Crying of Lot 49, the Group Read

[Mark Kohut]

p. 15 "She had never known numbers to run so high. It seemed unnatural".

I think it was Ruth Benedict (or one early anthropologist) who talked of
natural "organic' communities whose math, whose counting,  went like this:
 One, Two, Many...

I think it has been shown that Pynchon has deep thematic feelings about
natural.  About organic communities---see all his interpreted history of
the origins of European towns and cities in *Against the Day....*

Notice how imaginative numbers in *Against the Day* are.....bad
things....unnatural
by definition......

Here is some of that in embryo....a bit of his fuller world vision in
embryo....I suggest.