The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the 20th Century

Stirtf ft fit Fidd Models & Library Strategies in the 20th Century

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V A T I I n D f AT n

TIA\7I r o

T H E

C O S M I C

W E B

THE COSMIC WEB Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century j

N. KATHERINE

HAYLES

C O R N E L L UNIVERSITY ITHACA AND

PRESS LONDON

Copvrig.hr

by Corn til Univcrsitv

Ail rights R \ s e n e d . l:\eept tor brief qUOC.UK>ns in a review, this hook, or parts thereof", musr nor he reproduced ui any form without permission tn writing horn the publisher. Hoi information, address (.ornell 1'imersi.rv Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, N e w York 1 4 8 5 0 . l-'irsi published

bv (..ornell L'tmersitv Press.

Published in rhe I'nued K i n g d o m by Cornell UmvcrsJtv Press Ltd., i«oncion. liitenution.il Standard Book N u m b e r > ' - 8 0 1 4 i~42 2 Library of Congress Catalog Card N u m b e r X 4 - 4 5 1 4 1 Printed in the United Suites of" A m e n t a Librarians. Libraiy of Congress cataloging infbnwitiou appears on the lusi page of the book. Tlii- paper in ibis book is acid-fire and nuns the guidelines for pennaneuee and durability of the Committee on Vmiuetim Chuielmcs for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources

CONTENTS

Preface Introduction PART I : MATHEMATICAL A N D SCIENTIFIC

MODELS

1. Spinning the Web: Representative Field Theories and Their Implications PART I I : LITERARY STRATEGIES

2. Drawn to the W e b : The Quality of Rhetoric in Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 3. Evasion: The Field of the Unconscious in D. H. Lawrence +. Ambivalence: Svmmctrv, Asvmmetrv, and the Phvsics of Time Reversal in Nabokov's Ada 5. Subversion: Infinite Series and Transfmite Numbers in Borges's Fictions t>. Caught in the Web: Cosmology and the Point of (No) Return in Pvnchon's Gravity's Rainbow References Cited Index

PREFACE

WE ARE UVING AMID the most important conceptual revolution since Copernicus argued that the earth was not the center o f the universe. O f this new revolution much lias been written; b u t most of the discourse a b o u t it lias taken place within the boundaries of a single discipline, so that there exists n o accepted appellation for it and no clear definition of it as a general cultural p h e n o m e n o n . In this b(X>k I have singled o u t the "field concept" as the theme that is at the heart of this revolution, and have examined its various manifestations in the models of physics and mathematics, the theories of the philosophy of science and linguistics, and the structure and strategics of liter.irv texts. T h e field concept, as 1 use the term, is not identical with any single field formulation in science. For the men and w o m e n w h o work with the various scientific field models and theories f r o m day to day, they have highly specific meanings and applications. T h e term "field concept," by contrast, draws f r o m many different models those features that are isomorphic, and hence that arc characteristic ot twentiethcentury t h o u g h t in general. T h e only way t o approach a satisfactory understanding of the field concept is t o examine and compare a wide range of p h e n o m e n a that embody it; and that is the major burden of this book. But the m o r e salient features of the field concept can be sketched here. Perhaps m o s t essential to the field concept is the n o t i o n that things arc interconnected. T h e most rigorous formulations of this idea arc f o u n d in m o d e r n physics. In marked contrast to the atomistic N e w t o nian idea of reality, in which physical objects arc discrete and events are 9

PREFA< K

capable of occurring independently of one another and the observer, a field view o f reality pictures objects, events, and observer as belonging inextricably to the same field; the disposition of each, in this view, is influenced—sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly, but in every instance—by the disposition of the others. Another aspecr of the field concept, one that figures importantly in several disciplines and in the works of the five authors studied in this book, is the notion of the sclf-nferentiality of language. Because everything, in the field view, is connected to everything else bv means of the mediating field, the autonomy assigned to individual events bv language is illusory. When the field is seen to be inseparable f r o m language, the situation becomes even more complex, for then every statement potentially refers to every other statement, including itself . This implication of the field concept is central to the literary responses to the field view that I explore in this book. The field concept cannot, of course, be summed u p so briefly. Like many other general terms -"democracy," "romanticism," "modern i t y " - it can be fully understood only bv association with the various phenomena it is used to describe. Studying some of the embodiments of the field concept is mv purpose here. T h e metaphor I have chosen to represent the world as construed by the field concept is the "cosmic web." That metaphor communicates something of the interconnectedness and "stickiness" of self-reference of which I have already spoken. Its other applications are discussed in the Introduction and illustrated in the following chapters. O n e of the many ideas that the field view revises is the notion of a one-way chain of reaction between the event labeled as the "cause" and that labeled the "effect." Although I spoke earlier of the "influence" of the field view on m o d e r n literature, I do not mean to implv bv this that the literature I discuss is "caused" by scientific field models. Rather, the literature is an imaginative response to complexities and ambiguities that are implicit in the models but that are often not explicitly recognized. Thus a comprehensive picture of the field concept is more likelv to emerge from the literature and from science viewed together than from either one alone. In this sense the literature is as much an influence on the scientific models as the models are o n the literature, for both affect our understanding of what the field concept means in its totality. T h e Introduction and Chapter i lav out the conceptual framework IO

PREFACE

tor the book. The literary chapters that follow have been arranged in ascending order of the complexity of the authors' resistances t o the field concept; none of these writers adopts the field concept simple-mindedly or wholeheartedly. The chapter titles indicate the nature of these strategics: Pirsig propagandizes the field concept as a way to heightened consciousness. Lawrence and Nabokov arc ambivalent toward it. Borgcs subjects it to irreverent subversive transformations, and Pvnchon sees it as an unavoidable, and ultimately tragic, double-bind. Readers will be likely to find omitted from this list of authors favorites that thev think should have been included. Indeed, if my argument is sound, there must be many texts manifesting the influence of the field concept, in many different disciplines. 1 have thought it best t o treat a few models and authors in depth rather than mention many superficially. Readers w h o find these treatments interesting or persuasive can test the argument further with texts of their choice. My purpose is to blaze a trail rather than cover the terrain. If this book serves to open a dialogue, I am content; I leave it to others to complete the exchange. Many friends and colleagues have given generously of their time to read the manuscript and offer suggestions, and I am deeply appreciative of their help. Thev include W. T. Jones, David Smith, Noel Pcrrin, Thomas Vargish, Dclos Mook III, Christine Salada, Nancy Frankcnberry, and Nancy Crumbine. 1 am also grateful to the students in mv Science and Literature seminars w h o gave me encouragement and helped keep me going, and to colleagues in the Science and H u m a n ities seminar at the California Institute of Technology w h o gave me a hard time and helped keep me honest. Anonymous readers for Cornell University Press provided many helpful suggestions, from which I benefited greatly. I am also grateful to Dartmouth College for a Faculty Fellowship in the fall of tp79, during which a start was made on this book, and to the National E n d o w m e n t for the Humanities for a fellowship during 19791980, which allowed me to complete the original draft. T h e Humanities and Social Sciences Division of the California Institute of Technology provided secretarial support and an office during the tenure of mv N E H fellowship. I am grateful to the University of Missouri-Rolla for a Weldon Spring Faculty Grant in the summer of 1983 that enabled me to work on revisions. ! I

PREFACE

Chapters j, 4, and o of this book appeared in slightly different form as articles in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature (September 1982), CoMemporaty Literature (Winter 19821, and The Markbam Review (Summer 1983), respectively. I am grateful to the publishers and editors for permission t o use this material. For permission to quote from Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (copyright 1974 by Robert M. Pirsig), 1 .1111 grateful t o the publishers, William M o r r o w & Company, Inc., N e w York, and The Bodley Head Ltd., L o n d o n . Final thanks goes to Terr)' Viens, w h o read the manuscript, offered suggestions and criticisms, and helped prepare it for publication. Without her invaluable help, advice, and support, I could not have completed this project. N . K A T H E R I N E HAYEKS

Rolla, Missouri

12

PREFACE

Chapters 3, 4, and o of this book appeared in slightly different form as articles in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature (September 1982), Contemporary Literature (Winter 1982), and The Markham Review (Summer 1983), respectively. I am grateful to the publishers and editors for permission to use diis material. For permission to quote from Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (copyright © 1974 by Robert M. Pirsig), 1 am grateful to the publishers, William M o r r o w & Company, Inc., N e w York, and T h e Bodley H e a d Ltd., L o n d o n . Final thanks goes to Terry Viens, who read the manuscript, offered suggestions and criticisms, and helped prepare it for publication. Without her invaluable help, advice, and support, I could not have completed this project. N . K A T H E R I N E HAYLES

Rolla, Missouri

12

Tout sc ticnt. Ferdinand de Saussure

What wc observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Werner Heisenberg

. . . the grammatical background of our mother tongue , . . includes not onlv our wav of constructing propositions but the wav we dissect nature and break up the flux of experience into objects and entities to construct propositions about. Benjamin Whorf

We are suspended in language. Niels Bohr

Everything is connected. Thomas Pvnchon, Gravity's Rainbow

INTRODUCTION

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY has seen a profound transformation in the ground of its thought, a change catalyzed and validated bv relativity theory, q u a n t u m mechanics, and particle physics. But the shift in perspective is by no means confined to phvsics; analogous developments have occurred in a number of disciplines, among them philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, and literature. F r o m the vantage of the closing decades of this century, the appearance of a Copemican revolution sweeping through the culture is irresistible. I shall speak of it as a revolution in world view. T h e people most responsible for the transformation did not necessarily consider themselves part of a larger movement; nevertheless, their streams of inquiry flowed in a similar direction, the converging courses of which changed the intellectual terrain of modern thought. The essence of the change is implicit in the heuristic models adopted t o explain it. Characteristic metaphors are a "cosmic dance," a "network of events," and an "energy field." A dance, a network, a field— the phrases imply a reality that has no detachable parts, indeed no enduring, unchanging parts at all. Composed not of particles but of "events." it is inconrtant_m^ that:j>re simultaneously aflfccring each other. As the "dance" metaphor implies, its harmonious, rhythmic patterns of motion include the observer as an integral participant. Its distinguishing characteristics, then, arc its fluid, dynamic nature, the inclusion of the observer, the absence of detachable parts, and the mutuality of component interactions. This concept is very different from the older paradigm implicit in i s

INTRODUCTION

Newtonian mechanics. the atomistic, " c o m m o n sense" perspective we are all familiar with that views the world as composed ot" objects situated in an empty, rectilinear space and moving through time in one direction. T h e intuitive obviousness of this view to us is no d o u b t reintbrci d. as Benjamin Whort has suggested, by the deep structure of Indo-Huropcan languages, which embodies its fundamental assumptions: the separation between subject and object, the duration of objects through time, and the uniform, unidirectional flow of time. 1 But we should not lose sight ot the fact that the scientific expression of this view is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating from the latter seventeenth century. Since its beginning as a scientific world view can be historically determined, its ending perhaps can too. Although it is still the view most of us hold, there arc indications that its decline has already begun. T h e q u a n t u m field theories of high energy physics, for example, can lead to a very different perspective. Some physicists, faced with the dazzlinglv rapid transformations that subatomic particles undergo, have suggested that it is more economical to think of the essential entity not •is the particle, bur as the undcrh ing quantized field. In this view "particles' are expressions of the field's conformation at a given instant, appearing as the field becomes concentrated at one point and disappearing as it thins out at another. Particles are not to be regarded as discrete entities, then, but rather (ill Hermann VVeyl's phrase) as "energy knots." 2 W h a t the particle was for the Newtonian paradigm, the field is i for the new paradigm. Humanistic disciplines also reflect this change in view, as can be seen by comparing the dominant metaphors of our era with those associated with previous paradigms. When the eighteenth-century rationalists imaged the world as a clock, for example, they implied that the world was composed ot interlocking parts, that the parts could be detached from one another, and that an intelligent observer could deduce the function 1 Benjamin W h o r t . f oihitai Papers on \hialituiimlia {Washington, i).C... F o r e i g n Ser vice institute, 19*2), pp. ; ' - s i T h e p r o b l e m with W h o r f s thesis is that in s o m e strains or E u r o p e a n eulturc ttbi example, alchemie.it t h o u g h t in sixteenth- ami seventeen! h -ccntui \ F.nglandg v e n different w o r l d v i e w s have e m e r g e d , e v e n t h o u g h the language was essentially t h e same as rh.il Ncv, t o n spoke. Clear Iv other cultural factors, in addition t o t h , d e e p structure o ! language are responsible l o r t h e d o m i n a n c e ot the N e w t o n i a n w o r l d view f r o m the scscnrccniti t h r o u g h the nineteenth centuries

- H e r m a n n W e y l , I'hihwpljy ol MathaiUltia L uiversity Press, r . :rci T h i s a r n . l t w o t : the veted A l t 1 ' : , ! . - . : , p,:..(; in M a t h e m a t i c s f o r ;), p. 19. • Q u o t e d in Miiie Capok. The Philosophical Impact of Contemporaiy 1.1, Van Nostrand. nx>il. p.

I' vsics (Princeton:

SPINNING THI, VVT.N

.,< tii.iiMui .mil projected infinitely tar into the future. The equations tfhiii.ehes were considered immutable and complete, not susceptible s»s tin diet change or modification. i In si assumptions also had important methodological implications. Hi; aiisc interactions were unidirectional, the dominant mode by which » ncins were related t o one another, and hence the dominant mode ol « u h s i s , were causal. Because the physical world consisted of discrete In ulics separated in space, analysis of systems could be carried out tlmnigh interlocking series of discrete logical steps. Because systems ai te already inherently discrete, there was no problem in separating the .iliseiM'i I'rom what he observes. And finally, because the physical world lusted "out there," independent of the observer, it was determinate iml infinitely knowable. There were n o theoretical limits to how much ilif rational mind could understand about the physical world because the mind, in understanding physical reality, did not have simultaneously to understand itself. li( All of these assumptions were fundamentally questioned, and finally n e t thrown, by developments emerging f r o m two papers that Albert lanstcin published in 1905. O n e , drawing on Max Planck's suggestion ift.it light was quantized, was instrumental in the creation of quantum mechanics; the second set forth the Special Theory of Relativity. With these two seminal papers, the new physics was launched. In a little over ,1 decade Einstein would extend his conclusions to the General Theory of Relativity. Meanwhile, intense attention was being devoted to quantum phenomena, and by 1927 the mathematical formalism of q u a n t u m mechanics was essentially complete. With the formalism and theories in place, the debate on what they meant began in earnest. What became increasingly clear throughout the subsequent decades was that the new scientific models implied not only a new physics, but a new world view. Before physicists became concerned about such questions i s selircfcrcntiality, indeterminacy, and the lack of a rigid separation between is F o r a fuller and m o r e precise explication o f the m o d e l of reality implied by N e w t o nian mechanics, see Clifford H o o k e r ' s excellent analysis in "The Nature o f Q u a n t u m Mechanical Reality; Einstein versus Bohr," in PtvMan* ami Paradoxes: The Philosophised Challenge of the Quantum Domain, ed. Robert G. C o l o d n v 1 Pittsburgh: University oi Pittsburgh Press, 19721. pp. 6 9 - 7 2 . H o o k e r c o n c l u d e s his analysis o f the classical model ot reality with this observation: "The general c o n c e p t i o n o f the physical world c o n v e y e d in the preceding statements will n o d o u b t fx- famifi.tr ro the reader. It is a measure of the revolution brought about in the adrent of the quantum theory that every one of these claims has been challcnqctf' i p . 72, italics his).

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MATHEMATK

M. A N D SCIENTIFIC: M O D E I . s

subjcct and objccr, they encountered the startling ways in which the field concept transformed traditional views of time and space. With characteristic generosity Einstein, in a tribute written on the hundredth anniversary of Tames Clerk Maxwell's birth, attributes t o him this revolutionary change in notions of physical reality. Maxwell is remembered for his work m developing a field theory that united magnetism and electricity into the single entity that is now called the electromagnetic field. Before Maxwell, Einstein remarks, "people conceived of physical reality—in so far as it is supposed t o represent events in nature—as material points, whose changes consist exclusively of motions, which are subject t o total differential equations. After Maxwell they conceived physical reality as represented by continuous fields, which are subject to partial differential equations." 1 9 Maxwell had established the notion of a field as a concept equal in explanatory power to the Newtonian idea of material points when he showed b o w electromagnetic phenomena (including light) could be represented through a system of differential equations. Even a writer like D. H . Lawrence, w h o understood little of the mathematics, grasped the essence of this change and fashioned a literary model of it in the "polarities" and "fields" that we shall encounter in Chapter 4. Lawrence understood also that Einstein was connected w ith this transformation and that Einstein, even m o r e than Maxwell, was "knocking that eternal axis out of the universe." In this premonition Lawrence was correct, for it was Einstein who, in relativity theory, gave Maxwell's classical notion of a field its most powerful expression. So much nonsense has been written on the implications of relativity that one can sympathize with Martin Gardner's abrupt dismissal of the topic in his popular book 011 relativity. "If the reader wonders why the book contains no chapter o n the philosophical consequences of relativity," Gardner remarks, "it is because I am firmly persuaded that in the ordinary sense of the word "philosophical," relativity has no consequences."- 0 Gardner's assertion is an overstatement, for as he goes o n to admit, relativity theory does have important cpistcmologieal implica,( 'A!bcrt Einstein, "Maxwell's I n f l u e n c e o n the E v o t u r i o n of the tetea of P h v s u a ! Reality." Ideas and Opinions ( N e w York: Dell, 10*41. p. - ' ' M a r t i n G a r d n e r . The Relativity Explosion, rev. ed, ( N e w York V i n t a g e Hooks. 1976), p. x.

4 4

SPINNING T H E W E B

fions. But it is ncccssary to sort out what relativity does and docs not imply. Relativity docs not imply that "everything is relative." Indeed, before lie settled on "relativity," Einstein had considered calling his hypothesis die "Theory of Invariancc." In his Autobiographical Notes Einstein savs that he believes scientific theories should possess what he calls "logical simplicity," that is, that their fundamental postulates should not be the result of arbitrary restrictions but should flow naturally from the initial conception. 2 1 What Einstein found "particularly ugly" about Newtonian mechanics was that it gave special priority to stationary or nonaceelerating systems over all other kinds of rigid systems, without it being obvious why this should be so. 2 2 Similarly, it had been hypothesized that it was possible to define absolute motion by regarding all motion as taking place within an "ether," an invisible and virtually undetectable medium that was supposed to permeate space. In retrospect it is evident that these restrictions were ncccssary to preserve congruity with everyday experience. As Werner Heisenberg points out, the concepts of classical physics—mass, velocity, m o m e n t u m , force— are simply the experiences of cvervdav life cast into more exact and rigorous terms. 2 - 1 Relativity theory, by contrast, derives many results that are startlinglv at odds with everyday experience. Rather than beginning with "common sense," Einstein's thought was guided by a search for harmony among fundamental principles. It is this, rather than its extraordinary predictions, that struck Cornelius Lanczos, a physicist of Einstein's generation, as the most revolutionary aspect of relativity theory. Einstein saw science in a new light, Lanczos comments. " T o him science did not mean the primacy of the experiment or the primacy of the theory, but the primacy of a deep reverence for the all-embracing lawfulness which manifests itself in the universe." 2 4 Einstein's allegiance to fundamental principle can be seen in his account of h o w he arrived at the Special Theory. When he was sixteen. Einstein tried to imagine how a light wave would look to someone - 1 Elusion, Antolmttraplmal S'otrs, p. 21 " I b i d . , p. 25. -*Wcrner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science ( N e w York: Harper & R o w , 1058). p. 56. -•'Cornelius Lanczos, Albert Einstein and the Cosmic World Order ( N e w York: Interscience Publishers, i 9 6 0 , p. 112. 2

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M A T H E M A T I C A L AND SCIENTIFIC M O U E I S

traveling at the speed of light. 2 5 H e decided that to such an observer, the light beam would appear as a standing wave, oscillating back and forth without forward movement. This result puzzled Einstein not only because it was contradicted by Maxwell's equations, which implied that nonpropagating light was impossible, but more fundamentally because it implied that phenomena can appear different from different vantage points. Einstein decided diat if he had to choose between the laws of physics being universal or phenomena appearing invariant, he would choose the laws of physics. In the Special T h e o r y ' E i n s t e i n begins by assuming that the laws of physics should not depend on whether one is at rest or in uniform motion. He also assumes that the velocity of light 111 a vacuum is constant, regardless of the motion of its source. In order to preserve these invariances, Einstein reasoned that motion could only be defined relative to some arbitrarily chosen reference frame. With this reasoning, Einstein arrived at the now-familiar predictions that measurements of time, mass, and length arc not absolute quantities but subject to change, depending o n the reference frame from which they are madc. 2f> Paradoxically, these quantities are made relative so that others mav become absolute. The primary absolute is that the laws of phvsics remain invariant for any rigid system in uniform motion. A more sweeping absolute emerges from the interpretation that Hermann Minkowski, the Polish mathematician, gave to the interdependence of time and space in the Special Theory. As he set forth his interpretation before an assembly of colleagues, Minkowski predicted, "Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are d o o m e d to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality." 2 7 In the Minkowski interpretation, time and space are combined into the four-dimensional matrix of "spacetime." It is when this four-dimensional matrix is projected into the three dimensions of traditional Cartesian space that different observers can disagree about what happened. If, however, time is added as a "fourth dimen2s R e c o u n t e d in Fritjof Capra, 1 he Too of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modem Phvsics and Eastern Mysticism ( N e w York: Bantam B o o k s , 1977}. pp. ;;;tt '' • I r s h o u l d be e m p h a s i z e d that the relativity o f these quantities is nor merely a perceptual a m b i g u i t y in t h e observer. T h e m o s t sensitive instruments (for e x a m p l e , nuclear decav clock,) will record a t i m e that is n o t absolute, but relative t o the reference frame t o w h i c h thev are attached. Bertrand Russell m a k e s this p o i n t w i t h special clarity in The ABC af Relativity, rev ed. (Fair L a w n , N.J.: Essential B o o k , . 195S), p. 133. 27 H e r m a n n M i n k o w s k i in The Principle of Relativity by H . A. L o r c n t z , A. Einstein, H . M i n k o w s k i , and H . W e y l ( N e w York: D o v e r , 1921). p. 75.

