“He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him as much as ‘Trystero’ bothered Oedipa. But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of entropy. One having to do with heat-engines, the other to do with communication. The equation for one, back in the ‘30’s, had looked like the equation for the other. It was a coincidence. The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell’s Demon.”
Pynchon’s novels are so densely woven with various scientific concepts, where often readers comment to the effect that they only remember ten-percent of each chapter after a reading, that there is even a literary wiki (PynchonWiki.com) dedicated to the exploration of six of Pynchon’s novels: Against the Day (2006), Thomas Pynchon's most recent novel; Mason & Dixon (1997); Vineland (1990); Gravity's Rainbow (1973), Pynchon's awe-inspiring third novel; The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Pynchon's second novel; and V. (1960) Pynchon's first novel (the latter three as pictured on the site below). [9] |
"Nevertheless," continued Callisto, "he found in entropy, or the measure of disorganization for a closed system, an adequate metaphor to apply to certain phenomena in his own world. He saw, for example, the younger generation responding to Madison Avenue with the same spleen his own had once reserved for Wall Street, and in American 'consumerism' discovered a similar tendency from the least to the most probable, from differentiation to sameness, from ordered individuality to a kind of chaos. He ... envisioned a heat-death for his culture in which ideas, like heat-energy, would no longer be transferred, since each point in it would ultimately have the same quantity of energy, and intellectual motion would, accordingly, cease. "
“After having been worked with in a restrained way for the next 70 or 80 years [after its first formulation in 1865 by Rudolf Clausius], entropy got picked up on by some communication theorists and given the cosmic moral twist it continues to enjoy in current usage.”In the following oft-quoted passage, Pynchon explains how, as is the case for many if not most, he found difficulty in his attempts to understand the notion of entropy: [19]
“Since I wrote this story ["Entropy"] I have kept trying to understand entropy, but my grasp becomes less sure the more I read. I’ve been able to follow the OED definitions, and the way Isaac Asimov explains it, and even some of the math. By the qualities and quantities will not come together to form a unified notion in my head. It is cold comfort to find that Gibbs himself described entropy in written form as ‘far-fetched … obscure and difficult of comprehension’.”
“Any method involving the notion of entropy, the very existence of which depends on the second law of thermodynamics, will doubtless seem to many far-fetched, and may repel beginners as obscure and difficult of comprehension.”
Left: Pynchon in high school yearbook (1953). Left (center): Pynchon sitting, in a row of people, (c.1954). Right (center): Pynchon at (convention?) with press identification tags in Japanese and English (c. 1970). Right: Pynchon with paper bag on his head in an episode of The Simpsons, where he voices his own lines (2004). |
See main: Nobel prize winners in thermodynamicsIn connection to other Nobel Prize laureates in thermodynamics, in recent years, Pynchon has frequently been cited as a contender and seems to be in the running for the Nobel prize in literature, likely having been already nominated many times, but not yet won (similar to Gilbert Lewis, nominated 35 times). Likewise, in November of 2004 Austrian playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in literature (announced in October), commented, in an interview regarding her translations of Pynchon’s works, that: [15]
“Sure, I am fond of translating. But I wouldn’t translate Pynchon again. Not that I don’t consider him to be a genius. It’s a joke that he hasn’t got the Nobel Prize and I’ve got it. I do consider him as one the most important authors, far ahead of Philip Roth by the way. I cannot get the Nobel Prize if Pynchon hasn’t got it. That’s against the laws of nature. For the record, please.”
“Pynch; P&G Yearbook; Trade Fair 2, 3; Sr. Play student director; Spanish Club 3, 4: Honor Society 3, 4; likes pizza; dislikes hypocrites; pet possession, a typewriter; aspires to be a physicist.”