BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): at the window while he sleeps

[ish mailian]

Does P fear science? I doubt this is a supportable thesis. He
certainly doesn't condemn it. Nor do all creative souls. So, Monte is
making a point with sarcasm. What point? That foxes and dogs.....?
Science, along with nearly all other institutions of power, of western
culture and history, is subjected to P's satire. So, BTW, is art,
religion, philosophy, mathematics, psychology, history, linguistics,
statistics, Chemistry, economics, physics, biology, philology,
anthropology....and so on. All are satirized with the conventional
weapons of the satirist. For example, the obsession with The Book, is
conventional. So much that P does in GR is not novel. The Book, the
obsession with the Rocket, the quest...etc. One conventional strategy
of the satirist is mock erudition. P loves this tool and uses it
brilliantly. He also makes use of the satirist's cranks and hysterical
characterization. He loves parodistic encyclopedism.

As Kharpertian says, pp. 108-109, it

exposes all explanatory codes as partial, problematic, or repressive,
and the rejection of the monological nature of such autonomous codes
leads to radical fusion and fantastic alternatives.

A Hand to Turn the Time the Menippean Satires of Thomas Pynchon

Theodore D. Kharpertian

Kharpertian goes to school on decades of Pyndustry publications and,
in a dense and clear style, shows how the ideas of V. and CL49 are
combinesd in P's masterwork.  Not the first to recognize P as
satirist, more specifically, Menippean Satirist, but a fine work,
dense and clearly composed. Easy to read.

But we know all this so....
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Monte writes:
> 58.24: "Pointsman’s... his... a bleakness whenever she meets him.
> Scientist-neutrality." How does that differ from Roger's commitment to the
> data and only the data about rocketfalls, which was only recently "cheap
> cynicism"...? Or is Roger's version of neutrality less creepy to her
> *because* it makes him uncomfortable even as he insists on it? NB he
> repeatedly, parodically *plays* the mad scientist in exchanges with her. If
> I didn't know that Pynchon fears and condemns science like all good creative
> souls, I'd think there's some quite interesting ambivalence being modeled
> here.
>
> There IS a good mini-essay here on science and Pynchon in GR), which Monte
> might write. Focussing leads me to offer
> THIS possible reading: Roger believes that there might be SOMETHING
> ("magic") beyond the "scientific", beyond the measurement of material
> reality. ( One might be reminded of Oedipa's "something beyond the visible"
> or not).
>
> Pointsman has no such belief. His science-neutrality is really a
> positivistic belief in nothing but science.
>
>
> On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> end of P. 57 -> P. 58
>>
>> Foxes and dogs again, among the latter a painted pointer "alerted by the
>> eternal scent, the explosion over his head always just about to come." Good
>> boy, Tyrone!
>>
>> http://www.old-print.com/mas_assets/full3/J5141807/J5141807448.jpg
>>
>> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/43/02/f0/4302f06cbc44b3b2e6fbc371f51b2bce.jpg
>>
>>
>> What makes these images -- standard English fare at the time  for exurban
>> bourgeois as well as country-house aristocracy -- "even more autumnal,
>> necropolitical, than prewar hopes"..? This section has reminded us before
>> and will remind us again that Roger & Jessica's evasion  of the war is
>> temporary and precarious -- but here we're told that golden autumnal meadows
>> are *becoming* a City of the Dead (necropolis). Just a _memento mori_ for
>> the lovers, for a nostalgic English self-image? More?
>>
>> 58.11-15: something blocks Roger's speech, and "how does she know... so
>> exactly what Roger meant to say?" (Reinforcing 56.37's "Roger really wants
>> other people to know what he’s talking about. Jessica understands that.") A
>> hug, melting into arousal for both, is more than a consolation prize for
>> "failure to communicate" -- it *is* communication, "mind-to-mind."
>>
>> 58.16 brings us back to the framing night of winter solstice. Perhaps the
>> clinch just above was earlier the same night -- the section began with
>> "pillows in front of the fire. Roger’s clothing... scattered all about." Or
>> perhaps all their nights here are one, off the timeline and off the books.
>>
>> 58.24: "Pointsman’s... his... a bleakness whenever she meets him.
>> Scientist-neutrality." How does that differ from Roger's commitment to the
>> data and only the data about rocketfalls, which was only recently "cheap
>> cynicism"...? Or is Roger's version of neutrality less creepy to her
>> *because* it makes him uncomfortable even as he insists on it? NB he
>> repeatedly, parodically *plays* the mad scientist in exchanges with her. If
>> I didn't know that Pynchon fears and condemns science like all good creative
>> souls, I'd think there's some quite interesting ambivalence being modeled
>> here.
>>
>> 58.33: "And the people who might have been asleep in the empty houses here
>> . .., are they dreaming of cities that shine all over with lamps at night,
>> of Christmases seen again from the vantage of children and not of sheep
>> huddled so vulnerable on their bare hillside, so bleached by the Star’s
>> awful radiance?"
>> Spoilers be damned, this is a sweet foretaste of the Advent evensong
>> coming up three nights from now (p. 127)
>>
>
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