Pynchon's major novels and Conic sections

[Michel]

Those with access to JSTOR can read it.  This is from the book's ToC:

Bonus Chapter 5. An Automorphic Reading of Thomas Pynchon's Against the 
Day (Interrupted by Elliptical Reflections on Mason & Dixon) 128

This made me really curious.

Michel.

Op 15-5-2016 14:44, matthew cissell schreef:
> Hi John,
>
> I first came across some material that he had put up some time back 
> but they were really just the preliminary steps. I guess he took a 
> couple of years and made it part of a bigger book. Here's a link from 
> back in 2008: https://webusers.imj-prg.fr/~michael.harris/Pynchon.pdf 
> <https://webusers.imj-prg.fr/%7Emichael.harris/Pynchon.pdf>   Just a 
> pdf but you can see the idea.
>
> The price seems real fair so I think buying it is best. However, to 
> peruse a good part of the chapter one may find it on Google books: 
> https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UZGSBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=michael+harris+math+pynchon+conic+sections&source=bl&ots=sMlkL_8LFH&sig=N1uVdeImnufBLv9QVnpZq_SgILY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCvNitidzMAhVBHxoKHaGLDMkQ6AEIKTAC#v=onepage&q=michael%20harris%20math%20pynchon%20conic%20sections&f=false
>
> The chapter starts on page 128 I believe.
>
> The idea of a structuring device that can be read through his major 
> works is not hard to swallow when you consider that Pynchon's 
> "creative project", that he then saw as 3 or 4 novels, came to him in 
> the 60's, the same time that Georges Perec and others were starting to 
> use "strictures" and constraints that shaped their novels. After 
> literature had been stripped of its traditional elements (think 
> Beckett, Ionesco and the rest) it was time to play with those elements 
> in a new way (e.g, Italo Calvino, Julio Cortazar, and others).
>
> Prof. Harris has certainly read a good bit of Pynchon material (more, 
> I suppose, than any Pynchon scholar has read of p-adic and analytic 
> properties of period integrals and values of L-functions), it would be 
> interesting to know how many other math profs and buffs are also 
> readers of Pynchon.
>
> Have a good day sir.
>
> MC
>
> On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 2:16 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com 
> <mailto:sundayjb at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     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 <mailto: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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