Pynchon's major novels and Conic sections

[John Bailey]

This is great, Matthew. So much math in here I don't understand but am
rabbit-holing into, but the idea that the structuring of M&D can be
read through elliptical orbits is enough to make me want to read the
thing again. Has Harris published any chapters online or should we
seek out the book?

On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 9:20 PM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello P-listers,
>
> I've been meaning to share this but am only now getting around to it. Please
> forgive me if this has already been posted by someone else.
>
> There is a mathematician named Michael Harris who published a book about a
> year ago called "Mathematics without Apologies: Portrait of a Problematic
> Vocation" (Princeton UP, 2015). That might not sound like our cup of meat
> but turn to chapter 5 "An Automorphic Reading of Thomas Pynchon's AD" in
> which he posits that M&D has the ellipse for structure and that AD is marked
> by hyperbolae.
>
>  I will add to that by pointing out that on page 591 Kit is being informed
> that "worship of the number four, currently the rage in certain European
> circles, "not to mention ellipses and hyprebloae," -- loosely allied, in
> fact, as a sort of correpondent group [...]" The fact that they are joined
> in Yashmeen's direct speech quote but then broken off by the dash that is
> then followed by "loosely allied" complicates the parsing, after all
> hyperbolae and ellipses are allied in that they are both conic sections.
>
> Prof Harris proposes that the structure of the novel resembles "a hyperbola
> whose two arcs are joined by a sinusoidal curve". I am more inclined to
> agree with those reviewers and readers that noted a very elliptical nature
> to the book in that characters and narratives come back around like comets
> in so many ways. Why, even La Jarretiere comes back around (along with OIC
> Bodine). So while granting the hyperbola, I'll argue for the importance of
> the ellipse. Would it not be better to see a number of intersecting ellipses
> as the narrative structure?
>
> I also think that Prof. Harris makes a mistake in trying to include VL in
> this reading because I don't consider it one of his major novels, that is to
> say that it is not one of the 3 or 4 novels he was thinking to life in the
> 60's and 70's.
>
> Ciao
> MC
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