Pynchon, Time, Science: de Bourcier

[alice wellintown]

The Science-Critical Approach to Literature (e.g. Pynchon). Is it a
new trend?




There are the ones I've posted on recently. including one on Tesla, two on
Entropy, from the Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide, a book some P-Listers are
quite familiar with.

And

Pynchon, Cohen, and the Crisis of Victorian Mathematics
The Arc of the 0(0000)
Postmodern Historiography: Politics and the Parallactic Method in Thomas
Pynchon's Mason & Dixon
Information Entropy in Pynchon's Fiction
The Comet and the Rocket: Intertextual Constellations about Technological
Progress in Bruno Schulz's "Kometa" and Thomas Pynchon's *Gravity's Rainbow*

Telluric Texts, Implicate Spaces








On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>wrote:

> 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/dp/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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