GR translation: We seek no wider agency in this.

[bandwraith at aol.com]

What Pointsman means, and the meaning of his quote, it seems to me, are two different things, and it's not all his fault. He's trying to be a good scientist- follow the scientific method, etc., and remain objective. Unfortunately, in the context of this novel, being a good scientist is like being a bad priest. When one should be looking for ways out of the closed system that has led inexorably to the final solution, the last round-up or the final corridor of the shambles of the twentieth century, Pointsman is seeking a still narrower passage, in an effort to possess and control coincidence. He does not want to entertain the possibility that, yes, there is more here than just coincidence, but no, it cannot not be possessed and controlled by strict definitions and clinical sterility.

"...this is not a disentaglement from, but a progressive knotting into," however, and Pointsman, who should be seeking wider agency, misses the larger picture, and succeeds only in creating a labyrinth of his own device. More tragic than ironic.



-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
To: Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Fri, Mar 15, 2013 7:01 am
Subject: GR translation: We seek no wider agency in this.



P276.4-11   “And what if many—even if most—of the Slothropian stars are proved, some distant day, to refer to sexual fantasies instead of real events? This would hardly invalidate our approach, any more than it did young Sigmund Freud’s, back there in old Vienna, facing a similar violation of probability—all those Papi-has-rapedme stories, which might have been lies evidentially, but were certainly the truth clinically. You must realize: we are concerned, at PISCES, with a rather strictly defined, clinical version of truth. We seek no wider agency in this.”


What does Pointsman mean by the last sentence?  Is the "agency" his own act of inquiry, or does it refer to the hidden cause of Slothrop's apparent ability to predict the rocket's course?  Or something else entirely?


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