A math joke in Gravity's Rainbow

[Bekah]

Just my ignorant o,  but it seems as though Pychon uses math and science the way Hilary Mantel (Bring Up the Bodies) or Barry Unsworth (Sacred Hunger)  or Richard Flanagan ( Gould's Book of Fish) use history - and Pynchon does it, too.   Writers of historical fiction these days (not the old bodice ripper days) do considerable research to get the "facts" straight.   But sometimes they stray from those "facts" for the sake of the story - that's what makes it fiction - parts are invented.   And we can't legitimately "take issue" with the inventions because the book is fiction.   But if those same "facts"  were the basis of a work of non-fiction,  the author could surely be taken to task - even for an essay.   Imo, that's fine - how else would we have the fine science fiction we have?

But inventing "facts"  makes "suspension of disbelief"  a real stretch for those who are familiar with the facts - sometimes the old "SOD" just snaps.   (Mine did with P. Roth's Plot Against America and other books.) 

I have a problem when readers think they are learning history (or science) by reading fiction.   No,  no, no, no, no!   What I do when I'm presented with new info in fiction is to go check some sources (note the plural).   If the author has it "correct" I applaud the research and how the plot weaves a human story into accepted history.  When the "info" is misleading or downright incorrect I applaud the author's inventiveness - (if it's not too agenda driven or heavy handed).   

It seems that the science in AtD should be treated the same way -  also to remember is in AtD Pynchon was writing from the pov of historical understanding and events  - not with today's knowledge.  GR may be different in this aspect as it's from a 1970s pov re WWII.  

Please be gentle - I'm a novice, 
Bekah

On Jun 14, 2013, at 5:33 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> It’s a mathematical/verbal pun. Take “cabin” as a value, a quantity… could just as well be “x.” Read out loud, it’s
>  
> “The integral of ((one divided by ‘cabin’) times (the derivative of ‘cabin’)…
>  
> “Equals [mathematically] log ‘cabin’ + c [the logarithm of ’cabin’ plus a constant]…
>  
> Then a context switch to “log cabin” as an early house style (for USAns, young Abe Lincoln’s home)
>  
> And “log cabin plus sea” = “houseboat”. Hilarity ensues.
>  
> It’s a dumb joke that might be funny once or twice to a secondary/college math student who has just learned the symbols and how to interpret them. Sorta like the “Kilroy was here” drawing in V: the omnipresent WWII and 1950s ‘Kilroy’ sketch of a guy with a big nose peeking over a wall, recreated as a band-pass filter [one that allows only certain frequencies to get through] from a circuit diagram, which would amuse a budding electrical engineer.
>  
> Neither is “typical of Pynchon’s take on science” – in themselves, they’re not likely to be funny or interesting to any scientist/engineer past age 21. But *in the full context of his take on science and culture and myth and history,* they add threads to a tapestry:
>  
> -        “Gravity’s Rainbow” reminds us dozens of times of the first rainbow in Genesis: God’s promise to Noah and his family on the Ark (a houseboat) not to destroy the world again. In 1945 we have a nearly-destroyed world, and a rocket’s parabola asking us WTF we’re gonna do next time around. We also have a shitboat, the Rucksightslos, and a deathgod-boat, the Anubis. Oddly enough, both are on courses to or near the A4 “rainbow’s” starting point.
> -         
> -         “V.”, like CoL49 and GR and everything else to come, has great shadowy conspiracies: Trystero, Force/Counterforce, Jesuit/Chinese/Native American,  etc – that show up in many little clues (post-horn drawing, etc.).  In WWII, the Kilroy cartoon (UK “Chad”) became a humorous, pseudo-conspiratorial legend for Western Allied troops: how the hell did this little guy show up from Brooklyn and Birmingham and Bombay to Berlin? Now… insights into Pynchon conspiracies are repeatedly likened to “tuning in” – to finding  the right frequency (Mondaugen and the sferics, the “speaking flame” at the séance early in GR). Oddly enough, that’s what a band-pass filter does.   
>  
> If Alice is right – if math and science and technology in Pynchon are random buckets of pseudo-erudition randomly shoveled in because “that’s what he does” – then these nerdy connections aren’t worth knowing or thinking about. Your mileage may vary.
>  
>  
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 7:22 AM
> To: pynchon -l
> Subject: A math joke in Gravity's Rainbow
>  
> 
> Now, having just what Berger/Luckmann call "the sociologist's kitchen-statistics", I certainly will not claim any math knowledge here. I read Principia Mathematica (to improve my understanding of Wittgenstein), and I even read Laws of Form(to improve my understanding of Luhmann) several
> times, but felt very dull during those reads. And I do not get the math joke on p. 450 of GR at all. I
> simply don't. What's so funny about the houseboat formula and what's its function in the overall architecture of Gravity's Rainbow? Also wonder whether this math joke is typical for Pynchon's take
> on science. Anyone?
> 
> 
>   "Well, you can’t help but wonder who’s really the more paranoid of the two
> here. Steve’s sure got a lot of gall badmouthing Charles that way. Among the
> hilarious graffiti of visiting mathematicians,
>  
> ∫      1      d (cabin)  =  log cabin + c  =  houseboat,
>                                         (cabin)      
>  
> that sort of thing, they go poking away down the narrow sausage-shaped
> latrine now, two young/old men, their feet fade and cease to ring on the sloping
> steel deck, their forms grow more transparent with distance until it’s impossible
> to see them any more. Only the empty compartment here, the S-curved spokes
> on the peep-show machines, the rows of mirrors directly facing, reflecting each
> other, frame after frame, back in a curve of very great radius. Out to the end of
> this segment of curve is considered part of the space of the Rücksichtslos. Making
> it a rather fat ship. Carrying its right-of-way along with it. “Crew morale,”
> whispered the foxes at the Ministry meetings, “sailors’ superstitions. Mirrors at
> high midnight. We know, don’t we?”"
>