GR translation: We seek no wider agency in this.

[David Morris]

Nicely said.

On Friday, March 15, 2013, wrote:

> 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 <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com');>>
> To: Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> '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?
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130315/6d13c95a/attachment.html>