A math joke in Gravity's Rainbow

[Bekah]

Thank you for the notice,  Monte -  

To me,  Pynchon's approach to history and historiography is fascinating and surprising and fun.  He seems to either tweak some facts to fit his chronology,  put a thematic spin on some political aspects,  and/or give the whole story arc a sharp turn into the fantastical.   It works -  even the language of M&D.   I think it works in large part because of the fantastical element - the metafiction of it all.    Reading about Cherrycoke or the Chums of Chance the reader knows this is not going to be straight-up and serious historical fiction.    It's metafiction - AtD is an ambitious,  self-reflexive,  satirical and  magical pastiche dealing with 20th century world history and which just happens to be wonderfully well written.   I love it!  :-)  

There are several ways of a novel breaking with text-book history - 
1.  inventing events (people, etc.)  so as to add a dimension to the accepted history 

2. misrepresenting or erring in what is accepted.  Number 1 is commonly done - that's the fiction of historical fiction.  Number 2 is also done but not usually as well received - 

3.   forgetting -  this is what Larry McMurtry did in Lonesome Dove - he forgot the railroad!   (gads) -  But it was a perfectly well accepted book - great peek at the end of an era (And published the same year as Blood Meridian - another one with historical issues - not necessarily bad - I love the book.  LD got the Pulitzer - BM is a classic.  LD was started in the 1950s - BM used primary source material -  lol - ) 

Against the Day (and M&D and GR) are as much historical fiction as Gore Vidal's works - AtD just plays around more and is quite aware - metahistory/fiction.  

The books I take issue with are Roth's "The Plot Against America" because he twisted the history to suit his own head-banging agenda.   The other one is Kate Grenville's "The Secret River" and it's pretty much for the same reason.   And they (the books or authors - whichever) take themselves sooooo seriously!  

 Frans G. Bengtsson (The Long Ships - 1945) is wondrous (and funny).  HHhH by Lauren Binet (2012) is amazing -  every single trick of pomo while sticking pretty much to the facts.   And then there's Galore by Michael Crummy (also 2012),  parts of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas,   and of course the highlight -   100 Years of Solitude by Gabrial Garcia Marquez (1967)  is historical fiction of its own sort.   The list goes on -  (The Blue Mountain by Meir Shaleve).    It's historical fiction from traditional to post-colonial magic to meta-history - probably back to traditional (Bring Up the Bodies is a bit revisionist,  I suppose).     

What I really want to know about is this book: 
Thomas Pynchon and the Dark Passages of History by David Cowart (2012?) 

Has anyone read it?  Do you recommend it? 

Bekah



On Jun 14, 2013, at 2:52 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> Love it, Bekah, thanks! A lot of the "TRP and science" seam I've been
> working (see the long post to Mark a minute ago) is also "TRP and history,"
> sometimes even "TRP and the history of science" -- that last discipline
> being every bit as twisty, if not as long, as political or social/cultural
> history. 
> 
> I'd like to hear more about how you think Pynchon's historical fiction
> relates to the genre. Your "bodice ripper" (or "sword and swashbuckler,"
> Sabatini and Captain Blood and all that) reminds me that most HF was put
> into a sub-literary genre ghetto, the last place to put TRP -- even though
> of course he's been writing HF in passages, sections, and whole books since
> "Under the Rose" grew into V. (Some science fiction, too, from an even lower
> ghetto -- I mean, King Kong? PlasticMan comics!?!? Get me to my critical
> fainting couch!)
> 
> BTW, did we ever talk here about the *guts* it took to choose that
> 18th-century diction for M&D? For anyone already a Pynchon fan, or for
> anyone exposed to much 18th-century English prose, it should become
> transparent, maybe even a pleasure, in 20-30 pages... but how many potential
> new fans did he lose before they got that far? Shades of Giles Goat-Boy...
> 
> In "TRP and Science" #3 I mentioned distinguishing "where Pynchon is using
> historical facts, where he's pointing to alternate but plausible historical
> sequences, and where he's quite deliberately playing to conspiracy
> theories." In this context I'd amend the last clause of that to "where he's
> writing implausible alternate history,  'secret history' (e.g. the Trystero
> after Thurn und Taxis), or flat-out conspiracy theory." 
> 
> The combination of all three is where he blows up so many expectations of
> genre *and* mainstream fiction. In reading other historical fiction, I think
> the same way you do about historically verifiable vs. invented events,
> situations, characters etc. If I can't tell the difference on the fly, I'll
> check some other sources. And I usually award an author who knows the
> difference, and in whom I can infer a consistent rationale for her
> inventions, some extra-literary points for credibility.
> 
> But with Pynchon, I've learned to take for granted that there are going to
> be off-the-wall, flatly incredible, wacko touches that turn out to be
> historical fact -- and that right next to them will be very plausible,
> unremarkable, deadpan touches, consistent with all I know of history-book
> history, that he pulled right out of his ass. And then he wraps both in a
> conspiracy theory that's historically as off-the-wall as the Illuminati or
> Elders of Zion -- but somehow *feels* fearfully true to the dark side of the
> real world's real history. 
> 
> It's amazing. I'm thinking "Damn, Pynchon sure researched the hell out of
> the Columbian  Exposition and Colorado mining and union/anarchist history
> and Ruritanian espionage and Venetian commerce and electrical science and
> Balkan vendettas... although some portion of that, how much I'll never know,
> is really good plausible Pynchon counterfeit... " 
> 
> And here comes a dirigible loaded with every pulp boys' adventure trope of
> 1880-1920. A-and oh yeah, an alien artifact from Frankenstein's polar
> wastes. And a sand submarine to Shambhala. And a time machine. And
> metal-winged angel babes. And his second talking dog. 
> 
> As for AtD's Tesla, the dates and places and bare bones of his character are
> historical -- but all the rest belongs to either (1) the
> historical/political (not scientific) discourse of Big Money Sucks Profit
> from  Big Inventions, or (2) the full-tilt conspiracy-theory (not
> scientific) discourse of Big Money Suppresses Idealistic Genius' Invention
> That Would Have Given the World Unlimited Free Power Forever. Which is, as
> you say, one reason why it's not good to build your understanding of history
> *or* science on a Pynchon book.
> 
> FWIW, as I wrote during the group read, I think Einstein and relativity are
> barely alluded to but omnipresent in AtD, in the same way that the Holocaust
> and A-bomb are barely alluded to but omnipresent in GR, or the War of
> Independence and Civil War are unforeseen but omnipresent in M&D. That's
> another way in which Pynchon breaks the frame of historical fiction: one of
> the latter's common tropes is that we know what's happening elsewhere and/or
> what's coming, but the characters don't. Pynchon manages to write his
> narratives and their chronology  "around" huge there on every page.    
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
> Of Bekah
> Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 9:43 AM
> To: Monte Davis
> Cc: 'Kai Frederik Lorentzen'; 'pynchon -l'
> Subject: Re: A math joke in Gravity's Rainbow
> 
> 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
>