Don't know if this got upped yet or not: BE review from NATURE (Yes, NATURE)

[Allan Balliett]

Book smart

Novelist Thomas Pynchon shows that science and art can combine, with mutual
benefit.
18 September 2013
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Some writers use metaphors in science. Some go further and make a metaphor
of science itself — not the practical art of observation and empirical
testing, but the often-tricky concepts at the heart of the pursuit. Such
writing is difficult, and scientists and non-scientists alike can struggle
with the result. But when done well, the language of research and the
grammar of the natural world can sing a song as sweet as anything in
literature. The supposed differences between the two cultures dissolve,
leaving only those who get it and those who do not.

Many of those who do — both scientists and non-scientists — will be eagerly
awaiting the latest book from Thomas Pynchon, *Bleeding Edge* (Penguin). It
is reviewed on page 312 <http://www.nature.com/uidfinder/10.1038/501312a> by
Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena who is himself a writer and a self-confessed Pynchon
fan. Set against the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in New
York, *Bleeding
Edge* is one of Pynchon’s more straightforward books. As Carroll notes, it
is “told linearly, from the point of view of an acknowledged main
character, with something approximating an explicit goal”.
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That itself is a description of science, albeit a misleading one. Despite
the appeal of a simple narrative, of cause and effect, and the dogged
pursuit of truth by heroic individuals, most *Nature*readers will know —
and no doubt lament — that science is not like that. Pynchon knows that
too, and revels in our attempts to impose order on a chaotic, unruly
reality.

Pynchon, Carroll notes, often uses imagery and symbolism from science and
engineering. Stephen Hawking says that he was told that each equation
printed in a popular-science book would halve its readership, so imagine
the reaction of the editor on receiving the manuscript of Pynchon’s 1973
classic novel *Gravity’s Rainbow *(Viking), complete with a description of
the first elements of the Poisson distribution. Organic chemistry,
behaviour modification, double integrals and rocket dynamics all underpin
both that story and the language that Pynchon chooses to tell it.

Some physicists consider Pynchon one of their own. The author studied for
(but never finished) a degree in engineering physics at Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York, and worked as a technical writer for the aerospace
company Boeing. Biologists have credited his idea of a ‘counterforce’ — an
organizing principle (also known as life) that counters the universal
descent into entropy — as the spark that ignited their careers.

Those who get it see something special in Pynchon’s work. There are few
novelists who can claim to successfully unite the two cultures, but Pynchon
does it by dispensing with metaphor and turning to science itself.
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