splitting the Icelandic spar koan once again

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut wrote:
> It is a cliche to say that an historical novelist sees the past thru the present. Yet, Pynchon gives us that cliche Koanically?:
> A major surreal historical novel, which, seen refracted, is an alternative history; it is, in some sense, an anti-historical,
> anti-mythic b.s., anti-Romance [Chums thread] Romance?
>
> An Icelandic Spar history.


amazon search (if I've used it correctly) shows 15 results in AtD for
"iceland spar"

In contents as section title, then

114, 119, 126, 127, 130, 133, 134  -- in the Iceland Spar section, so
that kinda computes

250, 307. 355, 375, 437, 688, 983

what stuck in my mind?

a) there's a bunch of it in Iceland...

b) comes into play in a silver-to-gold process Merle and some other
person discuss, oh yeah Frank

c) there's a lot of it in Guanajuato, Guanajuato

vis a vis historical novel -
how about this, viewing history is going to depend on your personal
outlook, a-and there are a variety of those, especially when you talk
about two-party conflicts - Dred Scott v Sandford, or axis v allies,
z.B., so if you're researching, say, the labor movement in Colorado
there are going to be accounts where the owners have justification in
violently crushing what other accounts view as earnest and worthy
attempts to attain reasonable goals...

so those 2 viewpoints both seem to exist, floating side by side

this metaphor also applies to text interpretation in general (which
emphatically includes "seeing the past thru the present") so that the
Japanese scientist Dr Mikimoto (p 114) by embedding crystals of it in
cultured pearl - taken at face value - is a boys-novel plot device ---
but "when illuminated in a certain way" one might see the pearl as the
whole text (AtD, eg) and the crystals of Iceland Spar as metaphors
embedded therein!

also, and instantiatingly of the above principle, p 305 ff --
Merle discusses with Frank the "argentaurum" process for a couple
pages but it seems to me like an extended and very pertinent political
and moral commentary.

 ie, there are 2 points of view about dred scott / sandford's
proponents beat and beat on their arguments night and day until even
the government purchased the product
- but it still wasn't right and (afaik) the argentaurum process really
doesn't work.

so maybe part of the purpose of writing a historical novel is to see
the rights and wrongs of it, understand the splitting, and eh, maybe,
at least annotate the phenomenon or even suggest some emendations...