What do you think of Math/STEM in literature a la Pynchon/DFW/Richard Powers? Is it stupid masturbatory shit just to impress ignorant English Majors with fancy symbols? Does Math/Science have a place in literature, or should it be reserved more for those advanced sci-fi novels that actually explore scientific ideas?
If it relates to the story it's fine.
Deriving Einstein's e=mc^2 as a means of talking about relativity, for example, would work well in a story.
There are scientifically-minded people out there. Why shouldn't we hear stories from their perspective?
>>7759445
>Is it stupid masturbatory shit just to impress ignorant English Majors with fancy symbols?
I can't comment about DFW/Power, but, fuck, man, Gravity's Rainbow isn't that difficult and it makes sense.
He's writing about the change in culture that occurred with the military industrial complex of WWII.
He tied a lot of things together brilliantly in a way that a great historian only wished he could have done.
>>7759445
is Powers good? been looking to pick up some of his stuff.
Well of course it has a place--for instance, DFW uses the idea that any two points no matter how close together contain an infinity (clearly I'm an English Major, but that's the gist of it, anyway). I've read that the math he uses is actually wrong in some parts, but that doesn't really matter: the idea of any two points containing infinities adds to larger ideas of personhood and choice, while also being a big part Schtitt's tennis mentality. In another spot he uses math as a device to show that "truth" exists even if it has to be discovered (think of the plot--the story doesn't end without resolution, really: the reader is tasked with having to discover the truth). This is a vague summary of larger ideas in a 1000+ page novel, but you get the point.
So yes, I think "Math/STEM" has a place so long as it adds to larger ideas and/or character development and isn't just "masturbatory shit."
>>7759445
The greatest fiction writer of all time (Borges, obviously) made constant use of philosophical/mathematical/scientific elements as key players in the majority of his stories so I'd say it has its place
>>7759470
>He tied a lot of things together brilliantly in a way that a great historian only wished he could have done.
Because real historians tend to avoid attributing large and incredibly complex changes in the world to neat and connected factors which can be summed up in a few hundred pages.
So many English undergraduates (or any students of the humanities, really) run for the hills when mathematics gets mentioned. If only they realised it is taught wrongly in our education, and that if they could just teach themselves to think properly, they too could understand the patterns at play. The biggest collective misstep in any English department is that their final and most important lesson isn't the fact that mathematics is the truest, purest, simplest, most complicated, most profound and most elegant language at our disposal. How else does one expect to put down on paper what it means to be a human being?
>>7759494
Borges said that that thing you are referring to is how the Ulysses works, a segment can be divided into an arbitrary amount of segments (a day too)
The library of Babel is IMO the most based piece of fiction with mathematical themes
I loved the idea of a book with an infinite amount of infinitesimal pages
>>7759599
>idea of a book with an infinite amount of infinitesimal pages
If I remember correctly the books in The Library of Babel had a finite number of pages/characters.
>>7759470
>He's writing about the change in culture that occurred with the military industrial complex of WWII.
Uhh, what change would that be?
>>7759445
I think it is a fruitful partnership anon.
The future is tech, which is delineated by math and science.
Writers who can describe the relationship technology to society are valuable because we have little explicit understanding of these new frontiers.
A writer with a STEM background is even better because they will approach writing about these topics as an insider and with a clearheaded understanding of the concepts.
>>7759445
>Is it stupid masturbatory shit just to impress ignorant English Majors with fancy symbols?
As a mathematician who has read "Everything and More", I find this to be an accurate assessment. Also see his interview with Micheal Silverblatt wherin he spouts total BS about fractals and the Sierpinski gasket.
>>7759696
Everything and More was pretty damn bad to bee aych familia
>>7759599
u're remembering a diff book
Amusing quote from GR
>For days, as it turned out, the gangsters had known Squalidozzi was in the neighborhood: they could infer to his path, though he himself was invisible to them, by the movements of the police, which were not. Blogett Waxwing--for it was he--used the analogy of a cloud chamber, and the vapor trail a high-speed particle leaves . . .
>"I don't understand."
>"Not sure I do either, pal. But we have to keep an eye on everything, and right now all the hepcats are going goofy over something called 'nuclear physics.'"
>>7759641
You are right, but at the end there is a footnote that refers to the idea of such a book
>>7759729
It was reviewed in a math journal, look it up. They erred on the side of politeness and collegiality
i hope joshua cohen had a shit leap day
Pynchon's case makes sense as the whole thing appears during the description of the rocket, whitin the story of one of its engineers, so we're in a sense being immersed into his perspective. In IJ it added nothing from what I recall
Math is just a bunch of metaphors structured by logic. It's as appropriate as an other set of metaphors - it depends on what you're trying to say.
>>7759888
>>7759999
>>7759472
Yes, thematically he's halfway between DFW and Pynchon, but much less pessimistic than either— indeed his book's biggest fault are their maudlin nature. Only Gold Bug Variations really conquers his love of perfect characters by being so utterly intelligent in all other matters. However, Plowing the Dark's Lebanese subplot is one of the best pieces of fiction written in the last twenty years.
>>7759696
http://kelseylee.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/103556953/Rhetoric%20and%20the%20Math%20Melodrama%20Article.pdf
>>7759696
Everything and More isn't fiction, though. That was just ol Big Dave being a dumbass. Besides, it's hardly enough to make such a broad characterization like that. And the stuff in that interview is actually totally correct, he was literally that autistic about the structure of IJ. Of course it's an approximation, but it still has the general shape.
>>7760006
HOLY SHIT! Triple 8's followed immediately by quadruplet 9's.
>>7759445
>Does Math/Science have a place in literature
Yes, when used right: Pynchon, Calvino - it doesn't even have to *be* right - ...
>Is it stupid masturbatory shit just to impress ignorant English Majors with fancy symbols?
... but this is where you put your DFW and Lacan.
>>7761197
> calvino
Cosmicomiche is pretty good in mitosis
>>7761269
the moment you joined
>>7759445
i only laughed at DFW's essay on mathematics and tennis. He threw in similes that were pretty fucking stupid and unnecessary IIRC
>>7761269
>abloobloo people won't accept the quirky stoner hermit's gimmick literature as gospel