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SPINNING THE W E B

sum," the resulting (four-dimensional) description will be the same for all observers. By thus expanding the traditional three-dimensional Cartesian space into a four-dimensional matrix, invariance is achieved. In E. h. Taylor and J. A. Wheeler's words, "Space is different for different observers. Time is different for different observers. Spacctime is the same for everyone." 2 8 T h e absolute time and absolute space of Newtonian physics have thus given way t o a new absolute composed of both time and space. In thecGcneral Theory, Einstein extended his conclusions by postulating that the laws of physics are invariant not only for bodies in uniform motion but also for bodies in accelerating motion, so that the long-recognized equivalence of gravitational mass and inertial mass (the "weight" an accelerating object will assume in space, as a result of inertial resistance t o the acceleration) is established theoretically. Thus not only the choice of reference frame became arbitrary, but also the type of motion, for accelerating systems arc treated in the General Theorv with the same equations as nonaccelcrating or stationary systems. As a result, a radically different view of spacctime emerged. In the General Theory, gravitation is seen not as some mysterious force that mass exerts over distance, but as a result of the nature of spacctime itself. Einstein suggested that we should think of spacctime as being curved around large masses, and that it is this curvature which accounts lor gravitational phenomena. Spacctime, in this view, is not an empty container for mass. Rather it exists, and is given its characteristic structure, because of the distribution of mass. Indeed it cannot, properly speaking, be considered apart from mass. Whereas the Special Theory joined space and time into the single field_of_s^cetimc. the .General i hiSty further correlated spacctime and mass, regarding gravitationas a physical expression of the interaction between them. In both the Special and General Theories, then, Einstein arrived at a view of physical reality that transformed the isolated entities of Newtonian mechanics into unified, mutually interacting systems. Instead of seeing time as a series ot independent and omnipresent moments, Etnstcin conceived of it as inextricably linked with space to form the four dimensions of spacctime; instead of thinking of space as a rigid container, Einstein postulated that it took its structure from matter; i n s j f f d - T h e passage is from Spacctime

Pljysics, q u o t e d in Gardner, p. 101,

+ 7

MATIIE.M.VI tl'.AI AND SuiiNTIFIC: MOIM-.LS of seeing enerpy a n d f l a t t e r as fundamentally separate and inconvertible, E m s t t i n s h o w e d that thct arc essentially ctjtuvajent and potentially interconvertible. In .'.11 these results, relativity theory had the effect of transforming isolated parts into an interconnected whole. In seeing fundamental interconnections between entities that had been discrete quantities in classical physics, l instein helped t o prepare the way f o r a field concept of reality whose m o r e radical implications, however, liewas t o resist for the rest o f h i s life Einstein deeply believed in causality, in an objective world that exists independently of h u m a n perception, and in the universal truth of scientific law. As we have seen, all of these notions c o m e into question when the field concept is expanded t o include the language of observation, whether natural or scientific. W i t h q u a n t u m mechanics, especially as interpreted by Niels Bohr, this expansion t o o k place within physics itself. Meanwhile, even Einstein's classical formulations were disquieting to many o f h i s contemporaries, because they involved a new way of looking at the world as an interconnected mutually interactive unity. C o r n elius Lanczos recounts h o w a colleague walked o u t of an early seminar oil relativity in disgust, remarking "I am a physicist, n o t a philosopher." I.anczos himself admits, " T o get used t o this much m o r e abstract wav of thinking (necessitated by relativity theory] was not easv." 2 g Bur he also argues that the "gradual abstractization of our primitive concepts" that "may appear o n the surface as a loss" is m o r e than offset bv the gam. " W e admit the loss of simplicity." I anczos remarks, " b u t we are willing t o pay the price for the tremendous advance in unity."*" Einstein himself saw the advance in unity as the decisive factor. In a lecture at Princeton University in 1921, Einstein c o m m e n t e d : "The possibility of explaining the numerical equality of inertia and gravitation bv the unity of their nature gi\es t o the general theory of relativity, according to m v conviction, such a superiority over the conceptions o f classical mechanics, that all the difficulties encountered must be considered as small in comparison."' 5 1 But this is unity of a very special kind. If relativity asserts that apparently different p h e n o m e n a follow the same general laws, it emphasizes that our particular experience of those p h e n o m e n a ts n o t especially - " I . a n c z o s , p. ICQ • 1 "UmL. p. n o .

•"O

•

in Gardner, p. Si. 48

SPINNING T I it- W E B

flivilvjjcd. The angle from which we view the universe is onlv one •mi hi}* ni.inv, no more (or less) v alid than anv other. Relativ ity theory (H'tmits a more general formulation of the laws of physics; hut at the same time anv perspective from which we might actually view the world K made partial and contingent. 3 3 Relativity, then, contains two fundamental and related implications sT-.fi were to be absorbed into the lield concept; first, that the world is in interconnected whole, so that the dichotomies of space and time, m.ittet and energy, gravity and inertia, become nothing more than iMlercnt aspects of the same phenomena; and second, that, there is no ni h thing as observing this interactive whole from a frame of reference ti-moved from it. Relativity implies that we cannot observe the universe liom an Olympian perspective. Necessarily and irrevocably we arc within it, part of the cosmic web. It is precisely this relativity of viewpoint that Nabokov resists in Ada, il»«igh he is eager to explore the related proposition that rclativistic nine ts not susceptible to uniform measurement. Nabokov 's treatment • >1 telafiv irv theory in Ada is as selective as his narrator's, wht > renounces die "space-tainted, spacc-parasited time . . . of relativist literature" -a h He still arguing that the measurement of "real" time is variable. T h e implicit strategy behind this selectivity is at the center of the discussion in I lhaptcr 5, for it reveals how an artist can shape a model tor his own ••nils, and how this shaping can he at once scientifically incoherent and artistically powerful For this purpose Ada is a key text, because the ambiguities and tensions between what Nabokov borrows from relativity theory and what he rejects are central to the novel's artistic -ir.itegies. If Einstein is the father of relativity theory, he is the disapproving stepfather to quantum mechanics, the discipline sparked bv his other !, T h c p a r t i a l i s 5

MAIHFMATK'A! « D S o t N T t t K , Monr.t.s "gravity waves" (though no generally accepted detection of them has vet been made). As a result, relativity theory, in contrast to quantum mechanics, is determinate rather than indeterminate, a theory of local action instead of action-ar-a-distancc. The dilemma for modern physicists is that both relativity theory and q u a n t u m mechanics have proven so successful within their respective spheres of applicability that it is highly unlikelv either will be abandoned; moreover, both are clearly necessary when dealing with atomic phenomena T h o u g h no entirely satisfactory way to combine the t w o has vet been found, the difficulties are mostly in combining q u a n t u m mechanics with general relativity; the blend with special relativity has been very successful, and q u a n t u m field theory is now well established. But because the conceptual differences between the rclativistic and quantum theoretics persist, various other models have gained a hearing in the scientific community, among them "hidden variable" theories. These theories, regarded as untenable bv many physicists, show how very different models, some of them conceptually very strange, can emerge from a view of reality o n which there is general consensus. 1 lidden variable theories postulate that in some way that is not clearly understood, "certain dynamical variables" are affected when two particles interact. T h u s thev assume that the unknowable area covered bv Bohr's " q u a n t u m of action" is in effect controlled bv the "hidden variables," whose presence we may infer even though thev arc "hidden" from sight. In general, hidden variable theories were an attempt to restore determinism and causality to quantum mechanics bv postulating a causal mechanism operating within the area of uncertainty. The efforts of the hidden variable theorists took a dramatically different turn, however, when J. S. Bell, in what is usually called "Bell's T h e o r e m , " showed that a hidden variable theory cannot reproduce all of the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics unless it gives up the assumption of local action. As a result, some hidden variable theories adopted a non-locality assumption that, in the words of Max Jammer, endowed them "with features that seemed to belong to magic rather than physics." 4 2 They assume, for example, that a connection between two particles can obtain even though thev are widely separated in space. • ; - M . i \ f.immer, The Pbilwtphy m.

of Quantum

Mechanic*[ New York: John W i l e \ , 10-4 : p.

U>

SPINNING

the

Web

II- »t«f- .issumption particle A, for example, could be influenced bv the i'lul hi measurement performed on particle R if A and R had at some )«>> > i o n s moment been in touch, even if at the time of the measurement \ nut R are widely separated and have no further interaction. The t w o » - terns are thus supposed to be united in what Jammer characterizes as t imsterious conspiracy." "Even to many nonconformists," Jammer , on, hides, "Bohr's complementarity interpretation seemed to be less l.i/.nrc.""u

In contrast to the intuitive implausibilitv of the model, howcvcr^.is di. shared vision of what a field view of reality entails. KJayfd Bohm, one nl the leading hidden variable theorists, emphasizes that what he - ills the "implicate order" implicit in hidden variable theory is in harini mv with both relativity theory and q u a n t u m mechanics. 1 4 According IM Holitn, relativity rhcorv and quantum mechanics have in c o m m o n the notion of unbroken wholeness"; "if relativity were able t o explain n u n e r , it would say that it would be all one form—a field—all merging into one whole. Q u a n t u m mechanics would say the same thing for a different reason, because the indivisible quantum links of everything with everything imply that nothing can be separated." Rohm therefore suggests the emergence of an implicate order "which will be suitable for this unbroken wholeness." 4 5 In the implicate order, "each part contains the whole in some sense. The whole is folded into each part." In this view "points are not the fundamental notion any more as in the Cartesian system. Rather, what is fundamental is some region which contains, in some sense, the order of the whole." 4 ' 1 Hie contrast between the simplicity of the vision and the difficulty of the model is also apparent in many mainstream theories. Einstein, although he did not succeed in formulating a unified field theory that would unite relativity and q u a n t u m mechanics, nevertheless had a clear vision of what it would imply. In such a theory matter would be regarded as "being constituted bv the regions of space in which the field is extremely intense. . . . T h e r e is no place in this new kind of physics " I b i d . , p. m . H llavui Itohm, "The Implicate Order: A N e w Order for Physics.'' Proms - i9~Si, i : : .1 fuller treatment o f these ideas can be timnd in Wholeness and the Order L o n d o n and Boston: R o u t l e d g e & Kegan Paul. IOKOI. 4S B o h m , "The Implicate Order." p. " i b i d . , p. 91

Studies. Implicate

MATHEMATK AL AND S c i t J J T l F K . M O D E L S

tor both foe fickl and matter jw-tfa- field is the only mwiiy."* 7 Similarly, the prominent mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl wrote years ago that the electron .should he considered as "merely a small domain of the electrical field within which the field strength assumes enormously high values." 4 " Clitiord Hooker, in suggested that the kev to reconciling this shared vision and competing models may lie ill an essential change of perspective. "The general presupposition behind fundamental particle theory," Hooker writes, "is that there is a subatomic structure to physical reality, that just as macro bodies actually consist of atoms, so atoms actually consist of fundamental particles, and so on d o w n . " As H o o k e r points out, this view implies thar the theories will assume a certain form, "where particles in hierarchy level n are seen as structured swarms of particles of level «-r." But suppose, Hooker continues, that "the socalled subatomic world was only nature's way of responding to high energy attacks. Suppose, tor example, that the world were really continuous and the manner of its apparent breaking u p was much more like the water droplets ejected as a stone strikes the surface." In this ease the proliferation of fundamental particles is "best understood f r o m the top d o w n , " as "characteristic denizens of our machines only," rather than as "revealing a pre-existing physical structure ro be discovered." In words that David Bohm would echo six years later, this view of atomic phenomena in which it is seen "from the top d o w n " would "turn theorizing, and experimenting, 011 its head." 4 9 The turn of thought, from a view that sees the essence in the smallest indivisible part to a view that sees the essence as an indivisible whole, is clear. What remains unclear is whether it can ever be adequately expressed m an articulated model. 5 0 47

Q u O t c d ill ( .Ljli.1. p. tiu. H e i n i a n n W e y l , Philosophy ofMullHitinlia ami Xautml Saaia- ( P r i n c e t o n : P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s . iM-ry/, p. i ' i ' " H o o k e r , p. i - g . ' • ' H a a r e c e n t survey o t w h e r e tite m a t t e r s t a n d s n o w , sec G e r a r d t ' H o o f t . " G a u g e T h e o r i e s o i t h e l-orces b e t w e e n E l e m e n t a r v P a r t i c l e s , " Saaiufic Aiiiiriaiii, ; (June 19S0], - f i r T ' H o o f t r e p o r t s t h a t it n o w a p p e a r s p o s s i b l e t o r e p r e s e n t all l o u r k i n d s o f i n t e r a c t i o n s b e t w e e n e l e m e n t a r y p a n i c l e s by t h e s a m e g e n e r a l k i n d o f t h e o r y . Tilts i m p l i e s t h a r it m a y o n e d a y be p o s s i b l e t o u n i t e ail four i n t e r a c t i o n s u n d e r a c o m m o n t h e o r e t i c a l f r a m e w o r k , r e s u l t i n g in t h e u n i f i e d h e l d t h e o r y o f E i n s t e i n ' s d r e a m . A l t h o u g h n o s u c h t h e o r y h a s v e t b e e n f o u n d , a s t e p in t h i s d i r e c t i o n w a s t a k e n w i t h q u a n t u m elect r o d y n a m i c s , w h i c h a l l o w s t h e w a v e / p a r t i c l e d u a l i t y t o be c o r r e l a t e d w i t h e l e c t r o m a g n e t i c fields. But t h e p r o b l e m s e n c o u n t e r e d t e s t i f y t o t h e d i f f i c u l t i e s o f c o n c e p t u a l i z i n g reaiitv as a u n i f i e d lieid. T ' F I o o i t r e c o u n t s h o w t h e search f o r a w o r k a b l e m o d e l led t o s u c h 4M

i 59

SPINNING THE W E B

VVIi.it our survey of the field concept in various scientific models has $imvit is that the problem of articulation is intrinsic to this view of flUlitv, whether the language involved is the binary sequence of computet programs, the "wave-packet" equations of q u a n t u m mechanics, IN one of the syntactically linear natural languages in which scientists Attempt to come to grips with the philosophical implications of their models. Because the task of articulation requires that a vision of a ilviuniic, mutually interacting field be represented t h r o u g h a m e d i u m that is inherently linear, fragmented, and unidirectional, the novelist's miKcrn with language will have much in c o m m o n with these scientific m m cms. T h e strain of trying to capture the idea of a holistic field in an .mutilated medium will thus be as apparent—and as interesting—in tin literary chapters as it has been in this chapter o n scientific models. I he authors to w h o m we n o w turn have their o w n perspective and insights to bring to this problem. Whereas the scientific theories are ,. 11. ated through the attempt to express the field view in rigorously exact models, the literary strategies are forged by the desire to find a form, •tud .1 language, adequate to interpret its h u m a n meaning.

, 111i i it ics as " r e - n o r m a l i z a t i o n " c a l c u l a t i o n s , w h i c h w o r k by " f i n d i n g o n e n e g a t i v e Mijiniry t o r e a c h positive i n f i n i t y , s o that in the s u m o f all p o s s i b l e c o n t r i b u t i o n s the nihilities c a n c e r (p. 119), a n d " g h o s t p a r t i c l e s " w h i c h , t h o u g h t h e y d o n o t exist, a t e a d d e d I, - n u k e the- c a l c u l a t i o n s c o m e o u t r i g h t in t h e e n d . A l t h o u g h n e g a t i v e a n d p o s i t i v e mliililies can b e m a n i p u l a t e d m a t h e m a t i c a l l y , it is very h a r d t o c o n n e c t t h e s e formal - i t i .itions w ith a n intuitively p l a u s i b l e reality.

59

F.\ R T

T J T E R A R Y S T R AT E GIE S

CHAPTER

2

D R A W N T O T H E WEB The Quality of Rhetoric in Pirsig's Zen and the An of Motorcycle Maintenance I 1c who without the Muses' madness in his sou) comes knocking at the door of poetry, thinking that art alone will make him fit to be i ailed a poet, will find that lie is found wanting and that the verse he • writes in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen. l'lato, Pbaedrus

ROBERT M. PIRSIG'S VERSION of the field concept derives in jMit, as his title suggests, from the Zen concept of a fluid, dynamic re ilitv that precedes and eludes verbal formulation, Yet it is also informed bv the Western tradition that sees the Word as the ultimate icaliry. The conccrn with language that was one of the keynotes of the last chapter is central to Pirsig's attempt to find a rhetoric capable of meeting these conflicting premises. The emphasis on rhetoric is apparent in the "Author's N o t e " that introduces the narrative. In it, Pirsig claims that "what follows is based on actual occurrences," but adds that "much has been changed tor rhetorical purposes." 1 In this ambitious autobiography that is also a novel, 2 three distinct rhetorical strategies arc evident: those of the au1 R o b e r t M . Pirsig. Zen and the An of Motorcycle Mamtenance ( N e w York: B a n t a m , iySo), p. i. I use t h e B a n t a m p a g e n u m b e r s since this is t h e m o s t widely read e d i t i o n . T h e y a be c o n v e r t e d t o the page n u m b e r s m the M o r r o w edition ( N e w York. 197+) by m u l t i p l y i n g by n/12. 2 Apparently there are extensive parallels b e t w e e n t h e a u t h o r ' s lite a n d the b i o g r a p h y he presents in Zen. H e did teach at M o n t a n a , was a technical writer, a n d h a d a son w h o w a s institutionalized f o r a time f o r m e n t a l illness. T h i s i n f o r m a t i o n o n Pirsig's lite is not lirsrhand; it c o m e s f r o m m u t u a l acquaintances.

LI IERARY STRAI EGIES

ical discourse alone is not e n o u g h ; his narrative differs from Phaedrus's aborted dissertation in its fuller use of rhetorical resources. In a sense, the dissertation has been written after all; but it is n o w combined with the emotions that electrify Phaedrus's quest, and encapsulated within the philosophical discourse that Pirsig calls his "Chautauquas." Sut rounding the narrator's intellectual, abstract analysis of Quality is an extraordinarily complex rhetorical superstructure—all the more complex because it poses as a simple transcription of events. Like Phaedrus, the narrator's focus is on reason. "About the Buddha that exists independently of any analytical thought," Pirsig writes, "much has been said — some would cay too much, and would question any attempt to add to it. But about the Buddha that exists within analytic thought, and gives that analytic thought its direction, virtually nothing has been said" (p. - o ) . The goal, then, is not to abandon rational thought, not to attempt, as the Zen koan does, to involve the conscious mind in contradiction and paradox until it gives u p and comes to rest. Rather, the attempt is to combine rational analysis with a fuller use of rhetoric so that the reader experiences Quality even while hearing about it. The means bv which the narrator attempts this synthesis is deceptively simple: an alternation between past- and presenttense narration. The narrator begins, for example, by saving "I can seeby my watch, without taking mv hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning," but then moves into the pasttense narration characteristic of the Chautauquas. T h e narrative thus proceeds in two different modes: the narrator's evocative descriptions of the immediate scene, and the analytical discourse of the Chautauquas. T h e divisions correspond with what the narrator identifies as the Romantic and Classic modes of understanding, one based on an intuitive appreciation of immediate surface, the other on an intellectual analysis of underlying form. At the very beginning of his tale, the narrator remarks that he prefers motorcycles t o cars because "on a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it any more, and the sense of presence is overwhelming" (p. 4).' Talking about Quality in the Chautauquas helps us to understand the concept intellectually, while coming back t o the "scene" maintains our o n g o i n g relationship with the Quality moment. O f course, this involvement is a rhetorical illusion. What the narrator tries to occlude from our immediate consciousness is the obvious fact 08

D R A W N TO n i t W e f t : PIRSK,

MII h descriptions are not experiences at all, but verba! reconstrucnl'sensorv stimuli which may or may not have happened in the fe'it plate. The narrator's description o f the "immediate" m o m e n t in f k n etnlv ulies the vcrv duolitv that the Quality event is meant t o cirWHtn't'i As Pirsig defines the Quality m o m e n t , it is an undiffercntiKrd unity that precedes and eludes intellectual concepts; it is therefore «n«t"eus to the turning kaleidoscope that we imagined in C h a p t e r i, «!*>'• Unit), inclusive dynamics defy classification into "patterns." But »ln )t the narrator writes as a person describing a world "out there." he Ha already bifurcated that fluid, dynamic whole into a subject regarding an object. W h a t the narrator knows but does not admit is that even ht» immediate "scene" is an artifact that comes after the m o m e n t , a division imposed bv the conscious mind as it seeks to understand the *.irt.l as distinct from itself. As the m o m e n t that precedes intellectual iw.iieness, the Quality event has passed by even before wc read the itatrator's present-tense descriptions. Between any verbal construct and (tic Quality event is a difference that is by its nature n o t savablc, because fti speak inevitably implies that one is n o t the Quality m o m e n t but separate from it. At best language can only describe w h a t has been, not iOl.l! is.

