Saure Trauben der Mathematik / Trial Ballon

[Mark Kohut]

Irrelevant autobiographical tidbit: I first chose to read TRP, over some others back in the day, knowing Snow's essay and his Lit mag reputation, BECAUSE
I thought a writer who knew and used science and math might have more to show us about our post-Tolstoyan, post-Fitzgerald
world.....

From: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: Saure Trauben der Mathematik / Trial Ballon

I agree with Kai about the autobiographic dimension to Kit and Yasmeen's giving up maths but I don't think it is "sour grapes". The Cambridge Companion that Kai cites must get the chronology information from the letters in the Harry Ransom Center collection, but nothing indicates TP was crestfallen. The fact that TP applied shows that he was not just some guy who took some math classes at uni before switching majors.

Mark writes: "I agree that the simplistic two cultures dichotomy doesn't apply to TRP."  I'm not sure who you were agreeing with or in what context but I think I agree, if you mean that there is no either-or category with which to label TP's writing ie, he is neither for nor against math/ sci or the humanities. As a person whose background is so heavily informed by two very different fields it is not unthinkable to speak of TP as straddling the Two Cultures gap, a position from which he can challenge readers from diverse fields to reach beyond their academic discipline for a mode of questioning to which they are unaccustomed.

Alice, the Grapes of Rejection were pressed (and let us not forget the earth from which the vine grew) and the wine that came from it was sweet. From that wine did He make rivers of Ink to flow. Behold the deluge.

mc
ps "character on the big bang"? I'm lost. Is that a TV series? 

________________________________
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: Saure Trauben der Mathematik

more like with sweet grapes or Grace, P turns, water into sweet grapes
on the vine land. he is an author of american fiction, not a character
on the big bang, or in one of his novels. Jeez, I am a bit
disappointed that the P-list does not recognize that the characters
are obsessed with these kinds of things, winning nobels and the like,
and that P shows how such stupidity  can drain one of sweetness.

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> On 7/31/2012 11:17 AM, Matthew Cissell wrote:
>
> And I thought i was the only one thinking along those lines.
>
>
> The theory does have a certain something going for it, but does it really
> make sense that his early and continuous success as a novelist was
> insufficiently-ego-building as to render him seriously affected by a
> relatively petty rejection.  Can't imagine the actual acceptees wouldn't
> have been tickled pink to exchange places with the Pyncher.
>
> To me it just don't hold water.
>
>
> P
>
>
> ciao
> mc
>
> ________________________________
> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 12:09 PM
> Subject: Saure Trauben der Mathematik
>
>
> Me thinks there's an autobiographical dimension in this. After the
> publication of V Pynchon wanted to add a math degree to his literature BA.
> But in 1964 "Pynchon tells friends he has recently been denied admission to
> an undergraduate program in mathematics at the University of California at
> Berkeley", as it says in the Chronology of the Cambridge Companion. So the
> making fun of math plus the fact that "P has math given up by main
> characters in order to live" in AtD are oozing an aroma of sour grapes.
>
>
> On 31.07.2012 00:47, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>   From imaginary numbers on in AtD, mathematics is another trope
> about our self-alienating distance from the physical world, certain values
> to live by, other human relationships' meanings and more, I submit.
>
> I know no one else is rereading at the moment but from memory or when you
> do, make the case for higher-level math in ATD that is
> not part of the ridicule?  I can't see it.
>
> It is no accident, as Ian observed and as the verbal footfall of a finished
> argument, that P has math given up by main characters in
> order to live...Yashmeen so clearly it is almost heavy-handed, imho, yet in
> his way, TRP encodes tons of nuance (as usual) entertaining us
> with his theme.....
>
>
>
>
>
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