熵化迷宮：聘瓊『第四十九批貨的叫賣』

Entropic Labyrinth in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49

鄭曉如(Hsiao-ju Zheng)

指導教授 ： 史文生教授

國立臺灣師範大學/文學院/英語學系/碩士(2004年)

摘要

中文摘要
本篇論文旨在探討聘瓊在小說『第四十九批貨的叫賣』所呈現的美學/科學、虛構/真實、認識論/本體論之間複雜的關係。聘瓊利用迷宮結構來討論耗竭與再生。文本中的城市：聖納西索代表了一個失去秩序與差異的系統。此種均一化的過程使得文本中的女主人翁陷入了非此即彼的困境：她若非孤立於唯我論，就是陷入尋找絕對秩序的偏執中；不管是那種方式都將導向自戀式的僵化。另一方面，這種熵化系統卻也可使人心免於僵化的思考及理性的分析及分類。混亂及無目的性可能同時象徵耗竭的意象及新機會的可能性。聘瓊並列科學概念及文學論述以結合空間上的迷宮與精神及心理上的迷宮。然而聘瓊並非在此作品中闡述科學概念而是挪用科學。結局的懸而不決顛覆了傳統的科學思考及讀者的閱讀習慣。由於文本中秘密組織的存在與否最後未得到證實，我們關注的焦點也從現代小說中認識論的主題轉移到後現代本體論的討論。讀者因此肩負解讀的責任並且使僵化的系統再度恢復動態。此種超越文本迷宮的過程將使創造新文本成為可能。

關鍵字

迷宮 ； 熵化 ； 耗竭 ； 自戀

並列摘要

Abstract

This thesis is intended to trace Pynchon’s project of complicating the relationship between aesthetics and science, the fictional and the real, the epistemological and the ontological in The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon draws on the labyrinthine structure, both artistically and scientifically conceived, to address the problem of exhaustion and replenishment. The fictional city, San Narciso, figures as a system running down to chaos without order or differentiation. The leveling process makes Oedipa stuck in the either/or dead end. She can either insulate herself in solipsism or fall into victim of paranoia for the new Order. Either way leads to narcissistic stalemate. The entropic system, on the other hand, can free human minds from either/or thinking or rational analysis and classification. Disorder and randomness, paradoxically, suggest exhaustion and new possibilities. The way Pynchon juxtaposes scientific notions and literary narratives insinuates the conflation between the (labyrinthine) spatial world and the (equally labyrinthine) mental one. Pynchon, in effect, does not so much illustrate science as manipulate it. The suspense of a final resolution subverts conventional scientific thinking and the act of reading. The uncertainty of the presence or the absence of the secret system reflects the shift from the dominant epistemological concern of modernist fictions to the dominant ontological concern of postmodernist fictions. Readers have to take up the responsibility of interpretation and of setting the static labyrinth into motion again. Through the creative process of going beyond the textual maze, readers can dynamically produce the texts.

並列關鍵字

labyrinth ； entropy ； exhaustion ； narcissistic

參考文獻

Works Cited

Abernathy, Peter L. “Entropy in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.” Critique 14, no.2 (1972): 18-33.

Baudrillard, Jean. “Symbolic Exchange and Death.” Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings. ed. Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. 119-48.

Borges, Jorge Luis. “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. England: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1964. 62-72.

---. “Maxwell’s Demon Cannot Operate: Information and Entropy, I and II.” Journal of Applied Physics 22 (1951): 334-43.