing 2 sides of a relationship. But neither laughter nor tears, love or beauty  are truly binary,  and just when the scientists and theologians have it nailed down  those sneaky neutrinos show up  like visitors from the future, before they were invited.  We can't mistake life for code.  The universe looks to me also like circles in circles with curved  dimensions  inside curved dimensions. It seems to me that Pynchon wants us to grapple with the terrorism, the danger  the destructive power of binary logic and with good humor and some hard earned advice about what no to do, then to imagine something  more along the lines of disappearing and reappearing into the rainbow, growing and eating  vegetables, talking with the dog, playing music, time travel, creative sex, ceremonial cactus munching, anarchist golf, Pythagorean vacations. allat good shit.
>
> On Jan 7, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>
>> That Hegellian dialectical model is tremendously useful, so long as no
>> one really comes to believe that it reveals actuality. It is a way of
>> thinking, THE way most Westerners think, I suppose. Pynchon seems
>> greatly to emphasize the infinite middles, the continuum upon which
>> the binaries are pinioned. We seem necessarily to require the binary,
>> or contrast ("What is born of light?") so that we can become aware of
>> the shadows in the middles, but we can, yes, I say, refuse to give the
>> binaries greater significance than they have as points amidst an
>> infinite, non-linear continuity. We use them to parse experience, but
>> they cannot define it.
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>> Well I think the cover of ATD which refers to spar tells us that Pynchon sees at least a 3rd refractive vector.  The middle font( the infinite middles) is most clearly dissimilar from the front and back font.
>>> But I wonder if there is in the metaphor of spar a sense that the human world view is  hugely shaped by  binary thinking: good/evil light/dark on/off forward/back, holy/profane, better/worse. There is an obvious reason for that. We are constantly choosing by action between the possible and the real.  Is the point of decision a 3rd dimension or an illusion, the most real or the most fictional place of all?  Can one refuse to serve the binary?  Crystals are made by nature/physics/ the geometry of the real . What are these things that bend light doing in the dark under ground formed by fire and pressure but still shaped by the geometry of light? Vormancers all,  we are in a dialectic with forces large enough to destroy the planet . We ask these questions and the answers become monsters we can't control.  What I like about Pynchon, and what is a mark of all the greatest artists,  is that he won't allow most readers to pretend they are on safe ground. The motion and complexity is constant; the questions fast , furious and hard to shake. We laugh because we are hilarious but the rocket is over everyone's head . Humans are at the controls of the time machine, measuring it in nanobillionths, but do they have a clue how it works?
>>> On Jan 7, 2012, at 1:12 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oddly, I woke this morning thinking about the infiniteness of the twin
>>>> realms of possibility and impossibility. As utterly abstract ideas
>>>> both realms are both dimensionless and, well, non-existent, really.
>>>> However, it seemed to me as I drifted up into the realm of the
>>>> infinite middles, that all existence and activity is shaped in the
>>>> interface of the two, where dimensionality emerges as possibility
>>>> shaped by impossibility. I suppose I musta read too much Buddhist
>>>> philosophy, or took too much of something at some time in the past,
>>>> but it seemed somehow synchronous with your inquiry, here, Mark. My
>>>> personal inquiry that arose from that twilight zone had to do with
>>>> morality and ethics, but I guess that could pass time in Pynchonia,
>>>> too. But not now. Lovely though the woods are, I have promises to
>>>> keep....
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 2:20 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> Icelandic Spar is some kind of metaphor in AtD surely, correct?
>>>>> I'm sure we can spin out some possibilities.
>>>>>
>>>>> T.S. Eliot wrote an introduction to G. Wilson Knight's major
>>>>> book on Shakespeare called The Wheel of Fire and in that intro
>>>>> he wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> "But the greatest poetry, like the greatest prose, has a doubleness;
>>>>> the poet is talking to you on two planes at once."
>>>>>
>>>>> I thought of Icelandic Spar, but I'm touched with a connectiveness
>>>>> disorder so, forgetting that, we can still see how Eliot's words
>>>>> fit our Pynchon who packs in the planes like he wants all ten dimensions
>>>>> of the universe in his prose, yes?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>>>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>>>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>>>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>>>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant