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

Tue May 17 06:37:03 CDT 2016

I think that in GR Pynchon 'fears' the too-logical determinism of science.
Fears (and investigates) that supposed determinism. Allows thru Roger and
in other ways---The Counterforce?---a possible 'escape" while

Yes, he satirizes everything, everything....esp maybe in GR and AtD. Fully,
totally, mind-bogglingly, in a hard to find a footing way....

On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 6:30 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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)
> >>
> >
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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