Kathyrn Hume on Late Coover

[Markekohut]

studying my higher-level math via Wikipedia--smile--didn't I read that Aristotelian logic does not apply with imaginary numbers and in infinity theory?

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 9, 2012, at 9:29 PM, Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:

> As an aside, the discussion of the excluded middle reminds me of something from a piece of Borges criticism I was reading the other day
> 
> Waldo Ross once asked B[orges] if it was not possible to apply his idea of one's interior world, as found in "The Library of Babel", "The Aleph" and "The Zahir" and other stories, to the concept of an actual infinity. B responded: "That question is too metaphysical for me. I am not a metaphysicist. But in any case I can tell you that the series of mirrors is infinite. Aristotelian logic [my italics] would be impossible here. The series of mirrors loses itself in the infinite.
> 
> Leads one to think of the exclusion of the middle as necessary, due to the failure of syllogistic reasoning to cope with reality, producing endlessly bifurcating situations; "excluding the middle? There is no middle!" 
> 
> P.
> 
> On 10 September 2012 01:55, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I bow to your knowledge of Benton's work. I haven't read it (yet) but I must.
> 
> from the snippet you quoted I your email, I just read a binary opposition between
> The bad shit of the System and a counter force which fought back with mirror image
> (but very puny) bad shit Counterforce reactive actions.
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On Sep 9, 2012, at 9:31 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Still not sure what you have in mind here, Mark, but...as anarchy has
> > been a topic much discussed here, and as Benton's work is, as far as I
> > know, is the only work dedicated to anarchy in the works of P, and
> > maybe one of the best efforts in the Pynchon-Industry, I thought I
> > would call attention to it and contrast it with what Hume says about
> > anarchist destruction. As noted, Benton spends a lot of time dealing
> > with the complex definitions of anarchy before he settles in on a very
> > important paradox, one that is akey to reading any P-text. The paradox
> > comes in many forms in P, but we all recognize it as something that is
> > everywhere and consequently invisible, and for the anarchists, it is
> > the egalitarian and libertarian aspirations which battle against
> > present authority (Benton cites Emile Henry, p.548, Oak Law). Benton
> > goes on to claim that P asks us to read as an anarchist (although I
> > would say that P doesn't really care if we do this, but wants the
> > reader to swing from postive paranoia to anti-paranoia). Do authors
> > tell us or teach us how to read their books? I guess some do. McHale,
> > and others, have argues that P wants he readers to be modern readers
> > under the rocket of postmodern prose. In any event, Benton describes
> > what happens, even to the critic or theorist or PIndustry Giants when
> > they read a P work. Grant, in his useful Companion to V. provides an
> > excellent description of the history of hermeneutic nightmares Pynchon
> > studies have produced.
> >
> >> See later email after monte's about "anarchist destruction" misreading agreement.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPad
> >>
> >> On Sep 8, 2012, at 8:17 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> what is Benton's binary narrowness?
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 10:31 AM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>>> Pynchon answers Benton's binary narrowness all over but maybe most fully in AtD (& Lot
> >>>> 49 perhaps)?
> >>>>
> >>>> Sent from my iPad
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sep 8, 2012, at 7:59 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>> At the same time, of course, the novels do distrust systems and
> >>>>>> organizations, including, the family.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> And there in lies the flub. What P novels give us are paradox. So,
> >>>>> again, if we read a very fine essay on anarchy in Pynchon, where the
> >>>>> author has taken a great deal of time to define anarchy and apply it
> >>>>> to P novels, no easy task, we find a fine example of the Paradox of
> >>>>> Pynchon in Roger Mexico's thoughts of pissing on the conference table,
> >>>>> so the author, Graham Benton, with this judiciously selected example,
> >>>>> explains the paradox of the anarchist destruction: how can a
> >>>>> counterforce avoid replicating the patterns of existing political,
> >>>>> legal, and economic institutions that serve to dehumanize us? ("This
> >>>>> Network of All Plots May Yet Carry Him to Freedom"  Oaky Cit U Law
> >>>>> Fall 1999).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> And, this is not news to P readers or to readers of American
> >>>>> Literature, as we see that the history of utopian experiements in the
> >>>>> nation have been fictionalized, in Hawthorne, for example, ridiculed,
> >>>>> in Melville, for example.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> And, the deeper paradox of Pynchon, is not anarchist destruction's
> >>>>> paradox, but can be found in Bartleby or in The Town Ho's Story; there
> >>>>> it is, it is not destruction of existing institutions, of Wall Street,
> >>>>> or the Church, or the Political systems in Albany, or Washington, and
> >>>>> all are, along with the John Jacob Astor, condemned by Melville in
> >>>>> what is, as everyone who reads it must acknowledge, the greatest work
> >>>>> in American English, but a deeper Koan. That is, how do we live as
> >>>>> Christ without becoing Nietzsche?
> 
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