BtZ42Read

Wed Mar 16 07:28:53 CDT 2016

I wouldn't identify the vertex of the parabola with a zero point -- or at
any rate, have never heard the latter term used in either ballistics or
analytic geometry. The section title "BtZ" will be tied richly and
explicitly to Pavlovian conditioning, while nearly all the rocket
trajectory details (and metaphorical development of same) are later in the
book. Sure, everything connects to everything, but...

I was using "control" for human agency, direct or embedded in a system: the
period when the rocket engine is firing and the guidance accelerometer,
gyros, and vanes are active, programmed (albeit not digitally) to provide
thrust X for Y seconds, gradually tipping the trajectory from vertical
toward compass bearing Z. From brennschluss on, the rocket follows the same
path that a dumb old artillery shell or a rock would follow: what people on
the ground intended, did, or do has no further effect. Yes, it's
"controlled by" physical law from beginning to end, but I still find the
distinction between that and human control useful.

"Free"? That doesn't enter into it at all, Jackson. :-)

On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 7:27 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Gotta question some of this a little from my pov: Seems to me that once
> launched the rocket is all Control, it carries out its trajectory--unless
> interfered with--- by necessity, even beyond the zero point and gravity is
> that deterministic metaphor for not being "free" at all.
> I think chance and necessity per Monte is a real theme too (but perhaps
> even more so in ATD) but I'm having trouble seeing it starting here per
> Monte. (But, as with Pirates' dream, Monte might be right on here too).
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 1:09 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> Pynchon's writing sends each reader off on their own tangents (sometimes
>> multiple ones, in a single sentence). But I prefer to read a little closer
>> to the text. "The white line, abruptly, has stopped its climb. That would
>> be fuel cutoff, end of burning, what's their word … Brennschluss. We don't
>> have one. Or else its classified." The zero point is the top of the
>> parabola, the rocket-arc that Pirate sees from his rooftop. At the top of
>> the parabola (symmetrical in theory, at any rate), the slope is zero.
>>
>> So there are two "beyond the zero" points. "Their" side - the Nazi
>> rocket-launchers and "our" side (too classified to even name the zero
>> point?). An interesting thing happens at the zero point. The first half
>> (rising) is engineered, man-made; but in the descent, gravity (Nature)
>> takes over. Von Braun: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is
>> transformation." Or, as per the Tom Lehrer song: "'Once the rocket goes up,
>> who cares where it comes down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von
>> Braun.
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> From: Keith Davis
>>
>> Sent: Mar 15, 2016 12:21 PM
>>
>> To: Joseph Tracy
>>
>>
>> Cc: P-list List
>>
>> Subject: Re: BtZ42Read
>>
>>
>>
>> This could link to Slothrop's final scene, or state, as well.
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 12:20 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Beyond the Zero...beyond nothing, to everything?
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I was thinking of it as beyond this life, as well. The behaviorism angle
>> is also very insightful. Why not both, and possibly more?
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 11:55 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> I think so. Behaviorism is such a central theme. The screaming also has
>> an echo later in the screaming children in the secret behaviorist
>> experiments, which reinforces this thinking.  There is also a sense in
>> which Beyond the Zero refers to crossing the boundary between life and
>> death. Von Braun describes ’the continuity of “our spiritual
>> existence”after death'. Pynchon seems to me to be asking what kind of
>> spiritual existence comes out of Von Braun’s choices. Is there a sense in
>> which this kind of thinking leads to a lust for self annihilation as a mad
>> alchemical experiment. Bliss Zero.
>>
>>
>>
>> It is going to be very hard not to leap around here in the text.
>>
>> > On Mar 15, 2016, at 5:46 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
>> lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> > On 15.03.2016 09:39, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>
>> >
>>
>> >> Then there is this pe-orgasmic pause:
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> “There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screaming
>> holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it
>> bring its own light? Will the light come before ar after?
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> But it is already light," GR 5.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> Are we beyond the zero at this point? What, exactly, is the zero?
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Could it be that the zero refers to behaviorism? Pavlovian thought is
>> via Pointsman very present in this first part of the novel. In this
>> context, - please correct me if I'm wrong! - the one (1) refers to the
>> successful conditioning, manifest in a concrete behavior. The zero (0)
>> refers to the state where the conditioning is extinguished and the behavior
>> is not shown by the test subject anymore.  The formulation "beyond the
>> zero" then, perhaps, indicates a new phase in human history where the
>> thanatoid forces of society start, metaphorically speaking, to go beneath
>> our skin. Where science becomes "big science" (and data "big data"), and
>> even political mass murder, so very common to history, enters a
>> qualitatively new level with the Holocaust, as well as with Hiroshima.
>> Sentences like "It is too late", or "It has happened before, but there is
>> nothing to compare it to now", would fit such a reading. What do you think?
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> “Astrologically the beginning of the next aeon, according to the
>> starting-point you select, falls between A.D. 2000 and  2200. Starting from
>> the star “0“ and assuming a Platonic month of 2,145 years, one would arrive
>> at A.D. 2154 for the beginning of the Aquarian Age, and at A.D. 1997 if you
>> start from star “a 113.“ The latter date agrees with the longitude of the
>> stars in Ptolemy’s Almagest“ CGJ, Aion, 1959, 94n.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> -
>>
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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