Pynchon's math allusively. If they can get you to ask, etc.....

[Mark Kohut]

in mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value
than solving it.’ ~ Georg Cantor, from his doctoral thesis, 1867

More Misc surprising-as-grace math:

There is an absolutely incredible, descriptive, riff-filled-reflective
multi-page scene in Berlin Alexanderplatz at a slaughterhouse (and environs)
in which even metaphysics is brought up laughingly----and what does THIS
have to do with math, you are thinking?---

Which ends, just like this transition, with a guy sitting on a city bench
doing 'maths'. "it is very competitive out there in the world" he is
thinking.....!!

Musil, Doblin, math was a metaphoric theme for some of the great
modernists, brought to metaphoric overflowing with Pynchon perhaps.