I hat the narrator's rhetoric, t h o u g h more complex than Phaedrus's, • '.till not adequate t o the e n o r m o u s task he sets himself becomes (pparcnt as he keeps getting caught in the fundamental dilemma in\ i lived whenever Quality enters the realm of discourse. In the following passage, the narrator tries, as Phacdrus did with his students, t o coniliKT us that we already k n o w what Quality is Using his favorite an i.iphor of the mechanic w h o cares about and is involved in his work, ilif narrator describes the Quality experience. What produces this involvement is, at the cutting edge of consciousness, an absence of any sense of scpai ateness of subject and object. Being with it,' 'being a natural,' 'taking hold' • these are a lot of idiomatic expressions lor what I mean bv this subject-object duality, because what 1 mean is so y ell understood .as folklore, common sense, the everyday understanding of the shop, i p. 266)

The paradox of speaking Quality is implicit in the images the narrator uses to describe it. H e talks about an "absence ol any sense of sepj69

LITERARY STRATEGIES

ratencss," but then identifies this awareness as taking place at the "cutting edge of consciousness." T h e knife imagery, as we shail see, occurs elsewhere as a metaphor for Aristotelian analysis. But die narrator too wields a knife when he speaks, as the "cutting edge" of his consciousness divides his prc-intellectual awareness o f die event into the verbal abstractions of language. A variation of this dilemma appears in the narrator's repeated assurances that the ordinary people w h o are his readers already k n o w what Quality is from "folklore, c o m m o n sense, the everyday understanding of the shop." If he can achieve consensus, he can avoid defining Quality. But in order to achieve it, he must speak; his voice is what invites (or if we are more skeptical, creates) consensus by revealing t o us h o w his thought and ours are the same. Consensus can be established, then, only by speaking; but speaking distorts the essence of the Quality that we are presumed to share. As the voice continues to enlarge the area of discourse, bringing more and more of Pirsig's t h o u g h t into die c o m m o n consciousness of reader and narrator, the problem only becomes more acute. For as the voice continues, more and m o r e "bricks"—words, definitions, statements—stand between us and the Quality m o m e n t . T h e n a r r a t o r s problem with rhetoric is endemic to his narrative. The narrator warns that in classical Aristotelian analysis there is an "invisible knife moving," cutting the world into parts. But as we have seen, his o w n discourse docs exactly the same diing, as his bifurcated narrative form suggests. T h o u g h this double form is an attempt t o combine into one text both immediate experience and rational analysis, its effect is to further cut u p into pieces the unity that Quality presupposes. But the pursuit of Quality is only one goal of the narrator's speech. More pressing, and for him equally as important, is die need t o prove his sanity. This he does by asserting his difference from Phacdrus. The narrator's pretense that Phacdrus is a person separate from himself is p a n of an elaborate defense mechanism, for we gradually realize diat the narrator is the personality that emerged after Phaedrus's personality was annihilated by clectroshock therapy. The narrator's relationship to this former self is intensely ambivalent. O n the one hand he admires Phacdrus, spending countless hours attempting to reconstruct his ideas and planning a motorcycle trip so he can revisit Phaedrus's former haunts. But he also fears and flees f r o m him, or more precisely f r o m the

70

D R AWN T O T H E W E B : PIRSIG

possibility that this part of the self will return to assert that Pirsig, n o t Phacdrus, is die ghost. For die narrator, the self has thus been artificially divided into a speaking subject and a passive object. If form is itself a message, then the message conveyed by this split narrative, and split narrator, is the same: his rhetoric is not overcoming duality, but reinforcing it. As he says when he discovers that the hairline fracture in his friendship with John is representative of a much larger schism within the culture, "Vfou follow these little discrepancies long enough and they sometimes open into huge revelations" (p. 47). I should like n o w to enlarge the framework of the discussion by referring to a distinction that the narrator rightly insists is crucial. "The application of this knife, the division of die world into parts," die narrator points out, " . . . is something somebody does. F r o m all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. W e take a handful of sand f r o m the endless landscape of awareness around us and call diat handful of sand the w orld" (p. 69). What Phacdrus and Pirsig seek is to "direct attention t o the endless landscape from which the sand is taken" (p. 70). In a passage whose italics indicate his depth of feeling o n the issue, the narrator insists that "it is necessary to see that part of the landscape, inseparable f r o m it, which must be understood, is a figure 111 the middle of it, sorting sand into piles. T o sec the landscape without seeing this figure is not to see the landscape at all" (p. 70). T h e figure in o u r landscape, however, the figure we must •see if we are " t o see the landscape at all," is not die narrator but the author. The narrator explicitly denies that his rhetorical intent extends bcvond the simple strategy of a bifurcated narrative. "I suppose if I were a novelist rather dian a Chautauqua orator," he writes, "I'd try t o "develop the characters' of John and Sylvia and Chris with action-packed scenes that would also reveal 'inner meanings' of Zen and maybe Art and maybe even Motorcycle Maintenance. That would be quite a novel, but for some reason I don't teel quite u p to it" (p. 120). If die narrator is not quite u p t o it, however, the author is. As we shall see, increasingly Pirsig is developed as a "character" w h o engages in "action-packed scenes" that reveal a great many "inner meanings." Only when we t u r n 71

LITERARY STRATEGIES

fhor; those of the unnamed narrator, whose ideas obviously overlap with the author's, but w h o is also treated ironically; and those of Phacdrus, the shadowy other self that the narrator used t o be. The three have in c o m m o n the desire to find a rhetorical mode that will allow them to represent in words the field view of reality that they call "Quality'." Contrary t o what the "Author's N o t e " implies, rhetoric is not peripheral t o this enterprise; it is at its center. Phaedrus's approach t o defining and disseminating this field view is as bold as it is naive. According to the narrator, Phacdrus was technically a genius, scoring (85 on the Stanford-Binet I.Q. test. His ambition, and his failure, were proportionate t o his intelligence. His attempts to reform the entire structure of classical reason ended in a mental breakdown, a court-ordered institutionalization, and an eventual eradication of his personality by clcctroshock therapy. " H e was dead," o u r narrator affirms. Destroyed bv order of the court, enforced bv the transmission of highvoltage alternating current through the lobes ofhis brain. Approximately 800 mills of amperage at durations of 0.5 to 1.5 seconds had been applied on twenty-eight consecutive occasions, in a process known technologically as 'Annihilation ECS.' A whole personality had been liquidated without a trace in a technologically faultless act that has defined our relationship ever since. I have never met him. Never will. (p. 77) But Phacdrus has left behind a legacy—trunks of notes, recollections of him by family and friends, even fleeting memories that, like flashes of lightning, illuminate the narrator's quest for him. From these the narrator reconstructs Phaedrus's story; it centers o n trying to understand the relationship between language and the holistic, dynamic reality that he calls "Quality'." Almost from the moment that Phacdrus conceives of Quality, he senses that it cannot be defined. His initial insight is confirmed when he has a sudden intuition that what he has been calling Quality is the same as the T a o of classical Zen thought. As he reads through his handwritten copy of the Tao Te Cbing, he makes a "certain substitution" that confirms his insight: "The quality that can be defined is not the Absolute Quality" and "The names that can be given it are not Absolute names" (p. 227). But Phacdrus, teaching rhetoric at the University of Montana, is pressed bv academic colleagues for a definition. U n d e r pressure as 72

D R AWN T O T H E W E B : P I R S I G

' shim his o w n commitment t o reason as from his fellow English ; w f h ' ' i s he decides t o risk a definition, proclaiming that Quality is the nt when subject and object meet, the instant of "preintellectual *» limes,s" f r o m which flow all of o u r conscious images of the world. |h< reader will recognize in this formulation a model very similar t o the >»i, Itohr proposed in his interpretation of the Uncertainty Principle. t'"->C, however, chooses t o locate Phaedrus's response as part of the mo. h earlier tradition of Western rationalism. "Why he chose . . . to m|»>nd to this dilemma logically and dialectically rather than take the • »•>• escape of mysticism, I don't know," the narrator confesses. tttil I can guess. I think first of all that he felt the whole ( l u r c h of Reason | Wucdnis's term for academe] was irreversibly in the arena of logic, that when one put oneself outside logical disputation, one put oneself outside ;1flv academic consideration whatsoever. Philosophical mysticism, the idea that truth is undefinablc and can be apprehended only by nonrational tiv.ms, has been with us sincc the beginning of histnrv. It's the basis of /en practice, But it's not an academic subject, (p. 207) The decision marks a turning point. From there Phaedrus's path tikes him t o the University of Chicago to write a doctoral dissertation tin Qualitv. At Chicago he enrolls in "Ideas and Methods 251," a course tti classical Greek rhetoric. Already tending toward megalomania and paranoia, Phaedrus sees in the Chairman's conduct of the class a plot to defeat the rhetoric whose champion Phacdrus conceives himself to be. lite plot is appropriate, for in pitting the Aristotelian Chairman against him, it re-enacts the struggle Phacdrus imagines took place in ancient Greece between the rhetoricians and dialecticians, which in his view w as a struggle over whether reality could or could not be captured in words. The narrator presents Phaedrus's reconstruction of Greek t h o u g h t at face value, but this highly conjectural scenario is of interest more for what tt reveals about Pirsig's text than for what it teaches about Greek history. 3 According to Phacdrus, the Sophists, dedicated to rhetoric, 'Phaedrus's reconstruction o f Greek t h o u g h t c o m e s in for s o m e hard knocks from an anonymous reviewer in the Times Literary

Supplement,

w h o intimates that the narrator's

more egregious errors (for example, defining "Phacdrus'1 as "wolf") arc owing to the American habit o t reading the classics at third-hand remove I " O n the R o a d with Aristotle ' Times Literary Supplement

No

r M [April 10, 1974]. 4 0 5 - 4 0 6 ) . American reviewers,

on the other hand, tend to attribute tlle.se errors to the misapprehensions of the -,ei! taught; see. for example. G e o r g e Stemer's fine review, "Isneasv R i d e r , " The New 73Yorker f-Xniil i c io~4). 149

o'-

LITERARY STRATEGIES

had already formulated an idea of Quality, which they called "die G o o d . " Like Quality, the G o o d "was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, every-changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way" (p. 342). Because it cannot be known dircctly, it must be presented through analogy. T h e purpose of rhetoric is t o create the analogies that can awake the apprehension of the G o o d in the listener's mind. T o Plato and the dialecticians, however, reality was not the dynamic interaction the rhetoricians believed it to be, but a "fixed and eternal and uiimoving Idea" (p. 342). Hence it can be spoken directly, without need for analogy; the proper tool for its representation is not rhetoric but dialectical analysis. From this initial schism between the G o o d and the T r u e evolve the modern dichotomies that are the subject of the narrator's discourse. When die Truth-lovers w o n over the Sophists, the narrator conjectures, Western civilization was started on the padi that led to stunning technological feats, but emotional and aesthetic sterility. In this long decline into a society that believes in doing what is reasonable even when it isn't g o o d , rhetoric is demoted from diat which is best suited to represent the Good, as the Sophists see it, to the illegitimate emotional persuasion that Plato alleges it to be, and finally to die classification t o which Aristotle consigns it, a branch of pandering. This long, pseudo-philosophical disquisition has a suspense not easily conveyed here, for running alongside Phaedrus's reconstruction of Greek t h o u g h t is his o w n batde with die Chairman. 4 After some preliminary skirmishes, Phaedrus finally defeats the Chairman o n a point which any rhetorician instinctively appreciates, but which Truth-lovers tend to overlook: that the spoken word is only an analogy t o reality, n o t reality itself. Seated at a classroom table that has a crack running d o w n die middle, in keeping with the cultural schism being re-enacted there, Phaedrus defeats die Chairman by locating in the Platonic dialogue from which his name is taken the m o m e n t when Socrates admits that 4 T h i s scenario s u g g e s t s that d i e author is i n n o c e n t o f k n o w l e d g e a b o u t d e v e l o p m e n t s ill the p h i l o s o p h y o f .science since the late i s o o s . T h i s is n o t d i e o n l y example o f such naivete; w h e n e v e r the narrator attempts a d i s c u s s i o n o f t h e history o f p h i l o s o p h y , h e betrays w h a t G e o r g e Steiner calls "potted summaries" o f very c o m p l e x issues fSteiner, p. 1+9). T h a t h e s h o u l d nevertheless be c o n c e r n e d w i d i issues dial have d o m i n a t e d d i e p h i l o s o p h y o f s c i e n c e in this century is striking e v i d e n c e that the cultural matrix is capable o f g u i d i n g individual inquiry in parallel directions, even w h e n there is Utile o r n o direct influence b e t w e e n the different inquiries.

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his parable of the chariot drawn by t w o horses is not truth itself, but a representation of truth. Thereafter Phaedrus regards the Chairman with a mixture of contempt and pity; in his mind, his triumph has reversed the ancient triumph of dialectic over rhetoric. But though Phaedrus believes he won die battle, he finally conies to see that he has lost the war, for he "is doing the, same bad diings himself as die dialecticians d o when they use words as if they were reality. His original goal was to keep Quality undefined, but in the process of battling against the dialecticians he has made statements, and each statement has been a brick in a wall of definition he himself has been building around Quality. Any attempt to develop an organized reason around an undefined quality defeats its own purpose. The organization of the reason itself defeats the quality. Everything he has been doing has been a fool's mission to begin with. (p. 357) Thereafter he turns to silence, sitting in the corner of his bedroom letting his urine flow naturally, letting his cigarette burn d o w n naturally until it is extinguished by the blisters forming on his hand. D e p e n d i n g 011 one's viewpoint, this state can be seen either as a mystical ecstasy in which Phaedrus is finally at one with the Quality moment, or as a withdrawal into die insanity that the narrator so much fears. Perhaps the two are indistinguishable. Though Phaedrus's failure is an extremely poignant m o m e n t , 011 reflection we can see that failure was the only possible outcome of his struggle widi the University. That this realization is apt to strike us only after we have finished reading testifies to the narrator's evocative skill. Hut to try to imagine Phaedrus actually writing his dissertation o n Quality is to realize how futile the effort must have been. T h e proposition that Quality could be defined in a dissertation, let alone defended, is apt t o inspire incredulity in anyone w h o has experience with dissertations. Phaedrus fails because he cannot find a suitable rhetorical modern which t o embody Quality. Committed t o reason, he cannot resist being drawn into definitions and dialectical argument, and he then inevitably loses the Quality he pursues. The failure is not, however, the end of the quest to capture Quality in words. Pirsig's narration is a fresh start f r o m a different direction. Pirsig, cannier and m o r e wary, begins with the recognition that analyt75

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t o consider the author's rhetorical strategics do the fiill complexities of the attempt to capture Quality in words become apparent. The subtlety of the author's rhetorical strategies can be seen in the ironies that emerge at the narrator's expense. The most important, perhaps, occurs in the narrator's relation t o his son Chris. Richard H . Rodino notes that the narrator at the very beginning of the book "makes an a priori acceptance of the limitations of motorcvclc travel that becomes a staggering threat to the Quality o f h i s everyday life" w h e n hecommits himself to an internal monologue rather than an active interaction with his son. 5 "Unless vou're fond of hollering you don't make great conversations on a running cycle" (p. 6). Lost in what R o d i n o calls "the cottony silence of his o w n thoughts,"r 152

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corollary awareness that the Strange L o o p n o w encompasses us within its circumference. Sequences t h u s play an i m p o r t a n t role in allowing Borges t o develop the idea that b o t h his fictions and the world are self-referential systems. They arc n o less i m p o r t a n t in p r o v i d i n g h i m with a m o d e l f o r the structure o f his stories. T h e possibilities are implicit in Z e n o ' s Second Paradox, the parable o f t h e tortoise w h o has a head start and goes o n e length b e f o r e the hare begins. But after the hare has g o n e o n e length, the tortoise has g o n e o n e and o n e - t e n t h lengths, so the tortoise is still ahead. T h e paradox lies in the fact that n o m a t t e r h o w far the hare goes, the tortoise is always o n e - t e n t h the distance ahead. T h e a r g u m e n t owes its force, Borges points o u t in "Avatars o f the T o r t o i s e , " t o t h e series i +• t/to 4 1/100 + 1/1,000 + 1/10,000 . . . (O/, p. no). T h e m e t h o d suggests that infinity can be m a d e t o stretch between any t w o points simply by converting distance f r o m a c o n t i n u u m t o an infinite series of decreasing m a g n i t u d e . W e have seen h o w Borges uses this idea in developing t h e plots o f his stories; he also uses it in constructing the paradoxes that reveal the fictionality

o f the model. C o n t i n u i t y , particularly continuity o f space

and time, implies that m o v i n g f r o m p o i n t A t o p o i n t B requires traversing the intermediate distance. Borges prefers, on the contrary, t o break continuities into sequences so that point A suddenly' t u r n s i n t o p o i n t B (or point Z ) . Because the transition between terms is discontinuous, it is also possible for Borges t o suggest that space intervenes between t e r m s — a n d i n t o this space he can insert a sub-series o f infinite length. He t h u s gains t w o advantages f r o m sequences that he could n o t derive from continuities: the ability t o effect abrupt transitions b e t w e e n discontinuous terms (for example, by positing o p p o s i t c s as terms o f t h e same sequence so that progression along t h e sequence suddenly transforms o n e t h i n g into its o p p o s i t e ) ; and the ability t o suggest that infinity can stretch between any t w o terms of t h e sequence, t h u s rendering anv real progression an impossibility. In addition t o its thematic uses, t h e inherent discontinuity o f a sequence provides a model for the narrative structure of the stories. T h e "middle distance" that narrative fiction usually extends is excised in Borges t h r o u g h ellipses and sudden breaks that t r a n s f o r m a chronologically c o n t i n u o u s story i n t o a scries of disconnected narrative points. 10a. trans. Ruth l - 0 . Sims (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1964) (hereafter Ol). p. 46. 53

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With the collapse of die "middle distance," the length wc traverse is defined less bv the duration of the narrative than by the implied dis tance contained between the ellipses (which can be infinite). It is as if the linear spatiality of narrative fiction has been transformed into the repeated d o w n w a r d plunges one might endure in attempting literally to traverse a sequence. In this metaphorical, Borgcsian view of sequence, the spaces between terms are as important as the terms themselves. The discontinuities facilitate the abrupt leap of t h o u g h t necessary for the essential paradoxes t o emerge. They also create gaps that make it impos sible even to estimate where the b o t t o m might be. T h e sequence, implicit chasms yawning between its apparently adjacent terms, thus plays a metaphoric as well as conceptual role in the fictions, serving as both sign and symbol in Borges's fictional mode. So far I have been speaking of a sequence as .111 infinite progression of discontinuous terms. We are ready now, however, to consider the Cantorian view of an infinite series as a single entity, a pre-existing whole defined by the entire sum of terms. As we have seen, this view of series allows infinity to be encapsulated, as it were, within die bounds defined by the initial and final terms. Borges, aware of Cantor's work, sees in transfinitc set theory new possibilities for representing infinity within the finite bounds of his short stories—and also new threats to die "wildness" that he loves in infinity. Never merely a reporter of ideas, Borges subjects Cantor's theory t o what Harold Bloom would call a "strong reading," deforming it in ways diat reveal what he hopes to gain bv infiltrating his fictions with infinite series and sequences. Cantor was able to answer the question " H o w large is infinity?" by placing infinite sets in one-to-one correspondence. "The operation ot counting is nothing more for [Cantor] than that of comparing two scries," Borges comments in his discussion of Cantor set theory in "The Doctrine of Cycles." 1 6 The idea is to match up each element of set A with an element from set B; if it can be shown that the matching IJ> complete, with no elements left over in eidier set, then the two sets can be said to be equal in size, even though the number of elements in each is infinite and therefore not countable. As Borges points out, we can show that die n u m b e r of odd numbers is equal to the number of even numbers by using this one-to-one correspondence method (BR, p. 67): lf> Jorge Luis B o r g e s , " T h e D o c t r i n e o f Cycles," in Borges: A Reenter, ed. E m i r M o m g . i t and Alistair R c i d ( N e w York: E, 1'. D u t t o n , 1981) (hereafter BR), pp. 6 6 - 0 7 .

