CoL49 group reading ch3 - Lissajou / Botticelli

[Michael Bailey]

“Two phase-shifted sinusoid inputs are applied to the oscilloscope in X-Y
mode and the phase relationship between the signals is presented as a
Lissajous figure.

In the professional audio world, this method is used for realtime analysis
of the phase relationship between the left and right channels of a stereo
audio signal. On larger, more sophisticated audio mixing consoles an
oscilloscope may be built-in for this purpose.

On an oscilloscope, we suppose *x* is CH1 and *y* is CH2, *A* is the
amplitude of CH1 and *B* is the amplitude of CH2, *a* is the frequency of
CH1 and *b* is the frequency of CH2, so *a*/*b* is the ratio of frequencies
of the two channels, and *δ* is the phase shift of CH1”





“realtime analysis of the phase relationship between the left and right
channels”

Everyone is probably heartily tired of “right-brain/left-brain” ideation (I
know I am) but the many occurrences of some kind of a duality (2 floors in
Entropy, Stencil and Profane, elevated and gutter language in GR) elsewhere
in Pynchon’s works make it difficult to ignore a bifurcation in the story -

A) On one channel, Oedipa’s awakening into sexual “infidelity” with its
good and bad aspects (and her reactions both thoughts & feelings which are
all very interesting & imho would still be so without the Tristero (but of
course then what would she be having them about?)),

- sidebar: _Story of O_ 1954 would be an interesting compare/contrast here
- or what if O had a college education and more agency ??? -


B) and the limning of recent history with each Tristero brushstroke also
adding real or plausibly fictive historical details, nicely crafted in
beautiful language.

Which if that scheme doesn’t directly imitate the Lissajou figures, at
least thinking about a possible connection provides the concept of “more
than one thing going on, and they are related”

Seems pretty relevant to that thorough likening of “strip Botticelli” to
“Tristero revelations”


- Botticelli isn’t a game anyone I’ve ever met has played.

I did read a reference to it in one of the “Man from UNCLE” novelizations -
quite some time ago - Napoleon Solo and a lady friend were playing it, &
maybe Ilya Kuryakin was also .

- quick sidebar w/r/t Man from Uncle, 1964-68, so available to Tubeophile
author at time of writing - though I’d be surprised if he read any of the
novelizations - ¿quién sabe? - perhaps the show with its frequent trope of
“pulling in innocents to a spy caper” and its rather lighthearted approach
may have helped to inform if not the “plot” but the tone - like “what would
the civilian be thinking during all of this” or even, “what would happen if
UNCLE turned over the case to the housewife? Or if Napoleon slept with the
informal recruit”

- I figure it’d be Napoleon, but the girls I knew all seemed to like Ilya,
so maybe it’d be he.

———

Wikipedia said Botticelli’s kind of like 20 questions, but trying to guess
specific people.

Which I think could be useful as a way to feel out new acquaintances to
assess how “hip” (well-informed) they were, & in which areas. How many
questions you could come up with? How long to zero in?

So linking The Tristero to a game of strip Botticelli is a similar angle to
the quite sound marketing (and legal - because obscenity challenges were
only beginning to recede into the past) strategy

Similar to writing on the bathroom mirror “SEX!”

And then, lower down, in smaller print, “now that I’ve got your attention,
clean the sink”


Strip Botticelli! Now that I’ve got your attention, isn’t it interesting
how many weird things happened in postal history? Makes you want to buy a
lot of stamps, doesn’t it?

The beginning of Chapter 3 even suggests that outcome: “Much of the
revelation was to come through the stamp collection Pierce had left…”