Finally caught back up, even if I had to delay posting this week to make it across the line. I was particularly hung up on the Quaternion section from the end of last week — underlining more than usual, understanding less. One thing’s for sure, as Pynchon sez, “all mathematics leads…sooner or later, to some kind of human suffering.”
But before long we were into the mayonnaise museum, Pugnax’s disturbing taste for human blood, Ryder Thorn, Umeki, and the most powerful weapon in the world. It all seemed a little extra vague and hazy, like Venetian fog, I suppose, but well worth ‘marching through.
I wondered at points what must it be like to read this book as a scientist. To me, there are definitely sections that sound like so much arfing from a hyper-intelligent blood-hungry guard dog. Does the scientist reader laugh along with all that arfing? Or do they just say “come on now — ridiculous!” Any scientists among us? Who will speak for the scientific community?
Tuesday 4/23: While I’m asking questions, what I really want to know is: Can I stay caught up for a whole week? The answer lies on the bottom of page 636, but unfortunately, “you know who I am.”
(which is to say…. please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 636. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o’ day next Monday)
Pugnax!
-Cecil
"…something like the supervisor of an entire team of political agents…"
i rule! i finished this weeks reading and i’m continuing on, i’ll wait for you all at the top of the hill. it’s so nice to see my bookmark making its way closer to the tail end of the book, it’s all downhill from here. still too much sexual tension without much release/relief. where are all the juicy bits? and even though it takes some time at the beginning of each section to try and remember the players associtated with each story line, it’s far more accessible than GR.
I know how you feel Dan. It is somewhat disheartening to think the remaining pages are still more than many books I’ve read.
I stopped at the mayonnaise factory and barely got out alive. Like C.V., I wonder how this reads to folks with a clue about math. Are we deep at the core of that early 20th-century space/time shift that broke our time-bound paradigms, or is this Fourth Dimension stuff so much genial twaddle? Either way, Pynchon’s efforts to map all that science onto the geopolitical chaos just before Europe went 1914 & kablooey seem alternately heavy-handed and desultory to me. I feel like I’m wandering around in a hall of mirrors, where everything looks like a reflection of something I’ve already seen (did Pynchon ever meet a conference of loony scientific cranks he didn’t like? And aren’t all the Americans starting to sound alike, sharp and laconic and robotically Western?), and the fact that mirrors, bi-location, nonlinear synchronicities etc. seem to be the subject here ain’t helping me much on the ground.
Whenever the Chums float over the story, I’m happy; Lew being back shows some promise (remember way back in Chicago when Lew did something atrocious he couldn’t remember? What happened with that?); Frank’s on the horizon and with him may ride some plot. But it’s not really plot so much I’m missing; it’s the sense that all the italics—Pynchon’s (sometimes lazy) shorthand for portentous mysteries about to be revealed—are leading to something more than just one of Zombini’s tricks.
I guess what this section leaves me wondering is: Is the author a brilliant mathematician, revealing heretofore unguessed dimensions; an intelligence agent, reporting on the secret lines of force that make history; or a good-natured sleight-of-hand man, pulling an absurdly long multicolored handkerchief out of his pocket because he’s good at it, and he can? I know, I know: why not all of the above? But since we hit Brussels I’ve been feeling a little strung along.
Agreeing with Rodney: this math-centric European escapade is very rough going. And I had been regretting not being around for the GR DM, but if this is more accessible… perhaps a unidirectional nature of time, with no going back, is just fine.
Im also having difficulty with the last section. Tending to gloss over the math and vectors, etc but worried that, like Kit, Yashmeen and Gunther, my walking away from the math may be me walking away from figuring out the truth in all this and the ecstasy that comes from observing true beauty. The hope that this will all come together for me is what keeps me going. But at this point, Ill be happy to finish the book.
under the magic and noise, it’s the wistfulness about lost opportunity (as irrevocable as death sometimes) that i keep hearing–the bit player saying “and isn’t it the curse of a drifter, this desolation of heart we feel each evening at sundown…the possibilities never to be counted by the likes of us…for we’re only passing through, we’re already ghosts” [373] and the “replica” chums “meant to revisit the scenes of unresolved conflicts, the way ghosts are said to revisit places where destinies took a wrong turn, or revisit in dreams the dreaming body of one loved more than either might have known, as if whatever happened between them could be put right again” [422-423] and Frank, who “wondered if he could be his own ghost, and haunting these rooms and corridors, as if the nearly negligible fraction of his life spent here had remained here, somehow still proceeding, just past visibility” [461].
there’s plenty i like and plenty i miss, but it’s these undertones that make the march for me.
I’m trying, I’m really trying. I thought I used to be good at math. I was even secretary of the math club in high school. But the density of it! And what’s the point? I hope there is one. (I hope you’re right, Rodney.) I’m also getting sick of Dally…her odd reminiscences of Merle are strangely tiring–and they feel hollow. I’d rather find that “first lasagna south of the Mason-Dixon.” At least food and knife-throwing make sense. Ok, I’ll just give myself a pep talk and soldier on. After all, Pugnax waits.
such silly transient romances in here. does anyone find all this math sexy? all the paranoia. goes well with the new
Nine Inch Nails album, by the way. lots of interesting things happening with re doors. the hanged man indeed! enjoying The Slow and the Stupefied (“You heart it? See it, smell it?”). gassing hisself with entertainment. the 4th dimension already. Humfried emitting an alarming rhonchus. vague feeling I’ve been to a mickifest before. then it becomes One Flew Over the Fourth Dimension starring Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo (and a jelly doughnut). this is actually quite amusing. asylum at T.W.I.T for Kit? “Fate does not speak. She carries a Mauser and from time to time indicates our proper path.” now that’s classic. and then the god-author of chaos himself with “You know who I am.”
Wow, I just stumbled across this site and I’d love to join. I happen to be on page 663 right now, so I think I’m only slightly ahead.
Ben — excellent (and really, borderline spooky) timing….
We’ll be catching up to you this coming week. Welcome aboard! I aim to post a new thread every Tuesday, sometimes early Wednesday so Week 13 is just around the bend.
-Cecil
I know Dally had a true feeling that she needed to stay in Venice, but I sure hope the feeling passes. One way or another, Pynchon had better get her and Kit together soon (perhaps in Vienna?).
Funny parallel, reading this and His Dark Materials alongside each other. The world-travelling in either one is a little dizzying by itself, blended I have to drink it small sips. And the characters wander back and forth between books; Lee Scoresby is the equal of a couple different Pynchon cowboy-nauts. Thank goodness I finished the Pullman trilogy and can put it behind me now.
I gotta say, I felt myself warming up towards Dally as she makes Venice her home (yeah, it was in last week’s section, I’m a still lagging a little). Early on, she was with Merle as he got into photography; now she’s with a painter. Almost as if she’s a symbol for capturing light.
As for maths, rodney, cookie, et. al., I’m starting to feel that they’re a pretext to give the characters something to do – like romances are a pretext for running in and out of doors (p597). At least this week, I read the maths like a foreign language: just to enjoy the rhythms of the words.
Where do I pick up my Hausknochen?
A week-plus behind, but back on the move. Soon, soon, I’ll be there with you.
Fell behind last week, then hit the road for last five days–lugged, but never opened, AtD, so this is a second placeholding post. Hoping to hustle back in the next leg.
Steve aka Heurtebise