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I corresponds to 2 3 corresponds t o + 5 corresponds to 6, etc. T h o u g h Borges does not say so, it is also possible to show that the Dumber of o d d numbers alone is equal t o the total n u m b e r of both o d d and even numbers by a similar procedure: 1 corresponds to 1 5 corresponds t o 2 5 corresponds t o j 7 corresponds to 4, etc. Using this method, Cantor arrived at the paradoxical result that a subset (or partial grouping) of an infinite set is as large as the complete set itself. In fact, Cantor defined an infinite set as a set that can be put into one-to-one correspondence widi one of its proper subsets. Borges makes rhe correct, but t o a non-mathematician surprising, observation that "there are as many multiples of 3018 as there arc numbers [that exist]—without excluding from these 3018 and its multiples" (BR, p. 07). The proof follows the earlier method: 1 corresponds to 3,018 2 corresponds to 6,036 3 corresponds t o 9,054 4 corresponds to 12,072, etc. What fascinates Borges about these results from Cantor set dieory is the idea that "in these elevated latitudes of enumeration, the part is no less copious than the whole: the exact quantity of points diere are in the universe is the same as in a meter, o r in a decimeter, or in the farthest stellar trajectory" (BR, p. 67). Borges sees in Cantor's proposition a way to escape the bounds of finitude, for if any part, however minute, of an infinite set can also contain infinity, infinities can be opened within any dement, n o matter h o w small, simply by suggesting that it is part of an infinite series. "If the universe consists of an infinite number of terms," Borges writes, "then it is absolutely capable of an infinite number of combinations, and the need for a recurrence is invalidated" (BR, p. 67). In its immediate context, this result enables Borges to refute Nietzsche's doctrine of Eternal Return. In the larger context of Borges's stories, Cantor's results seem to promise that a fiction composed of a limited n u m b e r of words can, like the subsets of an infinite set, nevertheless contain infinity. In "The Aleph," Borges appropriates Cantor's 155

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nomenclature and methodology to explore the implications for literature that obtain w h e n infinity is encapsulated within a finite boundary. The bounded but infinite topography of the Aleph, a sphere a little over an inch in diameter that contains "all space . . . actual and undiminished" 64, p. 26), contrasts with the bounded and finite topography of the Garay Street house. T h e narrator's fixation on Beatriz Viter bo suggests that the arrangement of the locale is a parodic mirroring of Dante's Divine Comedy, containing, like that larger topographical work, a three-tiered structure—defined, in ' T h e Aleph," by the cellar, the drawing room, and the modern salon-bar next d o o r . 1 7 Borges subjects the work of his Italian predecessor t o a n u m b e r of playful inversions; the narrator experiences his epiphany in the lowest, rather than the highest, realm; the Aleph resides in the cellar, while the salon-bar is .1 horror of modern decor. But these inversions only help to highlight the assumptions diat the narrator and Dante share. In using topographical symbolism, both Dante and the narrator assume that space can be assigned symbolic significance, and that this significance can be compressed into, and expressed through, an object in the center of that space. In one sense,the object at the center of that space is Beat rice/Bcatriz; in another sense, it is the poem/fiction itself. T h e parody thus acts to link the narrator's literary strategies with the large body of traditional literature that, like the Divine Comedy, aspires t o express the ceaseless flux of the infinite universe through a symbolic structure that is itself bounded and finite. The existence of the Aleph, however, forces the narrator (and us) to question these assumptions. Dancri reverses Borges's procedures Daneri has no need to resort t o symbols t o express the essence of the whole, because he is the possessor of an object that literallv contains it. H e attempts t o create a literary counterpart to the Aleph in his poem entitled, appropriately, "The Earth," in which he intends to "set to verse the entire face of the planet" (A, p. IQ)- With the Aleph rather than Virgil as his guide, he believes that literature operates like trans finite mathematics, which implies that the part is as large as, and there fore can contain, the infinite whole. Borges warns that the use of the word ".Aleph" for the "strange sphere in my story may not be acciden 1 "The D a n t e parody is discussed at length in A l b e r t o J. Carlos's " D a n t e v 'El Aleph' de Borges," Dnquesne Hispanic Review, • (19*6), t c sec also Stelio C r o , " B o r g e s e Dante," l.ettere Italiane, zo (1068), esp. 4 0 7 - 4 1 0 .

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l » F ; I R "for Cantor's Menpenlebre, it is the symbol of transfinite numbers, of which any part: is as great as the w h o l e . " 1 9 As Borges recognizes, Cantor's w o r k can, if applied t o literature, have serious implications for literary m e t h o d o l o g y . Daneri's procedure illustrates them. For Daneri, poetic creation consists o f putt ing a subset of reality', the series o f signs that comprise language, into o n e - t o - o n e correspondence with the larger, infinite set of the world. H e bases his method o n the hint provided by the Alcph. T h e "formal perfection and scientific rigor" (A, p, 21) that Daneri claims for his p o e m is perfectly correct, if we assume that the world is an infinite set and language o n e of its subsets, for as w e saw, C a n t o r proved that a subset of an infinite set is as large as the set itself. It is therefore theoretically possible t o p u t the verbal signs into one-to-one correspondence with the infinite sets of the elements that comprise the world. This possibility drastically alters the role that artistic choice plavs in literary' composition, for when literature is a series of signs to be p u t into one-to-one correspondence with the world, choice is reduced t o deciding which sign t o match with which object. Daneri's fickleness in searching for the right sign onlv emphasizes h o w u n i m p o r t a n t choice has become. T h e narrator's fixation o n Beatriz, bv contrast, renders choice absolute. Rather than being reduced t o a m i n i m u m as it is in Daneri's p o e m , choice for the narrator is the mysterious mechanism whereby the infinite multitude o f o t h e r terms in the world can be made less significant than the privileged o n e u p o n which his choice operates. W e learn in the course o f the story that Beatriz was frail and stooped; that she wrote incestuous, pornographic letters t o her cousin; that she was forgetful, distracted, and c o n t e m p t u o u s , with a "streak o f cruelty" that perhaps "called f o r a pathological explanation." But these imperfections in n o way u n d e r m i n e the power of the artistic choice that identifies her as an ideal love-object. O n the contrary, by testifying t o the inexplicabilitv of this choice, Bcatriz's imperfections emphasize its absoluteness. 18 T h e o t h e r significance Borges claims for the Aleph is that "for the Kabbala, that letter stands for the En Soph. the pure and b o u n d l e s s g o d h e a d " (p. 29!. This aspect is discussed in S a l o m o n Levy's instructive article, "1:1 Aleph, s t m b o l o eabalfstico, y sus implicaciones en la obra d e f o r g e Luis Borges," Hispanic Review, 4 4 (1976), 143-161. '''Quoted from p. 29, The Aleph and Other Stories. T h e hill title tor Cantor's article is "Beirrage zur B e g r i i n d u n g der transfiniren M e n g e n l e h r e . " Part 1 appeared in Mathcmatische Annrtlm, 4 6 (1895), 481-512, and part 2 in the same journal, 4 9 (1897), 2 0 7 - 2 4 3 . An English translation can lie f o u n d in Contributions to the Founding of the Theory Transfinite Numbers, trans. P. E. B. fourdain ( C h i c a g o : O p e n C o u r t . 1915).

157

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This emphasis on choicc is significant, for central to the debate that arose over Cantor's transfinitc numbers was his method of arbitrarily selecting one element f r o m each of several sets and using t h e m to form a new set. This procedure became known as the "Axiom of Choice," and has since become one of the most controversial axioms of modern mathematics. T h e importance of the Axiom of Choice to Cantor set theory may be one reason why Borges makes the role of choice in literature an issue in die conflict between the narrator and Daneri. It is ail interesting footnote to Borges's story that in the early 1900s the Axiom of Choicc was used to develop the Banach-Tarski paradox, which states that given any two solid spheres (011c, for example, the size of a golf ball and the odier the size of the earth), each can be divided, as Morris Kline explains, into a "finite number of non-overlapping littlesolid pieces, so diat each part of one is congruent to one and only one part of the other." 2 " This implies, as Kline points out, that "one can divide the entire earth u p into little pieces and merely by rearranging them make u p a sphere the size of the ball." 2 1 I hasten t o remind the reader that diis is not Borges's fancy, but a logical consequence of the Axiom of Choicc as it is used in modern set theory. Given these results, it is not surprising that die Axiom of Choice is as central to Borges's story as it is to Cantor's theory. W e have seen that for Daneri, choice is simply a matter of matching words to objects 111 one-to-one correspondence; in this he follows Cantor's o w n methodology. For the narrator, by contrast, choice is the mechanism whereby the world as a series is first negated by denying its plenitude, then reconstituted (in a form congenial to his temperament) from the single element favored by his choice. Far f r o m using choice to validate series, then, die narrator uses it to deny series. T h e narrator's antipathy to series is as clear as Daneri's infatuation with them. Whereas Daneri delights in timetables, bulletins, and other paraphernalia that emphasize the seriality of time, the narrator is "pained" by the realization of a "wide and ceaseless universe" in which every small change is "the first of an endless series" (A, p. 15). These different views invite the question, which is closer to Borges's

Kline, pp. 269-270. Eor the example ot die golf ball wc could, of" course, substitute Borges's Aleph, a sphere "an inch in diameter." 21 ibid., p. 270. 158

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own preferences? Borges's strategy follows neither Daneri's o n e - t o - o n e correspondence m e t h o d nor die narrator's symbolizing, t h o u g h it draws o n both. Daneri admits the plenitude of t h e world b u t does n o t see that choice is inevitable; the narrator admits choicc, b u t denies t h e inevitability of the "endless series." Borges can have the best of b o t h methods because h e is willing t o give up die o n e assumption diat Daneri and the narrator share: that the world exists, and can be represented in literature. Illusion and symbol are therefore admissible, since he has surrendered Daneri's claim t o rigorous correspondence; and infinitude is also possible, since he is n o t b o u n d t o the narrator's desire for a single, determinate locus for reality. T h e Aleph f o r Borges is n o t reality but a symbol of the kind of paradox that reveals the impossibility of ever representing reality. In this distinction lies a crucial difference between Borges a n d Cantor. Even t h o u g h C a n t o r was never able t o demonstrate that t h e paradoxes inherent in his set theory could be resolved, he deeply believed that they were resolvable. As die attacks o n transfinitc n u m b e r theory grew, C a n t o r retreated t o Platonism for his defense. T o C a n t o r , the alephs were valid mathematical entities because they were ideal objects in die Platonic realm o f ideas. Cantor's scientific biographer Joseph Warren D a u b e n describes h o w , in Cantor's f a m o u s " M e n g c n l e h r e " paper. C a n t o r argued that the paradoxes of his set theory were resolvable because they corresponded t o a Platonic reality that was itself consistent. 2 2 In the ultimate, Platonic sense, C a n t o r believed that his theory was true because die Alephs were real. Borges, o f course, believes n o such thing. In his History of Eternity, -Joseph Warren D a u b e n , Gcorg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite SCambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979). D a u b e n talis the sentence with which Cantor begins the "Mengcnlehre" treatise a "classic," and adds diat it set "die t o n e for all that was to follow": "Definition: By a 'set' w e mean any collection M into a w h o l e of definite, distinct objects m (which are called the 'elements' o f M) o f our perception [Anscbuumniil or o f our thought" ( D a u b e n , p. 170). By defining a set as a collection o f elements o f our thought. Cantor was able t o avoid the distinction that his critics s o u g h t to make between the merely abstract existence that transfinitc numbers had a n d the referential existence that various elements within the set may possess. "This characteristic lof the elements in die set as objects o f t h o u g h t ] was tremendously important t o Cantor in an ontological wav," D a u b e n comments. "If ail the elements of his set theory existed o n the same level, with the same reality o f t h o u g h t s and images of the m i n d , then t h e r e was 110 dependence u p o n real objects o f a n y s o n . . . . T h e reality o f sets as abstract objects 111 the mind then carried over directly to tile transfinitc numbers, and conferred u p o n them a similar s o n o f reality" ( D a u b e n , p. 171).

1+5

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Borges impishly suggests that the Platonic realm of eternal archetypes is a huge museum of dusty pieces that serves mostly t o frustrate the cabinetmakers of the world as they pursue the unreachable Platonic table. 2 3 Because Borges docs n o t accept the Platonic reality as "real," 2 ' 1 he is also not obliged t o accept Cantor's belief that the paradoxes of selfreferential systems can be resolved. The Alephs interest Borges not because thev are real, but because they allow him t o suggest that noth ing is "real." This difference in strategies suggests parallel differences in motivation. Whereas Cantor wanted t o extend logical analysis, not destroy or compromise it, Borges wants to use logical analysis to show h o w profoundly illogical its results can be. T h e Aleph thus finally means something very different for Borges f r o m what it means for Gcorg C a n t o r . 2 5 Cantor chose the aleph to represent his transfinite numbers because it is the first letter of the H e b r e w alphabet, and he hoped that his alephs would be a new beginning for mathematics. 2 6 In Borges's story, the Aleph also represents fresh beginnings. But Borges is aware that it is a beginning that threatens to burst o u t of, rather than extend, logical analysis. W h e n the narrator's egoistic eye ("I") attempts t o establish bounds around the Aleph by looking at it from "every point and angle," he sees in it "the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth . . ." (/I, p. 28), irt a progression that circles back on itself to form a Strange Loop that includes the narrator within its circumference. According t o the

- ' f o r g e Luis B o r g e s , Histcrici de la Ktertlidad, vol. [ o f Obras Completas ( B u e n o s Aires Emecc Edirores, 1953), p. at. 24 l n an interview w i t h R o n a l d Christ. B o r g e s e o m m e n t e d that "I think E m Aristo telian, but I wish it w e r e the other w a y | i . e . , Platonistj. 1 think it's t h e English strain th.it makes m e think o f particular t h i n g s and p e r s o n s b e i n g real rather than general ideas being

real." The Paris Review, 40 (1967), 162. 2 - B o r g e s himself m a y have underestimated this difference; if s o , s o m e o f his misunderstanding o f Cantor's p o s i t i o n can u n d o u b t e d l y b e traced t o Kasner and N e w m a n . T h e b o o k is written in a popularized, colloquial style that m i g h t well make o t h e r mathematicians blanch. For example, this is their treatment o f the very c o m p l e x issues raised by what "existence" m e a n s in mathematics: "In m o d e r n times, the various s c h o o l s o f mathe matical p h i l o s o p h y , the L o g i s t i c S c h o o l , Formalists, and I n f l a t i o n i s t s , have all disputed the s o m e w h a t less than glassy essence o f mathematical b e i n g . All these disputes are b e y o n d o u r ken, o u r s c o p e , o r o u r intention. A stranger c o m p a n y even than the tortoise, Achilles, and the a r r o w , have d e f e n d e d the existence o f infinite classes. . . . A proposition w h i c h is n o t self-contradictory is, a c c o r d i n g t o the Logistic- S c h o o l , a t m e existence statement. F r o m this s t a n d p o i n t the greater p a n o f Cantor's m a t h e m a t i c s of the infinite s< unassailable" (p. 62).

' 6 K i i n e , p. 27o.

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narrator, a wrecking firm owned bv Zunio and Zungri finally tears down the Garav Street house. T h e impact of the Aleph lingers beyond the termination suggested by these "Zs," however, and the narrator in a last desperate attempt t o break our of the Alcph's Strange L o o p decides that the "true" Aleph is buried inside a stone pillar at the mosque of Aaur where it cannot be seen, only its "busy h u m " perceived. Along with the pcrfcct futility of this final choicc goes the absurdity of the narrator's desire to choose a single Aleph as the "real" one. As Borges knows, in Cantor's theory there is not one but an entire succession of Alephs, each n o more or less "real" than the last. Borges's fiction implies that the Aleph, like the infinite scries from which it derives its name, is a beginning without a terminus, a self-referential object capable of resisting all attempts to define or encapsulate it. The Aleph thus provides Borges with a metaphor through which he can subvert Cantor's hope that infinity would finally be tamed and brought within the bounds of rational analysis. We have seen that the same shift in perspective that allows Cantor to treat an infinite set as a "transfinitc number," seeing it as a coexisting single entity, also brought iti its train paradoxes of self-refercntialitv that finally threw all of analysis into question. Although Borges may not be firllv aware of the irony of (Cantor's position within the history of mathematics, an inmitive understanding of the potential conflict permeates "The Aleph," where the scientific model is playfully represented through a fictional creation. For Borges, the scicnce is as much a fiction as Daneri's poem, or indeed as the story itself. 1 have been suggesting that Borges's response to the field concept is essentially subversive, aimed at revealing the "crevasses of unreason" that make manifest the fictionality of the concept and, bv implication, of the holistic reality it tries t o express. But Borges, speaking from within that world view, finds his o w n utterance drawn into question by his subversive strategies. T o speak is to engage in sequential analysis and expression, and hence t o contradict the simultaneity that is essential for Rorges's paradoxes to emerge. Borges fully recognizes this limitation, as the companion essays of " N e w Refutation of Time" demonstrate. These essays explore the strategy of subversion not merely as an arbitrary or idiosyncratic response, but as a necessary consequence of the field concept that finally subverts the subverter. In " N e w Refutation of Time" Borges turns from the possibilities that 161

LITERARY STRATEGIES

infinite series have for space to the implications they have for time. Hewishes t o show that the conclusions of Berkeley and H u m e may be extended t o deny time. According to Borges, Berkeley denies that thereis an object existing independently of our perception of it; H u m e denies that there is a subject perceiving the object. With " m a n " merely a collection of sensations, Borges asks whether a single repeated perception is not enough to deny time also. If the number of human experiences is not infinite, then it follows that perceptions will be repeated, either in one man's lite or in the experience of two different men. The repetition has the effect of destroying time as a linear sequence and hence, if time is t h o u g h t of as a series, of refuting time. In a now-familiar ploy, Borges makes an almost imperceptible shift f r o m "continuity" t o "scries" when he talks of time's flow. Borges first refers to the "continuity that is time"; but later he shifts to the "series" of time, as ill the following passage: "The metaphysics of idealism declare that it is risky and futile to add a material substance (the object) and a spiritual substance (the subject) to those perceptions. I maintain that it is not less illogical to think that they are terms of a series whose beginning is as inconceivable as its end" (OI, p. 170). T h o u g h the thrust of the passage is t o say that the temporal series is "illogical," its covert effect is to postulate that time is indeed a series rather than a continuity, a series "whose beginning is as inconceivable as its end." Having posited time as a series, Borges then attempts to show that the series is invalid, because perceptions—that is, terms w ithin the series—are repeated. "Is a shifile repeated term enough to disrupt and c o n f o u n d the series of time?" Borges asks (OI, p. 178). In the second essay, the language returns insistently t o the terminologv of series. Borges instances C h u a n g Tzu w h o dreamed he was a butterfly and, awakening, die! not know if he was a man w h o dreamt hewas a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Borges maintains that at the m o m e n t of awakening, "only the colors o f the dream and the certainty of being a butterfly existed. It existed as a momentary term of the 'bundle or collection of different perceptions' which was, some four centuries before Christ, the mind of C h u a n g Tzu; they existed as term n of an infinite temporal series, between n + 1 and N - t" (OI, p. 184). Borges argues that if, "by a not impossible chance," a disciple of Chuang Tzu had an identical dream, the series would be confounded, its progression disrupted by the unexpected repetition of terms. "Is not o n e single repeated term enough to disrupt and confound the history of 162

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the world, t o tell us that there is n o such history?" (OJ, p. 185), he asles in words nearly identical to those of the first essayIn order for Borges's argument to succeed, it is necessary for him to postulate time as a series. Because time is presented as an unvarying, absolute series, Borges can undermine the relations between terms by suggesting, through the c o m m o n experience of deja m, that terms may be repeated in unexpected ways. If the relations defining the position of terms within the temporal series arc invalidated, the terms become autonomous units whose arrangement is arbitrary. With time an arbitrary succession of unconnected units, man is merely die "bundle or collection of different perceptions" existing at a point along that succession. When the perceptions change, the man changes. "Identity" is an usual sense thus ceases t o exist. T o share a perception is to become the same person. "Are the enthusiasts w h o devote a lifetime to a line by Shakespeare not literally Shakespeare?" Borges asks (OI, p. 178). From the foregoing, it appears that Borges is engaged 111 refuting the Newtonian idea of time. But the very terms he uses to refute it arc imbued with the Newtonian world view, because, as the reader will recall, it is in the Newtonian view that time exists as a series of universal moments. Hence the attempt cannot entirely succeed, because the vocabulary of denial is also the language of affirmation. Borges, of course, recognizes the paradox. Having set u p time as a series and shown h o w it can be disrupted, he proceeds to suggest that the series must inevitably be reconstituted. That the return of the scries is inevitable is suggested most deviously by the following passage. "I repeat," Borges says, "there is not a secret ego behind faces that governs actions and receives impressions; wc arconly the scries of those imaginary actions and those errant impressions." "Series" in this sentence means the temporal series of mental perceptions that constitutes "man." But when Borges immediately continues by repeating the word "scries," he changes its referent. "The series? If wc deny spirit and matter, which are continuities, and if we deny space also, I d o not know what right we have to the continuity diat is time" (OI, p. 175). In this second use of "series," it does not mean temporal progression, which has n o w become a "continuity," but rather denotes the sequence of terms emerging f r o m the idealist postulates of Berkeley and H u m e . T h e word "series" in this passage acts as a pivot whose changed meanings contain an essential paradox: first "scries" means temporal series, then it means the inevitable extension of

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the idealist argument. The disruption of (temporal) series is thus made t o form the final term of the series proceeding from idealist premises. If the temporal series has been refuted, the series of philosophical conjectures has been extended. T o deny series in one instance paradoxically creates a new scries, with its implicit chronology of successive generations of philosophical argument. T h e two sequential essays of " N e w Refutation" pose the same paradox in structural terms. The t w o essays largely repeat each other, confounding the expected seriality of argument by making us experience as repetition what we would ordinarily expect to be progression. "I deliberately did not combine the t w o into one article," Borges writes, "because I knew that the reading of t w o similar texts could facilitate the understanding of an indocile subject" (OI. p. r-i). Reading the two essays does indeed "facilitate the understanding," by making us experience the very repetition that forms the basis for Borges's p r o o f that temporal series can be disrupted. 2 7 But the essays also exist as a series, as essays "A" and "B". T h o u g h thev arc similar enough to evoke the feeling, "I have read this before," they arc different enough to suggest a progression in Borges's thought in the t w o years separating their composition—that is to say, thev exist not only as a repetition but as a progressive temporal series. Colin Butler, in a rigorous analysis of Borges's examples, demonstrates that the same paradox is true of virtually every piece of evidence Borges adduces t o prove that time docs not exist. Take the case, for example, of C h u a n g Tzu. Butler writes, s o h e r m e t i c are C h u a n g T z u ' s r e s p e c t i v e p s y c h i c states that h e c a n n e v e r b e finally certain w h e t h e r he w a s a m a n w h o d r e a m e d h e w a s a butterflv, o r

rice rerm.

T h e fact remains, h o w e v e r , that he w a s either o n e o r the o t h e r ;

and w h i l e his true identity m a y be questionable,

that

it i s s o c a n o n l y b e

t h e c o n s e q u e n c e o f a n a c t o f r e c o l l e c t i o n , w i t h its i m p l i c a t i o n o f c h a n g e , and therefore o f succession; w h i c h his e x a m p l e w a s i n t e n d e d t o c o n t r o vert.

