Pynchon, Time, Science: de Bourcier

[alice wellintown]

What Phantom Shape, Implicit in the Figures?”:
Liminal Monsters, Paranormal Places in Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon




On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:30 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com
> wrote:

> 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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