Bilocations, Chapter Eleven: That Göttingen Rag!

So, Kit is finally in this Reimammian Mecca. If you want to call it that. Which apparently I do. He meets Yashmeen, and they chat, and there's a certain amount of sexual tension, maybe, but they remain platonic.

Actually, they talk about math. A LOT. As does everyone in this chapter. It's pretty, not gonna lie, inaccessible. Quoth Kit:

Actually, I've been looking for a way, not to solve the Riemann problem so much as to apply the ζ-function to vector-type situations, for instance taking a certain set of vectorial possibilities as if it was mappable into the set of complex numbers, and investigating properties and so forth, beginning with vector systems in the prime-numbered dimensions--the well-known two and three of course, but then five, seven, eleven, and so forth as well. (591)

Kit you smooth talker you! When Yashmeen leaves, she engages in some math-related magic:

By mistake the door she chose to exit by was not the back door, though it looked--and from its swing, weighed--about the same, indeed seemed to be located in the same part of Kit's rooms, as the back door, and yet, strangely, was not the back door. How could this be? Actually, it was not even a door to begin with, but something designed to allow the human brain to interpret as a door, because it served a similar function." (592).

So that's nice'n'mysterious. One might be feeling a bit at sea here--I've got to admit, I'm skipping over a lot that I just don't feel capable of parsing in a useful way--but this may be of use: "The political crisis in Europe maps into the crisis in mathematics" (594). IS THIS ALL AN ALLEGORY? IS IT?!?

Well, at any rate, politics IS happening. This is definitely 1904-05. I don't know what my issue was. Mainly violence in Russia. And there are Russian spies everywhere: "they were trying to blend in, but certain telltale nuances--fur hats, huge unkempt beards, a tendency in the street to drop and begin dancing the kazatsky to music only they could hear--kept giving them away" (595). Yashmeen is concerned that she, the adopted daughter of a general, may be of interest.

And yet, life goes on: she's dating "a wealthy coffee scion named Günther von Quassel, who, on their first date, "had tried to explain to her the Riemann problem by means of statistical mechanics." Sexxxy! I have to say, the math here really is pretty indigestible. I think you can at least make the argument that Pynchon might've done a better job of integrating it into the text--I mean, god forbid I should be soft enough to suggest he make anything easy, but still.

There is some interesting talk of dimensions: "we can look at the 'fourth dimension' as if it were time, but is really something of its own, and 'Time' is only our least imperfect approximation." But--protests one of the Russians--"beyond the third...do dimensions exist as something more than algebraists' whimsy? Can we be given access to them in some more than mental way?" (602). Good questions. Fuck-ed if I know.

Ooh, but I can't not make note of this:

"In Geheimrat Klein's shop, we were more used to expressing vectors without pictures, purely as an array of coefficients, no relation to anything physical, not even space itself, and writing them in any number of dimensions--according to Spectral Theory, up to infinity."

"And beyond," added Günther, nodding earnestly." (603)

Yup: there's a Toy Story reference in my Pynchon novel. RIGHT. THE. FUCK. ON.

Anyway, I'm going to try to get to something that spends less time trying to force my brain into directions it doesn't want to go into. Catch ya on the flip side.