27 N e d 1. D a v i s o n also p o i n t s our the m i m e t i c f o r m o f these essays in "Aesthetic Persuasion in 'A N e w R e f u t a t i o n of T i m e , 1 " Latin American Literary Revien', r+ (1979), f 42R G o ! i n Butler, " B o r g e s and T i m e : W i t h Particular Reference t o 'A Ness R e f u t a t i o n o f T i m e , 1 " Otitis l.itterarum, 28 (1973), rs7.

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Butler argues, t o my mind convincingly, th.it Rorges's essay is a "temporary revaluation (of idealist arguments ] within the framework of an ontology that remains conventional t h r o u g h o u t . " 2 9 The real agenda for Borges's article, Butler hints, is not to extend the idealist argument to refiitc time, hut to create a framework in which Borges can place, with maximum plausibility and effect, the intimation of eternity that he experienced o n one particular summer evening in Barracas. So Butler shrewdly guesses that "A New Refutation of Time" is in fact "written backwards, and its initial philosophizing is only indirectly relevant to what comes after."-* 0 If we accept Butler's line of reasoning, the paradox that keeps recurring with the destruction and reconstitution of series can be seen as a result of Borges's inability fully to realize the ontological premises for which he himself argues. Borges can arrive at a felt sense of "the inconceivable word eternity" (OI, p. 180) only by momentarily suppressing the knowledge that the moment he participates in is not a unique event, but one of an almost endless series of moments, most of which arc inimical or indifferent to this feeling. Butler points out that essentia! to the kind of personal experience Borges is describing "is its capacity to exclude . . . its credibility depends ultimately o n the success with which Borges suppresses other felt states which militate against it." 3 1 Borges's strategy in trying to attribute to the m o m e n t a unique status is to separate it out from the flow of time; and this can be done onlv if the continuum of time is first made into a series. T h e n the sequentiality of the series is denied or stopped so that die single term containing the desired moment can become omnipresent and of infinite duration. The problem with this strategy is exactly that encountered bv the narrator of "The Aleph." Once the person (or moment, or event) is conceded to form ,1 term in a series, its existence implies the inevitability of the other terms, which will sooner or later emerge to push the favored term o u t of mind. The narrator confesses at the end of "The Aleph" that "I myself am distorting and losing, under the wearing away of the years, the face of Bcatriz" (.4, p. 30). But positing a series is also essential, for if the world is instead perceived as a continuum, there is

" I b i d . , p 159. ™Ibid., p Hi. - " I b i d , , p. 1-

1 6>;

LITERARY STRATEGIES

n o possibility of separating out the chosen element to begin with. The very action that allows choice to operate also assures that the choice will be less than absolute. The circular dialectic, then, is not merely an arbitrary requirement imposed by Borges's skepticism. Rather, it is a p r o f o u n d recognition of Borges's part that "really, what I want to d o is impossible" (A, p. 2?). W e can now appreciate that the same paradox was implicit f r o m the beginning in Borges's use of transfinite set theory. Cantor's proof that die part could be as copious as die whole seemed t o offer a mathematically rigorous demonstration that the single term can be made into the whole. I11 this case, of course, the necessity of succession is overcome because the part has supplanted the whole. But the victory is illusory, for to accept the presence of an infinite series is also to accept that there will be an entire succession of infinities, widi alcph-null succeeded by aleph-one, aleph-one by aleph-two, aleph-two by alcphthree . . . T h e infinite series that allows Borges to replace the whole with the equally copious part at the same time d o o m s him to the succession that such a series implies. In "New Refutation," this same paradox besets Borgcs-the-author as it had earlier Borges-the-narrator of "The Aleph." Borges, speaking in his o w n voice, is forced to recognize that his intimation of eternity is also subject t o the "endless series" that so distressed die narrator of "The Aleph." Thus no terminal resting place is possible, not even the apparent terminus of Borges's own skepticism. T h e inherent limitations of Borges's attempt to overcome time become explicit in the last paragraph of "New Refutation." "Time is the substance I am made of," Borges comments. "Time is a river that carries me away, but I am the river; it is a tiger that mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a tire that consumes me, but I am the fire" (OI, p. 187). We thus come, by virtue of Borges's dialectic, around again t o the realization that to confirm something is to deny it, to disrupt it is t o reconstitute it. T h e pattern is circular. As we have seen, the general progression of Borges's argument in " N e w Refutation" also forms a circle: first time as a series is created; then it is disrupted; finally it is reconstituted, bringing us back to the starting point o f the cyclc. This recalls the circular patterns imposed on linear scries in such stories as "The Circular Ruins" and "The Approach t o al-Mu'rasim." But the result now is not merely the loss of the raI6T>

SUBVERSION: BORC.ES

tionality of the Newtonian world view, but the undermining of Borges's own skepticism and idealism. His strategy' of claiming that there are n o final answers is n o t final, cither. I began this chapter by comparing Borges with Nabokov and suggesting that their artistic responses to the field concept were fundamentally different. I should like to close by suggesting ways in which diey are die same. We have seen that Nabokov took from the new physics the assurance that time can be reversed, placed it in the context of mirror symmetry, and then introduced some slight asymmetry that became identified with the recognition that time does, after all, proceed. Borges appropriates from Cantor set theory the idea of an infinite set as a single, pre-existing entity, and then applies die model t o time in order to prove diat temporal succession must yield to eternity. But like Nabokov, Borges must finally admit some limitations to his artistic project. Thus both Borges and Nabokov seek to appropriate parts of the field concept for their own purposes, and both end by admitting daat the appropriation can never be complete. T h e reflection suggests that Borges, like Nabokov, remains grounded in the Newtonian world of ubiquitous, omnipresent time that is finally the ultimate scries t o which both succumb. Borges himself knows that the series he uses to subvert die field concept involves him in paradoxes that he creates and exploits, and t o which he also yields. But worse for Borges than being subject to this limitation is to be trapped within a clear-cut world where continuities of logical progression render paradox impossible. In such a world, ail the artist can say is, "The world, alas, is real; I, alas, am Borges."

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CHAPTER

C.A. U G H 1 I TIX E W J^ Cosmology and the Point of (No) Return in Pvnchon's Gravity's Rainbow Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein,

Traaatm

MORE THAN ANY OTHER writer in this study, Pynchon grasps the full implications of t h e field concept, including both its promise o f a reality that is a h a r m o n i o u s , dynamic whole and the problem it poses of h o w to represent that reality' in the fragmented m e d i u m of language. Pvnchon's response t o this dilemma is t o create a text that at once invites and resists o u r a t t e m p t s t o organize it into a unified field of meaning. Gravity's Rainbow is notoriously difficult t o read because its complex and recurring allusions constantly t e m p t the reader to search for, and recognize, the extensive patterns of interlocking images to which the text owes its remarkable coherence and density, 1 while at the same time frustrating this attempt by a variety of techniques that tend t o obliterate o r contradict the emerging patterns. Any coherent account of this narrative will have t o come t o grips with this deconstructing ' O f t e n t h i s a t t e m p t t o r e c o g n i z e patterns in the text takes the f o r m o f generic cfassifica tlon. For example, S c o t t Sanders p r o p o s e s the term "paranoid h i s t o r y ' in "Pvnchon's P a r a n o i d H i s t o r y , " pp. 139—160 in Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon, ed. G e o r g e f x vine and D a v i d L e v e r e n z 1 B o s t o n : Little, B r o w n , 1976); Michael S e i d e l labels ir a "narrative satire" in " T h e Satiric Plots o f Gravity's Rainbow," pp. 198-212 in Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. E d w a r d M e n d e t s o n ( E n g l e w o o d Cliffs, N . f . : Prenrio 1 Hall. 1978); and E d w a r d M e n d e l s o n , in his seminal article, "Gravitv's E n c y c l o p e d i a , " pp. 161-196 in Mindful Pleasures, identifies il as an "encyclopedic narrative." A s t r o n g impulse t o tit the novel i n t o a discrete c a t e g o r y is also apparent in Mark Sicgel's "CreativeParanoia: U n d e r s t a n d i n g t h e System of Gravity's Rainbow," Critique, n : g - ~ l . 39—54.

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dynamic. T h e patterns of Gravity's Rainbow tend toward self-obliteration because the focus for the text's anxiety is precisely the cognitive thought that seeks to organize diverse data into coherent patterns. The source of the tension, in other words, lies in the namre of human consciousness itself. As w e saw in Chapter 2, contemporary philosophers of science and linguists have suggested that the act of cognition is not merely a passive observation of a world "out there," but the active creation of a world that is then perceived as separate from the cognitive faculties that brought it into being. The deconstructing dynamic in Gravity's Rainbow is put into the service of the same revised perception. As wc try to impose on the chaotic surface of the narrative the cognitive patterns that will let us classify and analyze it, wc are forced to become aware of the conscious effort that the reconstruction of pattern requires. Then, when wc find connections, that is, images o r reflections of o u r o w n thought processes, o n e of the patterns we can discern is the danger of self-consciousness. The realization subjects us to a double-bind. The perceived patterns tmplv that self-conscious cognition is skewing our society' and driving its toward destruction; but in order t o receive this message, we had to tame the unruliness of the text into cognitive patterns wc understand, thus exercising over the text the same kind of control that created the problem in the first place. If wc turn the dilemma around and look at it from the point of view not of the text's patterning but of its obliteration of pattern, we begin to see what role that refractoriness can play. The text's unruliness makes the reader acutely aware that patterns are not merely perceived but constructed, thereby alerting 11s (or reminding us) that as we read, we are building a cognitive structure. At the same time, the unruliness insures that this cognitive structure cannot be complete or perfect. For all its frustration for the reader, the unruliness offers a way out of the central dangers of authoritarian control and life-denying organization. I should like to turn n o w t o a discussion of t w o central "patterns" in Gravity's Rainbow, and show h o w they invite o u r identification of them -Kdwnrd M c n d c l s o n ' s s u g g e s t i o n that the text is an "encyclopedic narrative" has proven a m o n g the m o s t fruitfijl so far because his classification allows h i m t o acknowle d g e s o m e o f this resistance. Bur the refractoriness o f t h e text g o e s b e y o n d tilt- qualities (gargantuanism and inclusiveness) that M e n d e l s o n identifies as resisting o r g a n i z a t i o n . W h a t t h e text exhibits may m o r e properly b e described as a deliberate obliteration o f pattern.

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STRATEGIES

as "really there" and at the same time frustrate any unequivocal ta unainbivaient interpretation of diem. In their simplest aspect, the twi. patterns may be represented as the circle and the line. The circle is consistently associated with natural cycles and processes, and widi the prospect that wc can Return to some simpler, more innocent identification with the universal "field" of die cosmos. The line, or circle that has become linear by being opened into a parabola, is associated with the artificial structures of control diat drive tow ard some final terminus. 1 ' T h e contrast is embodied in t w o forms similar in shape but antagonism in meaning: die rainbow and the ballistic arc of the Rocket. Whereas the circular rainbow descends o n t o the "green wet valleyed Earth" in a harmonious and fertile union, the parabolic Rocket s arc, Katje senses, is a "clear allusion to certain secret lusts that drive the planet and herself, and Those w h o use her." 4 T o create the "visible," upward pan of the parabola whose arms stretch downward into infinity, the Rockei must thrust against Gravity, and this ascension can be achieved only through the naked application of power. It "alludes" to the ethos of patriarchy, the search for power that identifies masculinity with tech nology. Yet there necessarily follows Brennschluss, the point at which the Rocket enters its "feminine" aspect, when die assertion of power is helpless in the inevitable submission to a patriarch still more ancient. "Old Gravity." When the Rocket enters its descent, it "has submitted. Ail die rest will happen according to die laws of ballistics. Something else has taken over. Something beyond what was designed in" (p. 22}j. T h e Rocket's arc, unlike the rainbow, thus has a fatal asymmetry, the assertion of power at the beginning inevitably leading to the destruction at the end of the descent, the Rocket prefiguring the planet's "plunging, burning, toward a terminal orgasm" (p. 223).= 5 Alan } F r i e d m a n a n d M a n f r e d F u e t z , in "Science a.s M e t a p h o r : T h e i m a s P y n c h o n a n d Gnwitys Rainbow," Contmiporaiy Literatim', o 11974.;, 345-159, p r e s e n t an excellent d i s c u s s i o n o t t h e cycle of life a n d d e a t h as a c o n t i n u i n g process. An i m p l i c a t i o n o f t h c cycie, they c o n c l u d e , is t h a t eirder a n d ehao., are m u t u a l l y e n t a i l i n g o p p o s i t e s . -^Thomas P y n c h o n , Gravity'sRainbow { N e w Y o r k : V i k i n g Press, 1973), P- 233. I indicate my ellipses in b r a c k e t s ; w h e n they a p p e a r u n b r a e k e t e d , rhcy arc P v n c h o n ' s . - i ' v n e h o n ' 1 ; s c e n a r i o m a y wcii be i n d e b t e d t o t h e principles F r e u d tentatively sets f o r t h i n " B e y o n d t h e Pleasure P r i n c i p l e . " M u s i n g 011 t h e " c o m p u l s i o n t o r e p e a t " f o u n d in b o t h n e u r o t i c a n d n o r m a l b e h a v i o r ( p. 22}, F r e u d h y p o t h e s i z e s tfiat d i e u r g e t o w a r d r e p e t i t i o n is t h e desire t o r e t u r n t o ail earlier state o f b o n g . T h e eariiesr state o f b e i n g is, o f c o u r s e , t h e i n a n i m a t e . F r e u d speculates t h a t t h i s drive is eemtroiled bv a set o f " c o n s e r v a t i v e " instincts, a n d d i a l t h e s e are p e r h a p s e v e n s t r o n g e r t h a n t h e p l e a s u r e - s e e k i n g o n e s , l i e is d i u s " c o m p e l l e d t o say t h a t "Chi aim of ail life is death' a n d , l o o k i n g b a c k w a r d s , thai

70

C A U G H T I N i~HE W E B :

PYNCHON

f h c opposition between two geometries, one pointing toward RcHirn, the other skewed bv the self-conscious desire for control toward a :. Minus- from which there is no Return, is repeated in the contrast between the synthetic molecules of the chemical cartels and the organic, Icrtilizmg molecules of nature. The narrator recounts h o w in Kekule von Stradonitz's famous dream of 1865, Kekule sees the U r o b o r u s , the "dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World" (p. 412). T h e Serpent announces that "the World is a closed thing, cyclical, icsonant, eternally-returning" (p. 412); but Kekule interprets it as a vision revealing the cyclic structure of benzene. Kekule's discovery of the structure of benzene opens the way for widespread chemical synthesis of organic compounds; thus the dream signifying Eternal Return is perverted into .1 synthetic parody of itself. The dream has come, the narrator tells us, to ,1 "system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back [. . . ] removing from the rest of the World those vast quantities of energy to keep its o w n tiny desperate fraction showing a profit | . . . |. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time |. . . diat] sooner or later [it] must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life" (p. 412). In contrast to this perversion of Return is the process cat decay that fertilizes Pirate Prentice's r o o f t o p garden. Here the cycle of Return, mirrored in the cvciic form of the molecules, signifies not synthesis and deadi but fertility and life. T h e "politics of bacteria, the soil's stringing 1 if rings and chains 111 nets only G o d can tell the meshes of," produce bananas a foot and a half in length, "yes amazing but true" (pp. 5 - 6 ) . The affirmation of life continues as the enchanting o d o r of the banana breakfast takes over "not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving t o its molecules [. . . ] it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck otl" (p. 10). The "living genetic chains" that prove "labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face d o w n ten or twenty generations" also create the "same assertion-through-structure [that] allows this war morning's banana inanimate things existed before living ones '" The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Signutnd Freud, trans, f a m e s Strachcy, vol. is ( L o n d o n : H o g a r t h Press a n d the Institute o f Psycho-Analysis, 1955 j, p. Ir is possible, o f course, that t h e E r e u d i a n influence is m e d i a t e d , as L a w r e n c e C . Wolfley suggests, t h r o u g h N o r m a n C . B r o w n .

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fragrance t o meander, repossess, prevail" in spite of the terror of falling bombs. In contrast t o the artificial structures of organization and con trol that deny the cvclc of Rcnirn, then, arc the naniral structures of decaying organic matter that embody and affirm it. O n e is evil and insane, driving toward death; the other is natural and good, a source ot life and hope. The comparison reveals that it is not simply structure in itself that is the source of the narrator's concern, because the naniral world is also ordered. Rather, rhe concern is specifically with those structures that allow Them t o consolidate control bv extending the images of human consciousness t o all creation. T h e natural structures, bv contrast, reveal creation as a unified field in which we as well as all other c.reanires participate, but which does not specifically valorize consciousness, Pvnchon's sense of the field concept, derived largely f r o m thcrmodv namics and cosmology, emphasizes that it can never be entirely captured or contained within cognitive structures. Pynchon's suspicion of cognition can be seen in his treatment of the "Other Side," the existence we pass into after we die. When the narrator is in the grip of paranoia, he imagines that the O t h e r Side, like This Side, has been corrupted by cognition into organizational structures of control. When he can temporarily shake off his paranoia, however, he imagines the O t h e r Side as an initiation into a field view of reality. Crossing to the Other Side can convert even the most confirmed bureaucrat into a prophet of the field conccpt. Lyle Bland, for example, is transformed from plutocrat to mystic when he stumbles on the Masonic ritual whose magic allows him t o have out-of-body experiences. A similar transformation occurs with Walter Rathcnau. Rathenau, though he was "prophet and architect of the cartelized state" on This Side (p. 164), once on the Other Side begins to "see the whole shape at once," and as a result looks at the cartel in a radically different way. "Let me be honest with you," he says t o the German technocrats w h o arc his successors. "I'm finding it harder to put myself in vour shoes" (p. 165). So changed is Rathcnau from those w h o are "constrained, over there, to follow it [the pattern of historv] in time, one step after another," that he does not hesitate to tell the assembled bureaucrats that "if you want the truth |. . . 1 you must ask t w o questions: First, what is the real nature of synthesis? And then: what is the real nature of control?" "You think you know," he warns them, "you

C A U G H T IN i~HE W E B : P Y N C H O N

cling t o vour beliefs. But sooner or later you will have t o let t h e m go" (p.

167).

As Rathenau suggests, the issues of control and synthesis are central to understanding o u r perversions of the field view. In Kekule's dream, the bureaucrats on the Other Side try t o bring dreams within Their control. But in Rathenau's seance, control itself is revealed as a dream. The bureaucracy aims to reinforce pre-existing patterns of consciousness bv reassuring the self-conscious mind that even its moments of unconsciousness are controlled by "switching-paths"; but the spirits from the Other Side insist that even moments of supposed selfawareness are an illusion. The illusion of control leads inevitably t o the attempt at synthesis. T o maintain control we synthesize molecules, cause-and-eftect, and language, all of which symbolize and complete our alienation from the natural world. Roland Fcldspath tries to articulate what a field view means when he tells his listeners that from Beyond he can perceive the "illusion of control. That A could d o B. But that was false. Completely. Mo one can do. Things only happen, A and B are unreal, are names for parts that ought to be inseparable" (p. 30). "All talk of cause and effect is secular history," Rathenau says, "and secular history is a diversionary tactic. Useful to you, gentlemen, but n o longer so t o us here" (p. 167). As we shall see. the solution to the problem is bv no means simple or unambiguous, since it implies abandoning our very identity as homo sapiens, the creature w h o knows. Yet this is nevertheless the transformation that the narrator seems to suggest wc should undertake. Cognition is t o be replaced by an appreciation for the svnchronicity of Nature in which humans do not stand outside as originators of pattern, but take their place within already existing harmonies that include and subsume them. What I have been calling the narrator's obliteration of pattern may thus be an attempt to create another kind of pattern, a pattern that is holistic rather than sequential, synchronous rather than causal, natural rather than specifically human. 6 Crucial to this enterprise is Pynchon's narrative technique, as we can ''An e x p o s i t i o n o f s v n c h r o n i c i t y as a w o r l d m o d e l is a r t i c u l a t e d bv C . G . l u n g in trans. R . Y. C. H u l l , Bolliilgen Scries vol • ( P r i n c e t o n : P r i n c e t o n University Press, 1973), I n d e v e l o p i n g his t h e o r y , J u n g w a s greatly i n f l u e n c e d bv q u a n t u m m e c h a n i c s a n d t h e U n c e r t a i n t y P r i n c i p l e t h r o u g h , e o r r e sponeience w i t h W o l f g a n g Pauli, w h o w a s o n e o f h i s patients.

