Back to current chapter?

[Joseph Tracy]

Legitimate questions both. 

 The summary was attempting to condense the story line. I think  I will rewrite the summary to make it clear that the correlation is in the mind of Spectro and Pointsman.( part of my summary project is to get feedback so I end up with something P readers agree is reasonably accurate)  What is clear is that we have passed into a higher level of interpretation and  decision making. KS an PP have access to all the data collected and are persuaded that the correlation is real. My reading is that whether the correlation is connected or a bizarre fluke, which even Mexico doubts, the stars on the map were placed before the strikes. Up to this point the cause of the high degree of interest surrounding the map has been vague. Here it comes into focus. That was all I intended to say.

One aspect of the map and the scientists discussion of  a correlative mechnism is the question of  time as a dimension. Pynchon is questioning and playing with this role and nature of time. Can events in the future, influence the present? Do they cast a shadow, send messages. We see the ripples  from past forward but does it work in reverse? What would it look like? 
  
As to MAD, that goes back to the phrase ” a ghost in the sky" from the first of the 2 paragraphs of authorial comment:
      Imagine a missile one hears approaching only after it explodes. The reversal! A piece of time neatly snipped out . . . a few feet of film run backwards . . . the blast of the rocket, fallen faster than sound—then growing out of it the roar of its own fall, catching up to what’s already death and burning . . . a ghost in the sky. . . .

P is writing this at a time when the fear of nuclear war was intense and debate was eqaully intense. A generation was coming of age with this “ghost in the sky”. I think the debate over cause and effect concerning the instant annihilation from the V2s , is more than a chance reflection of that debate. Can nukes be both the cause of the disease and the cure? No one has to agree that this is an important layer of meaning in the text, which is why it’s a comment and an invitation to respond.



> On May 5, 2016, at 11:45 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Me, I'm still trying to figure out what mutual assured destruction has to do with Pavlov. 
> 
> Or how "we find with full clarity that Slothrop is somehow predicting the location and time of the fall of the rockets with his map of erections"... 'cause all I find is that Spectro and Pointsman think so.
> 
> Will check in if I make progress.
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 11:26 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> I like stouts, have no taste for IPAs. I’m glad for the IPA makers that someone likes them. I like people who like IPAs, but they taste like someone stirred in acetone to me. Maybe I have Irish chemistry. I don’t know, but words will not change this .
> 
> Anyone else up for a group read of a masterpiece or is this project going up in smoke?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> 

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l