Icelandic Spar, doubleness, wha?

[Mark Kohut]

Just to spar a little...

Icelandic Spar as metaphor does not seem to me to be an abjective correlative of  binary thinking. The doubleness is
not easily either-or, imho.

But, resonance moves in mysterious ways....

----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
To: Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Saturday, January 7, 2012 2:28 PM
Subject: Re: Icelandic Spar, doubleness, wha?

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