Syndmmiaty: An Amusal Connecting Principle,

LITERARY STRATEGIES

see by comparing it to more traditional novels. The traditional novel narrates action that we take to be meaningful, but it also contains descriptive passages whose purpose is to set the scene. This "loose bagginess" of the realistic novel has the effect of valorizing our usual modes of cognition, which depend u p o n subordinating masses of detail into background that can be safely ignored while we concentrate o n the small area brought into focus by our conscious attention. Psychologists have shown that this subordination of perceptual data into background is an essential element of cognition; it is what allows us t o "tame" the incoming signals so that we are not constandy overwhelmed by a mass of detail. 7 T h e texture drat we identity as "novelistic" recapitulates this process by encoding its signs widi distinctions between significant events and "irrelevant" details. The traditional novel is thus "realistic" precisely in the sense that it mirrors the process diat allows us t o bring reality into focus.8 What die familiarity of diese conventions may keep us from seeing is that the apparently "irrelevant" details perform an indispensable function. T o use a painterly analogy, the "irrelevant" details define the background against which a figure can be discerned. T h o u g h the figure is usually the focus of o u r attention, the contrast with the background is what makes the figure visible. Meaning is made possible—indeed, def i n e d — b y its distinction f r o m non-meaning. Pynchon explodes die traditional distinction between foreground and background by taking a radically egalitarian attitude toward his material. In effect, he refuses to make the distinction between the meaningful event and the "irrelevant" detail. In Gravity's Rainbow everything is placed at an equal distance f r o m the reader, so diat background and foreground collapse into the same perceptual plane. Gravity's Rainbow has hardly any plot in the conventional sense of the w o r d — o r rather, more accurately, everything is plot. Flashbacks, bits of dialogue from other times and places, sudden shifts of scene and personae, startling "Eor a nontechnical account of this process, see \1. Toda, "Time and the Structure of H u m a n Cognition," in The Study ofTime II, ed. ]. T. Eraser and N . Lawrence (New York, Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1975), pp. U7ti "The constructive role of cognition is stressed bv Ulrie Neisser in Cognitive Psychology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), p. 3: "the proximal stimuli bear little resemblance . . . to die object of experience that the perceiver will construct." Cognition is the sum of those processes that create from die incoming sensory data a recognizable picture of the world. 174

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transformations of apparently realistic scenes into bizarre fantasy sequences, make of the narrative a mosaic that defies the attempt to see meaning by making a series of distinctions, becausc all ate treated by the narrator as equally valid, equally entitled to our attention. With everything at an equal distance from the reader, meaning can no longer IK achieved by discerning difference. Rather, it emerges as a result of seeing that everything is at the same distance. Meaning thus becomes a function not of difference but of similarity, arising not f r o m distinguishing parts but from seeing the interconnection of the whole. Pynchon's equalizing technique, a kind of "principle of equal distance," establishes a link between our experience of the text and his central themes. Wc tend to experience meaning in this text as a paranoid, or someone dropping acid, or a religious visionary w h o believes in Providential design might experience it; in these views, there are no irrelevancies. These very different ways of organizing experience are isomorphic in the sense that they all presuppose die pervasiveness of pattern—that is to say, they all suppose a field view of reality. The changed way in which meaning arrives helps t o explain why readers react to this book in singular ways. They tend to be divided between those w h o find the novel a chaotic mass of unconnected detail, and those w h o see its patterning as pervasive. The difference in perspective arises because in Gravity's Rainbow meaning arrives as a gestalt, precipitating into awareness; either one sees the whole design, or one doesn't see it at all. For those w h o do, the technique forges a bridge between the emerging sense of a field view and the experience of reading. The very fact that we can see the connections means that we are participating in the m o d e of vision being described. Gravity's Rainbow is thus both a narrative and an initiation. T h e problems of articulation that the Held concept presents are not, however, so easily escaped, because of the sequential way in which human perception proceeds. T o illustrate, consider the "reversible" drawings that psychologists call equivocal figures. These are black-andwhite pictures that can appear eidier as a white figure o n a black g r o u n d or as a black figure o n a white ground. Once we learn to see both figures, we can bring first one, then the other into focus by shifting o u r attention f r o m one figure t o the other. It is apparent that one's mindset, rather than the picture itself, determines which figure is primary. Because neither could exist without the other, to designate either as 175-

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ground or figure is arbitrary; they mutually define each other. The relevant point is that human cognition is such that only one figure can be brought into focus at a time, even though we know that thev art interconnected. 9 As a consequence, we can never see the whole picture at once, because half of it will always be obscured from o u r vision at anv given time. This limitation is sensed by the lone visionaries of Gravity 's Rainbow, w h o try to tell the world that what we perceive as opposites are really parts of an interconnected whole. William Slothrop, a distant ancestor of Tyrone, is one of these. As he drives his beloved pigs to market, he begins t o see that the joy of the journey is defined by the slaughter of pigs at the journey's end; the "squealing bloody horror at the end of the pike was in exact balance t o all their happy sounds" (p. 555). If c o m m u n i o n and slaughter arc mutually defining opposites, then moral judgments that label one as "evil," the other as "good," miss the point of their mutual entailment. In his tract On Pretention, William Slothrop extends the argument to refute the Puritan doctrine of the elect There could be no elect without the preterite, William reasons, since salvation makes sense only if there is also damnation. The preterite are thus as necessary t o the scheme of things as their betters and hence, paradoxically, as worthy to be saved. T o realize that the distinction between the elect and the preterite implies a fragmentation of an original unity is to attain some hint of the namral wholeness that precedes and pre-empts such dichotomies. Those w h o , like William Slothrop, can realize this fallen condition have the best chance of wending their way back to a holistic m o d e of vision. Pointsman scorns the conjunction o f opposites as "just this sort of yang-vin rubbish" (p. 88), and he stands for those positivists w h o are wedded t o the atomistic perspective. William Slothrop, bv contrast, represents the "fork in the road America never took, the singular point she jumped rhe w r o n g way f r o m " (p. 556). T o Pvnchon, the theme of Return means more, then, than just returning in time or allowing a cycle t o continue. It also means learning to see the implications of the field concept, learning to appreciate the T h a t we focus on only one aspect of an equivocal figure at a time is emphasized b\- E. H . Gombrich in the introduction ro his classic work, ,4rr and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, Bollingen series vol. as (Kingsport, Tenn.: Pantheon Brxsks, 1060), pp. v ~ An example of an equivocal figure can be found in Neisscn, p. 90. 176

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m.my levels of the realization that "everything is connected." Even so megalomaniac a character as Gcrhardt von GOLL senses the profound truth that Pynchon believes the gestalt view contains. Greta Erdmann recalls that when Gerhardt filmed Alpdrucken, he arranged the lighting so that it "came from above and below at the same time, so that everyone had two shadows: Cain's and Abel's" (p. 39+). Lest we dismiss the conceit as just so much "precious Gollerei," the narrator later assures us that the "Double Light was always there, outside all film, and that shucking and jiving moviemaker was the only one around at the time who happened to notice it and use it, although in deep ignorance, then and n o w , of what he was showing the nation of starcrs" (p. 429). 1 .atcr, in the guise of Der Springer, Gcrhardt tells Slothrop, w h o is feeling sorry for the preterite crowd longingly eyeing Narrisch's dead turkey, "Be compassionate. But don't make u p fantasies about them. Despite me, exalt them, but remember, we define each other. Elite and preterite, we mewc through a cosmic design of darkness and light, and in all humility, I am one of the very few w h o can comprehend it in toto" (p. 4 9 5 ) . If we "in all humility" try to comprehend the "cosmic design of darkness and light" that Gravity's Rainbow is weaving, wc can begin to sec h o w the field concept encourages thematic connections between what at first appear to be complete contraries, as different as black and white. Death, for example, is sometimes represented as black, like night, like shit, like the Hereroes. At other times it is Dominus Blicero, that which whitens, like Wcissmann, like the Imipolcx shroud that Gottfried wears as he hurtles to his death. Drawing on Lawrence C. Wolfley's work o n repression in Gravity's Rainbow,10 wc can appreciate the complex of meanings that unites these black and white aspects of death into agestalt. In its black aspect thegestalt points to a repressed complex of emotions, beginning with the white man's unconscious association of death and shit, a "stiff and rotting corpse [. . . ] inside the white man's warm and private own asshole" (p. 688). When the white man associates the black and brown races with shit/death, the repressed complex manifests itself as racism or, in times of more acute stress, as the systematic l ° L a w r c n c e C. Wolflcv, "Repression's Rainbow: T h e Presence o f N o r m a n O . B r o w n in Pvnchon's Big Novel," PMLA,

92 (I97~), 871-889

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genocide of people of color. In its white aspect death is associated with the white bureaucrats and dieir attempt to routinize death by routini/. ing life.. Their denial of die black aspect of existence can be achieved only at the expense of making life not white, but gray. The resulting desire to inject some color into a colorless life leads t o such aberrations as WeissmaiVs games, o n one level, and Poklcr's compliance with the technology of death on another. Meanwhile, the technocrats continue t o exploit us, and every other life-form, merely to forestall for a little longer the inevitable. Pynchon is thus able to link his recurring con cerns—the rise of the multinationals, racism, the arms race, an exploitive technology—with the field concept, which at once clarifies the thematic connections and forces us into a new m o d e that is one version of the path that, somewhere back in die sixteenth or seventeenth century, we "jumped the wrong way f r o m . " At this point it may be well t o clarify how the field view differs from the kind of connectedness They seek. In one of Pirate Prentice's fan tasies, he envisions the preterite hell reserved for double agents, where Father Rapier, a "devil's advocate," preaches "like his colleague Teilhard de Chardin" against Return (p. 539). In The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard de Chardin argued that the evolutionary process would continue, with humans evolving into higher and higher levels of cogni tion, becoming more and more highly conscious. 1 1 In Father Rapier's speech, this theory takes die form of an assertion that "once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a certain degree of being connected, one to another, the chances for freedom are over for g o o d " (p. 539). Father Rapier sees that this connection leads directly to the possibility that They will not die. The narrator acknowledges diat the devil's advocate makes a "potent case" (p. 539); it represents the opposite of true Return, the perversion of wholeness into a kind of connectedness that both derives from and extends consciousness, with the ultimate aim of defeating death. The difference between Pynchon's sense of the field concept and diis perversion of connection is diat the field concept makes us aware that the pattern is m o r e inclusive than we can ever see at any one time, that another figure—at present perceived as g r o u n d — i s also part of the 15

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,

The Phenomenon of Man,

trans. Bernard Wall ( N e w York:

W5S>). 178

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I N i~HE W E B :

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pattern. Although in a sense consciousness brings the pattern into being, the nature of the figure is such that it also reminds us of the limits of consciousness. More important, it is a pattern that includes rather dian denies death. By acknowledging bodi black and white, it admits death as an essential part of the cycle of Return. T h o u g h f r o m the point of view of self-conscious cognition death is a termination, in the field view it is the background that, projected into the foreground, completes die pattern. We have seen how the black and white dualities that are pervasive in Gravity's Rainbow can be united into a single equivocal figure by an act of jjcstait perception that not only reveals the interconnectedness between the apparent opposites, but also initiates us into a field view that is in sharp contrast with the fragmented, atomistic mode of cognitive consciousness. But in order to appreciate this implicit unity, we first have t o indulge in some fairly sophisticated cognition, for example the analysis proposed by this chapter. The paradox points to the fact that the enterprise that Pynchon is undertaking cannot succeed, almost by definition. T o be able to decode the text is t o be cognitivelv conscious, and to be cognitively conscious is t o deny the message implicit in that decoding. W e dius return t o the double-bind that is at the center of Pynchon's complex view of o u r relation t o the field concept. W h a t then are we to make of the narrative as an attempt t o create a verbal analogue to a comprehensive, interactive field? W h e n the attempt to Return is subverted through the very processes the narrative uses t o envision it, the enterprise of representing the field through words itself becomes ambivalent. 1 2 The narrator's divided response to his o w n narrative project emerges with special force in the metaphors of the frame and the interface. In Gravity's Rainbow we are always in the process of reconstructing, of piecing together the bits and pieces of what we hope will be a complete picture. Yet even to call it a "picture" is to frame it and thus to falsify the attempt t o create a holistic vision. T h e pun on frame is important: by placing the narrative within a frame, we view it as essen12 E i n d a Westervclt makes a similar p o i n t in ' 'A Place D e p e n d e n t o n Ourselves': T h e Reader as System-Builder m Gravity's Rainbow,'' Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 22 (1980), 67—90, w h e n she points o u t that Gravity's Rainbow "is t r o u b l i n g n o t only because o f the events it portrays, but also because o f die activity required o f d i e reader and the c o m m e n t s u p o n that acuvity w h i c h the text implicidy makes" (69).

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dally separate arid distinct from the cognitive faculty that brought it into being. Thus we have " f r a m e d " it in another sense, that is, defined it in such a way that w h a t we assert of it, even t h o u g h false, cannot be proven t o be false because the falsity is contained in the very assumption that it is an object of discourse. Another sense of "frame" is the frame of a film, the individual segment that has been artificially imposed on the original scene bv the photographic process. The square holes punctuating the narrative resemble the sprocket holes of film, suggesting that the intrinsic discon tinuiry o f film is recapitulated in the fragmented sections of the narrative. When a film is shown, the frames blur together t o give the illusion of a continuous process; but the image on the screen is in fact a fragmented reconstruction of what was only an actor's version of reality t o begin with. The narrath'e, like the celluloid strip of film, is an inter face that creates through fragmented words (as the film does through color and light) a similitude of continuous reality. If we think of an interface as a barrier inserted between us and the "real thing," we may imagine that if only we could penetrate it, we could get back t o the reality whose image wc see. But that "reality" is itself a reconstruction lust as the "reality" of a film derives from actors moving through a script, so the "reality" of the verbal reconstruction derives from cog nitive processes that transform immediate perceptions into verbal abstractions. Return bv this route is thus impossible, since what we Return t o is only another reconstruction, not the original field of life itself. O n e meaning o f the interface, then, is that "reality" exists on neither side, so that penetrating the interface merely takes us from one kind of reconstruction t o another. M o r e generally, an interface is a boundary separating t w o phases of matter, or metamorphically, t w o orders of being. In fragmented, prctertite terms, an interface encourages us to see the t w o phases as qualita tively different, and therefore t o perpetuate the illusion that tme of them, at least, must be real. Thanatz rakes this view of the interface between This Side and the O t h e r Side as he waits at the "black and white" gasworks for the Blicero that he suspects mav be dead. Thanatz. as death-obsessed as his name suggests, can't resist imagining "what it will take to get Blicero across the interface. W h a t ass-wiggling surrender might bring him back . . ." (p. 668). Thanatz recognizes the interface as a "meeting surface ft>r t w o worlds," but the narrator I 8C

CAIIGJFR IN THE WEB: PYNCHON a d d s , w i t h his u s u a l ironic ellipsis,

. . sure, h u t which two?" (p. 668).

T o T h a n a t z the interface leads merely to n e w opportunities to continue the g a m e s o f d o m i n a n c e and submission, control and surrender, that self-conscious h u m a n i t y amuses itself w i t h in a parodic perversion o f true R e t u r n . B u t the interface also hints at a wholeness that c a n n o t be g r a s p e d through rational analysis. A t the interface, T h a n a t z c o n f r o n t s these limits in understanding the possibilities f o r R e t u r n . H e k n o w s that there's 110 counting 011 any positiv ism to save him, that didn't even work back in Berlin, before the War, at Peter Sachsa's sittings . . . it only got in the way, made others impatient with him. A screen of words between himself and the numinous was always just a tact ic . . . it never let him feel any freer. These days there's even less point to it. (p. 668) F r o m a field perspective, interfaces are not barriers, b u t points o f exchange, surfaces t h r o u g h w h i c h t w o orders o f being can interpenetrate. T h i s raises the possibility o f .1 holistic field that transcends and includes the interface. A s the interface is thus t r a n s f o r m e d f r o m the boundary that cognitive consciousness perceives it to be to the permeable m e m b r a n e it can b e c o m e in the field v i e w , R e t u r n returns again as a possibility. H o w an interface m i g h t become a permeable m e m b r a n e is suggested bv the narrator's treatment o f film. W h e n w e think o f an interface as a barrier, w e imagine that on o n e side o f a film are the screen i m a g e s , the complex play o f light and s h a d o w that creates the illusion o f life; o n the other side, actors p e r f o r m i n g actions called f o r by the script. B u t w h a t the narrator makes us see is that these screen images sometimes have consequences in life b e y o n d the script, as when the jackal men rape Greta E r d m a n n 111 Alpdrucken

and father u p o n her a real child, Bianca,

w h o will later die in the jackal ship Anuhis.

T h e interconnections extend

to the m e n w a t c h i n g the film w h o will that night g o h o m e and father children themselves, as Pokier does with Ilse. C o n n e c t i n g w h i t e Bianca with dark Ilse is the celluloid film impregnated with silver nitrate salts, chemicals w h o s e peculiar property it is to translate light i n t o black, darkness into light. W h e n Ilse is identified as the s h a d o w image o f Bianca, w e are once again r e m i n d e d that, despite o u r divisions o f the field into T h i s Side and the O t h e r Side, art and reality, connections exist that join all sides into a single field o f interaction. 18 T

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STRATEGIES

In a narrative where black and white are joined by gestalt perception into a single figure, the interfaces are always permeable, given the right perspective. Van Goll, hearing of the "accidental" death of the composer VVebcrn, insists that everything fits together and that there arc, properly speaking, 110 accidents. " O n e sees bow it fits, ja> learns patterns, adjusts t o rhythms, one day you are 110 longer an actor, but free now, over on the other side of the camera [. . . ]" (p. 49+). For D e r Springer, whose totem is die white plastic knight, this means "waking u p oneday, and knowing that Queen, Bishop and King are only splendid cripples, and pawns, even those that reach the final row, are condemned t o creep in t w o dimensions, and 110 Tower will ever rise or descend 110: flight bus been given only to the Springer!" (p. 494)- As the Springer in his imagination leaps off the chessboard, departing from the game in which he is a piece to be moved, an actor reading lines, a character in a book, to "the other side of the camera," we are invited to reflect on the implications of seeing every text or film as a permeable membrane. T h e possibility that art can become reality, reality art, is a doublevalued potential in Gravity's Rainbow, bearing both negative and positive signs. O n the one hand it opens the possibility for Return, for if the artist in an act of re-vision can picture the wholeness that we have lost we may be able to recapture it, not only in imagination but in fact These m o m e n t s of possibility shimmer throughout Gravity's Rainbow like a rainbow of promise. W h e n Geli saves Tchitcherine, the narrator wistfully hopes that "this is magic. Sure—but not necessarily fantasy" (p. 735). T h e routes back, Pynchon intimates, are real; die Masonic ritual, t h o u g h debased into something as innocuous as Rotary luncheons, really does work; love as a redemptive force really does have efficacy in the world. At the m o m e n t when Cell's spell proves strong enough t o counter Tchitchcrine's obsession to kill the black brother w h o is his color-negative, the narrator can hope diat the life-force, the forces of R e t u r n and redemption, will be stronger than the destructive impulses of a death-haunted humanity. It is not hard to hear in diese passages die hopefulness of the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1960s. The death force is "only nearly" as strong as die life force because "a fewkeep going over to the Titans every day, in their striving subcreation" (p. 720). This "subcreation" is, however, subsumed within the creation that is Gravity's Rainbow, and in that larger context, the narrator's hope diat

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our plastic age can again bccomc titanic is more complex. That the larger act of vision, Gravity's Rainbow itself, is a kind of Return is hinted at in the same pervasive pattern that makes of it a gestalt; the very wholeness of its design suggests that it is possible to learn to grasp the field view. But Pynchon cannot help also seeing the ironic possibilities of this kind of Return. They come out most clearly, perhaps, in his treatment of von Coll. After von Goll hears about the Zonc-Hereroes, he becomes convinced that his fake propaganda film on the "Schwarzkommando" in fact brought diem into being. So he makes contact with die Argentine anarchists w h o want to restore dieir land t o the primal unity it possessed before the national government and white men made it into a land of broken promises and broken landscape. "It is my mission," von Goll tells the Argentine anarchists, "to sow in the Z o n e the seeds of reality [. . . ] My images, somehow, have been chosen for incarnation. What I can do for the Schwarzkommando I can do for your dream of pampas and sky. . . . I can take d o w n your fences and your labyrinth walls, 1 can lead you back to the Garden you hardly remember" (p. 388 ). The allusions to Borges, however, encourage us to put von G o l f s promise in a different perspective. As we saw in Chapter 0, Borges does not remove labyrinth walls in his fictions; rather, he crafts his tales with such convoluted turnings that they themselves become verbal labyrinths. We never get back to the "Garden you hardly remember" in Borges. Rather, die Garden is itself revealed as an artifact, a labyrinth of our o w n making. T h e same could be said of Pynchon; though die pervasive patterning of Gravity s Rainbow compels us to sec "everything is connected," what is restored is not primal unity but a posdapsarian artifact that feeds on paranoia and complicity. In more general terms, die problem is diat die vision of the artist is necessarily that o f h i s time and place—fallen. Even granting the power, what sort of creation would this fallen Creator bring into being? The problem reaches grotesque proportions with von Goll; what vision of wholeness could emerge from this mad megalomaniac? T h e incongruity between von Goli's promise and the reality he represents is immediately apparent in his plans to film Martin Ficrro. In Part I of the poem, Martin Ficrro deserts and turns renegade, abandoning the army t o side with die Indians and the open land. But in Part II, the Return of Martin Fierro, the gaucho "assimilates back into Christian socicty" and returns

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t o the city; "a very moral ending, but completely opposite to the first" (p. 387). The circularity implies a failure of artistic vision that makes true Return impossible. " W h a t s h o u l d I d o ? " v o n G o l l w a n t s t o k n o w . " B o t h p a r t s , o r just P a n I?" "Well," begins

Squalidozzi.

