Pynchon, Time, Science: de Bourcier

[Monte Davis]

I'm halfway through a first reading of Simon de Bourcier's Pynchon and
Relativity: Narrative Time in Thomas Pynchon's Later Novels


 

http://www.amazon.com/Pynchon-Relativity-Narrative-Pynchon%C3%A2-Continuum/d
p/1441130098/

 

which will be out in paperback in November.

 

It's tough going, closely argued and dense with reference to other Pynchon
studies, to pomo literary theory of hi/story and narrative, and to the
science and metaphysics of time (and popularizations of both) in 1890-1920.
But it really repays the effort. If you're interested in what P is doing
with time (and transcendence of time) in AtD and M&D - e.g. why some escapes
from time take you to the Land of the Dead, while others take you to grace,
the uncorrupted Gnostic radiance of light itself - you'll think more clearly
about it, and get more from the books, if you read this. I'm already
convinced that Zoot's time machine, Zombini's _Doppiatrice_, and the Rideout
& Bounce Integroscope aren't just three casual bits of techno-tomfoolery:
each is linked to a distinct tradition of scientific, metaphysical, and
popular thought about time. 

 

A sample:

 

The lecture given by Minkowski at the F.I.C.O.T.T. at Candlebrow is
evidently a version of his address to the 80th Assembly of German Natural
Scientists and Physicians at Cologne in September 1908 (Minkowski 73-91).
This is clear from the conversation between Merle Rideout and Roswell Bounce
after the lecture, which they have some difficulty in following because it
is delivered in German:

 

After everybody else had left the hall, Roswell and Merle sat looking at the
blackboard Minkowski had used.

      'Three times ten to the fifth kilometres,' Roswell read, 'equals the
square root of minus one seconds. That's if you want that other expression
over there to be symmetrical in all four directions. '

      'Don't look at me like that,' Merle protested, 'that's what he said,
I've got no idea what it means.'
        'Well, it looks like we've got us a very large, say, astronomical
distance there, set equal to an imaginary unit of time. I think he called
the equation "pregnant."'

      'Jake with me. He also said "mystic."' (AtD 458)

 

The section of Minkowski's lecture they are referring to appears in its
published translation thus: "the essence of this postulate may be clothed
mathematically in a very pregnant manner in the mystic formula 3.105 km =
(sqrt -1) secs." (Minkowski 88)

 

Pynchon refers specifically to Minkowski's use of blackboard and chalk (AtD
458), alluding to a playfully lyrical passage in the original lecture:

 

"With this most valiant piece of chalk I might project on the blackboard
four world-axes. Since merely one chalky axis, as it is, consists of
molecules all a-thrill, and moreover is taking part in the earth's travels
in the universe, it already affords us ample scope for abstraction; the
somewhat greater abstraction associated with the number four is for the
mathematician no infliction." (Minkowski 76)

 

--

 

Of course, if you think science in Pynchon is all pseudo-erudition, the
better to hold down a whipping-boy, then the many close correspondences that
de Bourcier highlights between details of Pynchon's books and details of
articles and lectures and books by Minkowski and Weyl and Einstein, Bergson
and James and Whitehead, are just so many remarkable coincidences.         

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