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

[Lemuel Underwing]

interesting, thanks for sharing


On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com>wrote:

> Book smart
>
> Novelist Thomas Pynchon shows that science and art can combine, with
> mutual benefit.
> 18 September 2013
> Article tools
>
>    - PDF<http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.13759!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/501282b.pdf>
>    - Rights & Permissions<https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?author=&title=Book+smart&publisherName=NPG&contentID=10.1038%2F501282b&publicationDate=09%2F18%2F2013&publication=Nature+News>
>
> 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”.
> Related stories
>
>    - Fiction: Silicon and surveillance<http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/501312a>
>    - Communication: Mind the
>
> 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.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130920/6fc86f56/attachment.html>