"I k n o w w h a t you w a n t . R u t I m i g h t g e t b e t t e r m i l e a g e o u t o f t w o m o v i e s , if t h e first d o e s w e l l at t h e b o x o f f i c e . " ( p . 387)

As far as dcr Springer is concerned, the snake in his promised second Garden doesn't need an apple; he can just hold u p a balance sheet. The problem is bigger than the idiosyncrasies of the megalomaniac German filmmaker; it is at the heart of the moral ambiguity that informs Pvnchon's vision of the artist as creator. If film is one permeable membrane, the Word is another; and Pynchon, like von Goll, is fallen, preterite, of diseased imagination. What then if his acts of naming, like von Goll's films, have the power not just ro reveal the patterns but actually t o create them? What rough beast will come breaking through the Text as interface into this world? It is this question that bestows on the act of naming, as on other acts of creation, a terror that cognitive consciousness at once creates and apprehends. There is, in addition, an ever more radical problem with Pvnchon's act of naming that arises not merely from the preterite nature of the artist but from the fallen nature of language itself. When the early Slothrops—Constant and Variable—believed that the Scriptures would be translated directly into God's Hand emerging from the sky, they were testifying t o the power of the W o r d in Western culture. God's W o r d wrought the first Creation; his Son is the W o r d become flesh. But in the fallen world of the preterite, the status of the W o r d as an instrument of creation is more ambiguous. Under narcosis Slothrop comes up with "Blackwords," "new coinages [that] seem to be made unconsciously" (p. 391). H a s he, the narrator asks, by way o f language caught the G e r m a n mania for name-giving, dividing the Creation

finer

a n d finer, analyzing, setting n a m e r m o r e

hopelessly

apart f r o m n a m e d , e v e n t o b r i n g i n g in t h e m a t h e m a t i c s o f c o m b i n a t i o n , tacking together established n o u n s to get n e w ones, the insanely, endlessly d i d d l i n g p l a v o f t h e c h e m i s t w h o s e m o l e c u l e s are w o r d s . . ." (p. 391). 184

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In this view language leads not to connection but to fragmentation or even random combination. The kind of Creation spelled o u t bv the Word in a routinized societv is indicated bv the internecine rivalries among the Committees set up to form the New Turkic Alphabet. Representative of these insanities is Radnichnv on the Schwa Committee, w h o "has set out on a megalomaniac project to replace every spoken vowel in Central Asia" with a "neutral u h " (p. 353). Pvnchon's broad satire points to the imperialism of the entire project , which aims to impose on "the lawless, the mortal streaming" (p. 355) of native speech the letters and words that the burcaucracv decides thev should have. Once the flux of the spoken Word has been broken into the discrete and inflexible symbols of written language, it "can be modulated, broken, recoupled, re-defined, copolymerized one t o the other in worldwide chains" (p. 355). Treating words as chemicals, and chemicals as words ( " H o w alphabetic is the nature of molecules," the narrator muses) suggests that their different programs have the same end, control, and the same effect, a numbing, vitiating fragmentation of Meaning into meaningless segments and combinations. The positivist program to force multiform indcterminacics into specific slots, whether through dictionaries, chemical synthesis, or Pavlovian experiments, breaks the original Whole into shards that can then be recombined to reflect the face, not of God, but of fallen man. In view of the uses and abuses the preterite find for the W o r d , one can only applaud Slothrop's instinct to "edit, switch names, insert fantasies" (p. 302) in the yarns he spins for Tantivy at the office. Slothrop's primitive fear of "having a soul captured bv a likeness of image or by a name" (p. 302) is one expression of the ambiguity inherent in the project of creating words; once written (or published in a book), they inevitably become transfixed, discrete, and immutable, an implicit denial of the ever-changing flux of the field view, even if they purport t o embody or reflect that endless streaming. Thus the moments when the W o r d becomes potent with the possibility that it will not only describe reality but also bring it into being, moments when "pencil words on your page [are] only At from the things they stand for" (p. 510), arc charged with threat as well as promise The possibility that the Text is an interface, on one side the W o r d , on the other reality, haunts Gravity's Rainbow. It is at this threshold. 185-

LITERARY STRATEGIES

w h e n the characters can feel " t h e potency o f every w o r d , " w h e n "words arc only an eye-twitch away f r o m t h e d u n g s they stand for" (p. t o o ) , that the ambiguities s u r r o u n d i n g the possibility o f R e t u r n become m o s t a p p a r e n t and painful. F o r if the act o f n a m i n g itself introduces division, w h a t could these m o m e n t s bring into being b u t the fragm e n t e d reality that cognitive processing implies? A n d if the fragmentation o f t h a t n a m e d creation is only a n o t h e r version of T h e i r synthetic, f r a g m e n t e d w o r l d , then the w h o l e project o f escaping T h e i r control has been co-opted a n d subverted by the very a t t e m p t t o speak it. P v n c h o n ' s view o f t h e potency o f t h e W o r d is subtly different f r o m t h e A d a m i c belief that everything possesses its o w n right name, ordained by G o d a n d p r o n o u n c e d by man. Being of the posr-structuralist g e n e r a t i o n , P y n c h o n grants that names in themselves are arbitrary. Bui he reasons that once h u m a n k i n d has assigned m e a n i n g t o s o u n d s , how w e choose to deploy those s o u n d s (the act of n a m i n g ) reveals deep patterns o f c o r r e s p o n d e n c e that the n a m e r s sense and t o which they r e s p o n d . So w h e n Saurc B u m m e r grabs the W a g n e r i a n helmet, screws the horns off o f it, c r o w n s S l o t h r o p with it and screams, "Raketcmensch!" die narrator comments, "Names by themselves may be empty, b u t the act of naming

. . ." (p. 366). Enzian, t o o , w h e n h e intuits that

t h e Rocker, was tired f r o m N o r d h a u s e n , house of the n o r t h and therefore o f d e a t h , thinks that "names by themselves may have n o magic, but t h e act o f n a m i n g , t h e physical utterance, obeys the p a t t e r n " (p. 322). H e r c r o history also "obeys the p a t t e r n , " so the correspondences between the H e r c r o past and t h e Rocket are n o t arbitrary, b u t part of a pervasive pattern in w h i c h t h e H e r c r o destiny a n d t h e 00001 tiring are inextricably linked. But Gravity's Rainbow

of course is fiction

(isn't it?). It is hardly sur-

prising that the correspondences fit, since they were created t o d o so. W h a t d o e s this created p a t t e r n tell us a b o u t reality, if anything? T h e narrator recognizes that w h a t he calls his " K u t e K o r r e s p o n d e n c e s " (p. 590) are t h e image, n o t the end p o i n t , of an infinite series h o p i n g to "zero in o n t h e t r e m e n d o u s and secret F u n c t i o n w h o s e n a m e [. . . ] c a n n o t be s p o k e n " (p. 590). T h i s is language in its fallen aspect, as an imperfect i n s t r u m e n t t h a t reveals only blurred a n d indistinct o u d i n e s o f w h a t was once perfect unity. But t h e p r o b l e m is insoluble only if w e believe that unity is somet h i n g that m u s t be created, or m o r e precisely, re-created. C o n s i d e r the

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PYNCHON

implications of the following progression: first language is seen as a process of recovery, an attempt to Return to the underlying deeper pattern. Then, language is an instrument not of recovery but of creation, actually bringing the patterns into existence. The next step is t o recognize diat the distinction between "reality" and "created pattern" is meaningless. This step implies a redefinition of the essential relationship between art and reality. Instead of asking, "What is breaking through die text as interface:" the appropriate question is, " W h a t makes you think there is an interface?" In this view the elaborate metafictional machinery of the novel not only reflects but also challenges the perspective that we adopt when we operate within the subject-object duality. In the Floundering Four episode, as the narrator's camera eye retreats from the stage o n which the Floundering Four act to show a stadium full of spectators, among which are the Floundering Four, we arc warned that "die Chances for any paradox here, really, arc less than you think" (p. 680). The "monumental yellow structure" of the stadium is subject to a "never-sleeping percolation of life and enterprise through its shell. Outside and Inside interpiercing one another t o o fast, t o o finely labyrinthine, for cither category t o have much hegemony any more" (p. 681). When the subject-object duality is considered as an illusion that is imposed o n reality radier than inherent in it, all we must do to recover the wholeness is t o abandon the perspective that leads us to believe it is real. This provides one explanation for Slothrop's final dissolution. F r o m a perspective that eschews the subject-object duality, for example from the perspective of Rilke's Duino Elegies, Slothrop has arrived at a transcendent realization of the essential connectedness of all things. In Zen terms, he has achieved satori, experiencing the self as a manifestation of the Universal O n e . 1 3 But if to overcome die subject-object duality completely is t o merge ' ' T h i s is t h e a r g u m e n t L a n c e O z i e r uses in " T h e Calculus o f T r a n s f o r m a t i o n : M o r e M a t h e m a t i c a l I m a g e r y in

Gravity's Rainbow," Twentieth Century Literature,

21 (197s), 193-

210, t o c o u n t e r Joseph Slide's i n t e r p r e t a t i o n in Thomas Pynchon ( N e w Y o r k : W a r n e r Paperback Library, 1974) t h a t S l o t h r o p ' s d i s s i p a t i o n implies h e " n e v e r found h i m s e l f ' (p. 2io). B u t t o claim t h a t S l o t h r o p ' s dissipation is simply t r a n s c e n d e n c e is t o d o violence t o all o f t h e negative c o n n o t a t i o n s w i t h w h i c h the n a r r a t o r s u r r o u n d s S l o t h r o p ' s disappearance. Surely Mark Siegel is m o r e nearly correct in p o i n t i n g o u t t h a t t h o u g h in onesense S l o t h r o p ' s dissipation is t r a n s c e n d e n c e , in a n o t h e r sense " S l o t h r o p has a b a n d o n e d his ability t o m a n i p u l a t e a n y t h i n g in the physical w o r l d " (Pynchon: Creative Gravity's Rainbow

1 8 7 - in Paranoia

[ P o r t W a s h i n g t o n , N . Y . , a n d L o n d o n : K e n n i k a t Press, 1978], p. 88.)

LITERARY STRATEGIES w i r h the " m i n d - b o d v " o f the c o s m o s , it is also t o cease to exist as a person localized in time and space, and thus t o be unable to influence the temporal u n f o l d i n g o f events. T h o s e w h o have m a d e the transition, f o r example Walter R a t h c n a u and L y l c Bland, cease t o care h o w events u n f o l d in secular history, for the g o o d reason that t o them secular history is an illusion. S o m e t h i n g o f the same indifference occurs in those w h o immerse themselves in the "mindless pleasures" that are the proletarian equivalent t o R i l k c a n transcendence. I f f r o m o n e perspective this is salvation, f r o m another point o f v i e w it is a betrayal o f the revolution by b e c o m i n g incapable o f effective social action. T o stay at the barricades, h o w e v e r , is t o remain in the realm o f cognitive t h o u g h t , thus c o n t r i b u t i n g , t h r o u g h the verv act o f remaining conscious, to T h e i r enterprise. I take this t o be one m e a n i n g o f Slothrop's " p r i m a l d r e a m , " in which he o p e n s a G e r m a n dictionary t o find, o p p o s i t e " J A M F , " the definition " I " (p. 287). T o try to fight T h e m is t o b e c o m e T h e m . T h e narrator has the " w o r l d - r e n o w n e d analyst M i c k e y W u x t r v - W u x t r v " suggest that " t h e r e n e v e r w a s a D r . ] a m f [. . . ] Jam!" was only a fiction, [. . . ] to help [ S l o t h r o p ] deny w h a t he c o u l d n o t possibly a d m i t : that he might possibly be in love, in sexual love, w i t h his, and his race's, d e a t h " (p. 738). T h e assumption that there could exist a " T h c y - s t r u c t u r c " distinct f r o m a " W e - s t r u c t u r e " is exposed as an illusion at the novel's end w h e n w e split into the spectators w a t c h i n g a m o v i e in w h i c h G o t t f r i e d f i l l s in the R o c k e t , and the victims o n w h o m the R o c k e t will land as it falls the "last delta-t." A s l o n g as w e remain cognitivelv conscious, the holocaust is inevitable, and the realization that " e v e r y t h i n g is c o n n e c t e d " leads o n l y to the understanding that T h e y are W e . T h u s slowly, inexorably, P v n c h o n ' s text keeps returning to the central d i l e m m a o f h o w t o speak f r o m w i t h i n a field w i t h o u t betraying it to the linear processes o f articulation and cognition. T h e t w o conflicting i m p u l s e s — t h e h o p e that R e t u r n to a pure apprehension o f the field m a y be possible, and the recognition that such a h o p e is inherently c o n t r a d i c t o r y — d e f i n e the matrix within w h i c h the action o f Rainbow

Gravity's

takes place.

T h e trajectory f r o m w h i c h there is n o R e t u r n can be called centrifugal; its m e t a p h o r s are the D i a s p o r a , the scattering o f the seed, the F l i g h t f r o m the Center. " W h a t if xve're all J e w s , " G w e n h i d w v tells P o i n t s m a n , " | . . . ] all scattered like seeds? still f l y i n g o u t w a r d f r o m the 188

C A U G H T IN i~HE W E B : P Y N C H O N

primal fist so l o n g a g o " (p. 170). Pointsman, t h o u g h he pretends t o m i s u n d e r s t a n d , " k n o w s w h a t he means"; "he means alone a n d separate forever" (p. 170). O p p o s i n g this m o v e m e n t are the centripetal forces that extend b e v o n d the b o u n d a r i e s o f the individual self t o identify with the life cycle as a whole. Satire B u m m e r prefers Rossini over Beethoven because "with Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, a n d like it o r not that is t h e o n e great centripetal m o v e m e n t of the W o r l d . T h r o u g h the machineries of greed, pettiness, a n d the abuse o f p o w e r , love occurs" (p. +40). T h e belief that " t h e W o r l d is r u s h i n g t o g e t h e r " (p. +40) is the h o p e that alienation can be o v e r c o m e by t h e simple forces o f love and trust; it is identified with the possibility that there are routes back, paths of R c m r n t o the Center. O n e scientific model Pvnchon d r a w s o n t o validate these t w o o p p o s ing impulses is the cntropic decay implied by the Second L a w o f T h e r m o d y n a m i c s , which o p p o s e s t h e tendency o f life to create structure. A n o t h e r scientific model that is equally i m p o r t a n t t o Pvnchon's scheme, and that m o r e directly connects with t h e field concept, is t h e expanding model of the universe. 1 4 T h e study of h o w t h e cosmos began w a s revolutionized, as was so m u c h else in physics, by Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity. It was f r o m these t w o theories that m o d e r n cosmology was born. D u r i n g the

1930s

a n d 1940s,

the implications o f the field concept for c o s m o l o g y w e r e increasingly developed, and climaxed in the discovery of the cosmic background radiation that provided compelling evidence for the "Big Bang" theory o f creation. According t o the "Big B a n g " model, at the b e g i n n i n g o f time an unimaginably dense center c o n t a i n i n g everything in the universe exploded, expelling matter in every direction and creating, as it expanded, the present universe. In this model, the cosmos is conceived as c o m i n g i n t o being at the expanding circumfercncc of t h e initial explosion. Beyond the circumference lies an unimaginable void that lacks even the basic structure o f spacetime, while at its center lies t h e 14 T h c w o r k o f Ilya P r i g o g i n e o n t h e r m o d y n a m i c systems tar from e q u i l i b r i u m has been seminal in elucidating the tendency of life t o create structure; see f o r example Ilya P r i g o g i n e and G . N i c o l i s , Self-Organization in Nan-Equilibrium Systems: From Otssipative Structures to Order through Fluctuations ( N e w York: John Wiley. 1977). For a discussion o f h o w s e e m i n g l y low-cnrropv e v e n t s can b e reconciled w i t h the S e c o n d Law o f thcr m o d v n a m i c s bv c o n s i d e r i n g the larger c o s m o l o g i c a l s y s t e m w i t h i n w h i c h thev are contained. see P. C. W . Davics's discussion o f "branch systems" in The Physics of Time Asymmetry (Berkeley and Less Angeles: University o f California Press, i n - - ; pp. 68-- - , +.

189-

LITE RA R Y S ERATEG IES

memory of'what the narrator calls the "primal fist," the singularity that he recognizes as the "infinitely dense point f r o m which the present Universe expanded" (p. 396). As Pvnchon's narrator correctly asserts, this point of singularity is technically called a Fricdmann point, after the "Russian mathematician [Alexander] Fricdmann" (p. 396). These relet ences suggest that Pvnchon's mvthic Flight from the Center is an imagi native reconstruction of the scientific model of an expanding universe Like the fictional universe with which the characters in the narrative attempt t o come to terms, it is invested by Pynchon with both a positive and negative valence, with the possibility that closure may be achieved and the possibility that it may n o t . 1 5 The model's connotations of ambivalence come into focus through the text's treatment of "singularities." As we have seen, one example of a singularity is the Fricdmann point, the hypothetical center from which the universe exploded. More generally, singularities are points in mathematical functions where the derivative, or rate of change, of the function becomes discontinuous. 1 6 O n e example of a singularity is a point where a function peaks sharply (Figure 1). In Pynchon's view, singularities pose a particular threat t o the differential calculus because at a singularity the rate of change that the differential attempts to express goes t o infinity. Figure 2 shows how, as the Ax increment approaches zero at a singularity, the Av increment suddenly becomes very large. T h e differential, dy/dx, is defined as the limit, as Ax ap15 E o r .1 g o o d g e n e r a l d e s c r i p t i o n o f h o w t h e " B i g B a n g " t h e o n ' w a s d e v e l o p e d a n d c o n f i r m e d , see T i m o t h y Ferris, The Red l.mut: The Searchforthe Edge of rhe Universe ( N e w Y o r k : W i l l i a m M u r r o w , 19"" . A l e x a n d e r A. F r i c d m a n n first p r o p o s e d t h e e x i s t e n c e o f infinitely d e n s e p o i n t s ( t h e " F r i c d m a n n p o i n t " ) m his p a p e r , " L ' b c r d i e D r u m m u n g d e s R a n m e s , " Zeitsclmft fur I'hysik, 10 (19.22), J77-3S0. In t h i s article F r i c d m a n n p o i n t s o u t t h a i an e x p a n d i n g u n i v e r s e t h a t o r i g i n a t e d f r o m a s i n g u l a r i t y in t h e s p a e e t i m e m a t r i x w a s in fact m a t h e m a t i c a l l y p o s s i b l e , in c o n t r a d i s t i n c t i o n t o t h e s t e a d y - s t a t e m o d e l t h a t E i n s t e i n has p r e s u p p o s e d . F r i c d m a n n is c o m m o n l y r e g a r d e d as t h e f a t h e r o f t h e " B i g B a n g " t h e o r y o f c r e a t i o n b e c a u s e o f this w o r k . ( S e e also E r i c d m a n n ' s article " l i b e r d i e M o g l i e h k e i t e i n c r W e l t n u t k o n s t a n t c r n e g a t i v e ! K r u m m u n g d e s R a u m e s , " Zeitsclmft fur Plnsik, 21 \1924| ",26- ;,2. t T h e n a r r a t o r ' s a l l u s i o n s t o E r i c d m a n n reveal P y n c h o n ' s f a m i f iarirv w i t h t h e s e c o s m o l o g i c a l m o d e l s . l0 L a r i v c W . O z i e r in " T h e C a l c u l u s o f T r a n s f o r m a t i o n " has s o m e d i s c u s s i o n o f t h e s i n g u l a r i t y o n p p . 202 - 2 0 4 . H o w e v e r , 111 a d i a g r a m o n p. 2 0 9 h e s e e m s i n e v p i i c a b l y t o associate a s i n g u l a r i t y w i t h t h e m a t h e m a t i c a l o p e r a t i o n t o r d i v i d i n g a w e l l - b e h a v e d funct i o n (in i n s d i a g r a m , a s t r a i g h t line; i n t o s m a l l e r d e l t a r i n c r e m e n t s . A c t u a l l y , a s i n g u l a r i t y is w h a t disrupts t h i s d i f f e r e n t i a t i n g p r o c e s s . M o r e o v e r , it is clear f r o m P v n c h o n ' s r e p e a t e d a s s o c i a t i o n o f s i n g u l a r i t i e s wirii steeples, m o u n t a i n p e a k s , etc. t h a t he i.s u s i n g s i n g u l a r i n 111 t h e sense o f a s h a r p p e a k in t h e f u n c t i o n .

19O

C A U G H T IN i~HE W E B :

PYNCHON

Figure 1. Diagram of a singularity

proaches zero, of Av/Ax. 1 7 At the singularity, this limit must be formally expressed as infinity because it fails to converge, becoming larger and larger as the cusp is approached. T h e singularity thus represents a point where the behavior of die function ceases to be mathematically expressible, except in a purely formal way. Metaphorically, it is the

Figure 2. D i f f e r e n t i a t i n g a s i n g u l a r i t y I7 Joseph Slade in Thomas Pynchon has a good diagram of this proccss of differentiation (P- 219).

191-

L I T E R A R Y S R R AT EGIES

point at which the function escapes f r o m the delta increments of rational analysis into the unknown. The mysterious potential of a singularity to deft' rational analysis is the basis for the narrator's account of the Polish undertaker w h o , clad in a metal suit, rows o u t on the lake in a thunderstorm. T h e undertaker wants to be hit by lightning because he assumes that "the ones w h o d o get hit experience a singular point, a discontinuity in the curve of life." " D o you know what the rate of change is at a cusp?" the narrator asks. "Infinity, that's what! A-and right across from the point, it's minus infinity" (p. 664). The singularity, concealing a point so mysterious that calculus, no matter h o w infinitesimal its intervals, can never capture it, is the mathematical equivalent t o Slothrop's insouciant wanderings. When the narrator identifies the singularity with the steeple of the Empire State Building that King Kong climbs, he suggests that, like King Kong, Slothrop, or the Rocket, singularities possess the charismatic power t o disrupt business-as-usual with their uncontrollable behavior. But like all charismatic objects in Gravity's Rainbow, the singularity is subject to co-option. If it has the power to disrupt: conventional modes of cognition, it can also become a tool in Their service, or twisted into paranoia by us. The undertaker, we are told, wants t o be struck by lightning not because he cares about "busting the code" of "secret organizations or recognizable subcultures," but because "he thinks it will help him in his job- He wants to know how people behave before and after lightning bolts, so he'll know better h o w to handle bereaved families" (p. 665). The alternative to this routinization of the singularity is a paranoid response to it. T h e narrator warns that if we attempt t o cling t o the singularity as King K o n g did to the steeple, "bareback dwarves with little plastic masks [. . . ] that happen t o be shaped just like the infinity symbol" wait t o snatch us off into the congrucnt-butnot-identical world that the paranoiacs inhabit. T h e singularity thus has both a positive and negative value, expressed formally in differential calculus as the positive and negative infinity that represents the up- and down-slope at the cusp. T h e singularity has, in other words, a doubleedged point. What then are wc t o make of the narrator's emphasis on the Friedmann point, the singularity from which the universe began? Irs double valence comes most clearly into view when we consider it as the point 192

C A U G H T IN i~HE W E B : P Y N C H O N

not only f r o m which we began, but to which we will return. T h o u g h astronomers agree that the universe is expanding, they d o not agree o n whether this outward trajectory will continue forever. It is possible that the attractive forces between the masses that comprise the universe will eventually be able t o overcome the outward movement. In this case the universe could begin contracting. The rush inward toward the Center would then end in another incredibly dense mass which would again explode, expelling matter outward. The universe would thus act like a rubber band being stretched and then released. 1 8 In this case, the universe will not end in the heat death predicted by the Second Law of thermodynamics (and Pynchon's "Entropy"), but will continue t o exist in unending cvclcs of Flight and Return that some see as a cosmic analogue to reincarnation. The physicist Thomas Gold has even suggested that in a contracting universe, entropy would spontaneously d e c r e a s e . T h e concerns that mark Pynchon's earlv fiction— the heat death of the universe, the Second Law of thermodynamics, the erosion of meaning that entropv implies -could thus be subject to qualification or reversal if the Universe can Return. But the other edge of this point emerges with the realization that Return also means annihilation, for the universe can be reborn onlv by going through the absolute gravitational collapse that means not onlv the death of all life, but the destruction of all matter as wc know it. This is the "Secret of the Fearful Assembly" (p. 738) that lies behind the narrator's various scenarios of Return, for example when he imagines the assembly of the 00001 as a "Diaspora running backwards, seeds of exile flying inward in a modest preview of gravitational collapse" (p. 737). The point of the 00001 Rocket, also called a "singularity," is another version of the Friedmann point, and thus implies both rebirth and annihilation. At the end of the text we get the point in both senses, 1K F o r a d i s c u s s i o n o f t h e o s c i l l a t i n g u n i v e r s e m o d e l s see D a v i e s , pp. 188-198. I n an o s c i l l a t i n g u n i v e r s e t h e t e w o u l d , strictly s p e a k i n g , b e n o " B i g B a n g " o r c r e a t i o n e v e n t , o n l y t h e p o i n t s at w h i c h o n e p h a s e o f t h e cycle e n d s a n d a n o t h e r b e g i n s lg T h o m a s G o l d , " T h e A r r o w o f T i m e , " American Journal eif Physics, t o (1962). 401- 410. Sec also H e r m a n n B o n d i . " P h y s i c s and C o s m o l o g y , " The Observatory. -:1 (1962), 1 0 141. It s h o u l d b e n o t e d that G o l d ' s arguments f o r the decreasing e n t r o p v o f a c o n t r a c t i n g universe are o p e n t o serious o b j e c t i o n s ; see, f o r example, Davies, pp. 193ft'. I n order f o r e n t r o p v t o d e c r e a s e , t h e u n i v e r s e w o u l d s o m e h o w have t o anticipate t h e p a t t e r n o f R e t u r n so t h a t t h e c o n t r a c t i o n w o u l d b e ideally reversible in t h e t h e r m o d y n a m i c s e n s e ( D a v i e s , p. 199). T h a t t h e o d d s a g a i n s t s u c h an o c c u r r e n c e are s t a g g e r i n g l y g r e a t is p e r h a p s o n e r e a s o n w h y , in Gravity's Rainbow, t h e h o p e f o r R e t u r n is s o q u a l i f i e d .

193-

LitERARY STRATEGIES as that part of the Rocket about t o penetrate our skulls and as the emergent meaning that links o u r comprehension of the larger, cosmicpatterns o f R e t u r n with the concomitant realization that they necess a r i l y e n t a i l o u r personal annihilation. T h u s the dilemma that has c h a r a c t e r i z e d a l i o f Pvnchon's representations o f the field concept is writ l a r g e in t h e cosniological m o d e l : to r e m a i n conscious is t o resist Return, and to Return is t o experience the annihilation of consciousness that Slothrop foreshadows for us when he dissipates into the underlying field of the cosmos. T o this complex dynamic I should like to add o n e m o r e complexity, in the form o f a particularly bizarre singularity—die black hole. T h e crucial factor in whether die universe can stop expanding and begin contracting is the a m o u n t of mass it contains. Researchers have attempted t o calculate this figure, but the numbers are so near t o the critical mass that it is still t o o close to call; the answer could go either way. T h o s e w h o believe there is enough mass t o initiate return argue that some of it can't be seen because it is hidden in black holes. M a n y scoff at this conjecture, but it is difficult to disprove because n o one understands exactly what happens in black holes; within their infinitely dense confines, the k n o w n laws o f physics cease to be valid. The controversy IS echoed in Gravity's Rainbow, and connects Pynchon's treatment of singularities with the larger questions posed by the narrator's attempt t o create a narrative "field" in his text. Black holes are t h o u g h t to be created by the collapse o f dying stars w h e n the forces of gravitation become so intense that nothing can escape. O n c e matter or energy enters the circumference of this influence, called the "event horizon," all knowledge of diat event is lost because n o t h i n g , n o t even light, will ever return t o deliver information a b o u t it. T h e event horizon has a magnitude calculated by the Sehwarzchild radius, named after Karl Schwarzchild, w h o noticed, in 1917, anomalies in Einstein's gravitational equations that later were recognized t o describe black holes. O n c e a star contracts beyond its Schwarzchild radius, P. C. W . Davies writes, "the whole mass implodes to a zero volume and infinite density" (Davies, p. 98). In Pynchon's text, "Schwarzchild" is the Jamf code name for the infant Slothrop. T h e correspondence suggests that black holes are the charismatic objects in the scientific model that play a role analogous to Slothrop in the plot, ln fact, black holes are recognized as singularities in the spacetime fabric 194

C A U G H T IN i~HE W E B : P Y N C H O N

Singularity Figure 3. Deformation of spacetime

by a black

hole

of the universe; Figure 3 shows why their calculated shape justifies the name. Like other singularities, black holes too have a double-edged point, both a positive and negative value. The doubleness is inherent in the equations predicting black holes, for it turns out that these equations have not one but t w o solutions. In the second solution, the equations yield a "white hole," a center from which energy and matter radiate outward rather than being sucked in as they are in a black hole. Gravity's Rainbow is filled with black-and-white images that are mirror reflections of one another and that can reverse into one another as they move through time; a black hole can be transformed into a white hole by reversing the value of time in the equations. The symbolic values of die two mirror images are also opposite. Whereas the black hole is a powerful metaphor for the absolute annihilation of n o Return, the white hole promises rebirth through another "Big Bang." In von Golfs last cinematic production (shot, 110 d o u b t , in black and white), he runs the film backward to create a "reverse world" in which "the Great Irreversible is actually reversed as the corpse comes t o life to the accompaniment of a backwards gunshot" (p. 745). V o n Goll is not as deranged as he might seem, for the convert s

LITERARY

STRATEGIES

sion of a black hole into a white hole would enact a similar scenario for the entire cosmos. If the substance of the universe is being sucked into black holes, it is being spewed out again from white holes in a circular dialectic in which annihilation and rebirth arc simply t w o sides of the same coin. Taken as agestalt, the two sides merge into a single picture of the cosmos itself participating in a cycle of Return that at once transcends and validates the attempts at Return within Pvnchon's text. W e are now in a position t o understand whv Pvnchon chose in his title to highlight the role of gravity, tor gravity is the force connecting these t w o possibilities. T h o u g h physicists disagree about whether Return is possible, the\ concur on what will allow the contraction to begin. T h e gravity that the narrator warns us is "taken so for granted" is the elusive power that can turn the Flight f r o m the Center around. If Return is possible, it will be because gravity is pulling the universe together again. But this same gravity is also what insures that nothing can return from a black hole. T h e connection between them helps to explain whv gravitv should be treated both as a Vice, an "old b u f f o o n " leading us d o w n the primrose path, and as a redemptive force controlling our destiny. Thus rhe enigma of gravity's double role is clarified when we realize it is the underlying force responsible b o t h for the ultimate Flight from the Center that black holes represent, and the cosmic Return t o that Center. N o t all of the enigmas, however, arc susceptible to resolution. When the field models of cosmology define boundaries that arc as wide, or as narrow, as an oscillating universe, the ambiguities that characterize human life are reinforced, not banished. If the universe can Return, then it provides a cosmic equivalent to the process of life, death, and new life that we see in Pirate's r o o f t o p garden. Only bv identifying with this universal cycle of Return can we find such comfort as the cosmicdrama allows. T h e irony is rhat as long as we remain human, complete identification with it is impossible, for to be conscious is t o value consciousness, and hence to resist annihilation. T h e narrator, after describing Lvle Bland's transcendent realization that Gravity is something "eerie" and "Messianic," mourns that rhe rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside of Earth, a t t h e m e r c y of a G r a v i t v w e h a v e o n l y b e g u n t o l e a r n h o w t o d e t e c t a n d m e a s u r e , m u s t g o o n b l u n d e r i n g in o u r f r o n t - b r a i n f a i t h in K u r e K o r r e s 196

C A U G H T IN i~HE W E B : P Y N C H O N

pondences f. . . ] kicking endlessly among the plastic trivia, finding in each Deeper Significance and try ing to string them all together like terms of a power series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secret Function whose name, like the permutated names of God. cannot be spoken . . . (p. !90)

Though the "Kute Korrespondences" between language and a field view of reality can provide a contcxt for the questions Gravity's Rainbow poses, thev cannot supply the answers. Like the real nature of gravity, our relation t o the field of the cosmos is a "tremendous and secret Function" whose meaning finally "cannot be spoken," even by Pvnchon.

19-

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204

INDEX

Alazraki, Jaime. 147

" N e w Refutation o f T i m e , " 161-16?

Anti-realism, 23

"Pierre Menard. Author o f Don

Appei, Alfred, 130 Aristotle, 65, 7 0 , 76, t 4 0

Quix-

ote," 138-139 Platonism and, 159-160 Strange troops in, 143, 348, 152-153

Banach-Tarski Paradox, 158

time as scries in, 162-166

Beckett, Samuel, 23

"Tlon, U q b a r , O r b i s Tertius,^ 139,

Bell, J. S., 56. S w also H i d d e n variable theories

144-148 Butler, C o l i n , 164-165

Bergson, H e n r i , 18 Bersani, L e o , 88 B o h m , D a v i d , 4 9 . $7, 58. See also H i d d e n variable theories Bohr, Niels, 4 8 , 5 4 . 65, 97 interpretation o f Uncertainty R e l a t i o n , 51-55

Cantor, G c o r g , 37 actually infinite sets, 1 4 0 - 1 4 1 alephs, 140, t 6 0 - 1 6 1 Borges's differences w i t h , 159-161 transfinite set theory, 139-143, 154-156 Capek, Milic, 4 9 »

q u a n t u m o f action, 52- 5?

Capra, Fritjof, 19

theory o f language, 52-54

Cartesian d i c h o t o m y , u - u , 41 - 4 2 , 86.

Bondi, Hermann, Borges, Jorge Luis, 21, 24, 27, 142

i r \ 187-188 Causality, jo

"The A l e p h , " 156-161

Chautauqua. See Pirsig, R o b e r t M .

"The A p p r o a c h t o Al-Mu'tasim," 1 4 8 -

Christ, R o n a l d , s6o

151 Cantor set theory, 37, J39~*43- 15.'. 15— 158, 161 "The D o c t r i n e o f Cycles," 154-155

Clark, C o l i n , 88 ; 91 C o n r a d , Joseph, 2 3 - 2 4 C o s m i c w e b , 21, 4 2 , 4 9 . See also Field concept

field c o n c e p t in, 151, 161

C o w a n , James C , 86«

"History o f Eternity," 142, 160

Cultural matrix, 2 3 - 2 4

' T h e Library o f Babel," 151-152 literary strategy and style, $+3, 148, 153154 N a b o k o v ' s relation to, 138-139, 167

D a u b e n , Joseph Warren, 159 Davis, Martin, 35. Sec also H a l t i n g Problem

INDEX Davis, P. C. W.. i«9«. i93«» '94Davison, N e d J., i 6 + « D c m b o , L. 5., 125 127 Eichner, Hans, 1 7 - l y Eighteenth-century rationalism, I A - R Einstein, Albert, 4-+, h i belief in causality, +2, 48 concept o f space time, 4 6 - + ? disapproval o f quantum mechanics, 49-5o General Theory o f Relativity, 43, 4 7 49 search for universal harmony, 45~46 Special Theory o f Relativity, 18, 43, 4S-4? unity of relativity theory, 4 S - 4 9

Gravitation, 55, 196-197. Set' Albert; Pynchon, T h o m a s

also

Einstein,

H a l t i n g P r o b l e m , 35-36. See also Davis, Martin H a n s o n , N . R., 38-39 Heisenberg, Werner, 31, 45, 51-52, 112. See

also Bohr, Niels; Keller, Evelyn Hidden variable theories, 56-58, See Bohm, David Flilbert, David, 32, 34 H i n z , Evelyn, 95«

also

Hofstadter, Douglas, 34. See also Godel, Kurt Hooker, Clifford, 52, 58. See also Bohr, Niels; Q u a n t u m mechanics H o u g h , Graham, 9 4 «

Engleberg, Edward, 9 4 » Faulkner, William, 2 4 Ferris, T i m o t h y , 190« Feynman, Richard, son Field concept, 19, 32, 42- 55 definition o f , 9 - 1 0 , 15-17 Einstein and, 4 8 - 4 9 epistemoiogical implications o f , 2 7 - 2 8 influence o n writers, 2 4 - 2 5 language and, 4 1 - 4 2 limits t o classical analysis, 31—36 resistance to articulation, 19—21,55- 59 See also Borges, Jorge Luis; N a b o k o v , Vladimir; Pynchon, T h o m a s Ford, George, joiw Formalist Program, 32, 4 0 Freud, S i g m u n d , 103, 105, 170W Friedman, Alan J., 170?/ Friedmann, Alexander, 190- 192 Gardner, Martin, 113, 115 influence o n N a b o k o v , 114-117, 127, 135 relativity, 4 4 - 4 5 General Theory o f Relativity. Sa Einstein, Albert Godel, R u n , 36, 41 Cantor as predecessor, 141-142 Incompleteness T h e o r e m , 21, 33-35 See also Flofstadter, D o u g l a s Gold, T h o m a s , 193" Gombrich, E. HL, i76«

implicate order. See David B o h m Jammer, Max, 56-57 Jung, C. G., i73» Kasner, Edward, 142,160.

See also

Borges,

Jorge Luis Keller, Evelyn, 85, 8 7 - S8. See also Heisenberg, Werner; Uncertainty Relation Kermodc, Frank, 88 Kline, Morris, 141-142, 158. See also Cantor, Georg Kuhn, T h o m a s , 3 9 - 4 0 Lanczos, Cornelius, 45, 48 Laplace, Pierre, 42 Lawrence, D . H . , 26, 4 4 , 83, 86, ioj approach/avoidance to unconscious, 91, 103, 109

Fantasia of the Unconscious, 104 -109 incest desire in, 9 0 , 103, 105 language and, 9 6 - 9 7 Maxwellian terms in, 4 4 , 86 metaphysics of, 8 7 - 8 9 polarities in, 8 5 - 9 4 , 1 0 4 - 1 0 5

Psychoanalysis of the Uneomcmts, 104— 108

The Rainbow, 90-95 spiritual incest in, 106, 108 style in, 9 4 - 9 7

206

Index Lawrence, D . H .

substance metaphors, 75-78

(cont'd)

U n c e r t a i n t y R e l a t i o n a n d , 8 7 - 8 8 , 91,

synthesis o f p e r s o n a e , 8 2 - 8 4 w a t e r m e t a p h o r s , - 8 - 8 0 , 82

109-no w o m b i m a g e r y in, y ? , 10-7-108

Planck, M a x , 43

Women in Love, 9 6 - 1 0 2

PoJanyi, M i c h a e l , 3 9 - 4 0

Leavis, F. R . ,

Positivist P r o g r a m , 32, 38, 4 0

L e v e r e n z , D a v i d , i68n

P r i g o g i n e , Ilya, 189"

Levine, G e o r g e , i68«

Puctz, M a n f r e d , i?o« P u r d y , S t r o t h e r , 128-129

Literary h i s t o r y , 22-25

P y n c h o n , T h o m a s , 21, 27, 4 1 , 5 4 M a s o n , B o b b i e A n n , 127"

black h o l e s , 1 9 4 - 1 9 6

M a x w e l l , J a m e s C l e r k , +3

B o r g e s a n d , 183

M e n d e l s o n , E d w a r d , i68»

C a r t e s i a n d i c h o t o m y a n d , 1s7-188

M i n k o w s k i , H e r m a n n , +6, 4 9 "

c o s m o l o g y a n d , 189-197

M o r i n , E d g a r , 138

d e c o n s t r u c t i n g d y n a m i c , 168-169 equivocal f i g u r e s , 175-1-79,182

N a b o k o v , V l a d i m i r , 22, 26, 4 9 , 167 a s y m m e t r y in Ada,

120-124, 129-130

field c o n c e p t a n d , 175-179 f r a m e m e t a p h o r a n d , 179-180

a s y m m e t r y in t h o u g h t o f , 124-125

gravity a n d , 196-197

field c o n c e p t a n d , 136-137

l a n g u a g e a n d , 184-187

The Gift,

narrative t e c h n i q u e , 174-175

125-126

Look at the Harlequins! m e m o r y in Ada,

116-117

m e t a p h y s i c s o f Ada,

136—137

m i r r o r s y m m e t r y in Ada, m o v i e s i n Ada, Pale fire,

t i m e in Ada,

t h e r m o d y n a m i c s a n d , 189, 193

112, 117-118

132-134

126-127

Speak, Memory,

p a t t e r n s , 170-172 singularities, 189-193, 195

131-135

124-125, 130

119-122, 135-136

N e w m a n , James. See K a s n e r , E d w a r d N e w t o n i a n m e c h a n i c s , 16, 4 2 - 4 3 , 45, 163

Q u a n t i z a t i o n o f light, 51 Q u a n t u m m e c h a n i c s , 43 Einstein a n d , 4 9 - 5 0 h i d d e n variable t h e o r i e s a n d , 57-58 relativity a n d , 55-56 Uncertainty Relation a n d , 50-52 w a v e - p a r t i c l e d u a l i t y , 50—52

Ozier, Lance W., iyo« Parity, fall o f , 112-113. See also W u , C . S.; Wigner, Eugene Particle Physics, 58, 5 8 - 5 9 " Pauli, W o l f g a n g , 112, 173" Petersen, A a g e , 52 Pirsig, R o b e r t M . , 25, 4 0 b i f u r c a t e d n a r r a t i v e in, 70-71 as c h a r a c t e r , 7 4 - 7 7 C h a u t a u q u a , 68 definition of the G o o d , 6 6 - 6 7

Received V i e w . See S u p p e , F r e d e r i c k ; Hanson, N. R. Relativity, 4 5 - 4 9 h i d d e n variable t h e o r i e s a n d , 5-7 q u a n t u m m e c h a n i c s a n d , 55- 56 invariance o f , 4 6 See also E i n s t e i n , A l b e r t R o d i n o , R i c h a r d H . , 72, 7 4 " R o m a n t i c i s m , 17-19 Russell, B e r t r a n d , 142

lateral d r i f t , 8 0 - 8 1 linear s e q u e n c e , 79 - 8 0

S a n d e r s , S c o t t , 168;;

m o t i o n m e t a p h o r s , 75-78

Saussure, F e r d i n a n d d e , 22—23

Phaedrus, 6 4 - 6 7

Schwarzchild., Karl, 194-195

Quality, 6 4 - 6 8

Seidet, M i c h a e l , i68«

I iifiary T h m o

T H E Scientific

Field in the

C O S M I C Mnd?h

ami

Twmtifth

N. K A T H E R I N E

• P 3

W E B

i.itrrtiry

Stntlrgie>

Century

HAYI.KS

A conceptual revolution has taken place in the twentieth century, one that has radically altered ways of thinking nlmnt not only the sciences but mathematics, philosophy, linguistic*, arid literature as well. As a result, Katherine fiayles says, we may be wittie«Miijf the birth of a new, holistic world view, based in large part on what *he characterizes as the field concept. From thai concept—which depict* the world as a mutually interactive whole, with each part connected to every other part by means of an underlying f i e l d — h a v e come models as diverse as quantum mechanics and Sntwmtre'ss theory of language. "A scientist as well as a literary scholar. N. Katherine llayles in her book studies the impact of field theory . . . upon the representational strategies of five writers of fiction: Robert M. Pirsig, I). II. Lawrence, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, and Thomas I'ynchon. . . . Hayles demonstrate!.s) a sure ability to make the nuances of post-Newtonian mathematics and physics available to humanists, and her study . . . is an important one: its value can only endure or grow with additional study."—Journal of English and Germanic Philology "Luminously written and argued with impressive sophistication." —American Literature N. K A T H E R I N E HAYLES is Associate Professor of English at the University of Iowa.

Cornell Paperbacks Cornell University Press

ISBN

O-flQlM-IEIO-M

r