Quirks of the Quantum: Postmodernism and Contemporary American Fiction

Index

Index Absalom, Absalom! (Faulkner), 31, 33–34, 96–99, 142–43, 155 Aczel, Amir D., 14, 96 Aesthetics of Chaos (Gillespie), 198–99 Against Relativism: Philosophy of Science , Deconstruction and Critical Theory (Norris), 40–41 Against the Day (Pynchon), 177–93; “Against the Day” section, 182; anarchist tide at heart of, 189–90; “Bilocations,” 182; The Book of the Masked, 191–92; Chums of Chance, 180–81, 192; critical response to, 177–78; history takes over the tale, 188–89; “Iceland Spar,” 182–83, 188; light as touchstone of, 186–87, 190; “The Light over the Ranges,” 182; maps in, 192; narrative strategy in, 179–80; and 9/11, 190–91; polarized narrative in, 183–85; populist vision of, 114, 178; quantum theory influences , 43, 179, 192–93; Quaternion/ Vectorian war in, 185; quests in, 186; as revenge-tragedy, 181; “Rue Du Depart ,” 182; social and political aspects of, 178 American Pastoral (Roth), 143 Amis, Martin, 160 analogy: in Auster’s The Book of Illusions , 154; Bell on, 24; between material world and aesthetic experience, 35; as never ultimate truth, 29; Norris on, 40; in postmodern fiction, 45 antimatter, 16, 22 “As If” (DeLillo), 166 atoms: beta decay, 21; Bohr’s model of 1913, 49; versus dark matter, 26; identity of parts of, 16–17; understanding of, 20 Attridge, Derek, 195 Auster, Paul: chaos and chance in fiction of, 70; creates characters who are aware of creating themselves, 146; linear plots and narrative trajectories broken down by, 63; polarities in criticism of, 9–10; quantized style of, 94; quantum theory influences, 43; sentences and paragraphs of, 114–15, 117. See also Book of Illusions, The; City of Glass; Leviathan; Man in the Dark; Moon Palace Baggott, John, 2 Barthes, Roland, 157 210 : Index Batty, Nancy E., 33 Baudelaire, Charles, 120 Baudrillard, Jean, 10, 37, 40 “Belief in Our Biographies” (DeLillo), 166 Bell, John, 19, 24 Beller, 38 Beloved (Morrison), 99, 103, 162 Bergson, Henri, 32 Berkeley, George, 153 Bérubé, Michael, 7–8, 36 beta decay, 21 big bang theory, 25–27, 29, 50 “Big Two-Hearted River” (Hemingway ), 96 Birkerts, Sven, 82–83 “Birthmark, The” (Hawthorne), 151 black holes: in Auster’s The Book of Illusions, 148, 149; and belief in origins , 154; death compared with, 147, 148; in Didion’s Democracy, 91; in Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking , 139; information swallowed by, 141; knowledge of, 73 Blakelock, Ralph Albert, 86 Blithedale Romance, The (Hawthorne), 142 Body Artist, The (DeLillo): birds in, 102; causality undercut in, 44–45; death in, 101, 104, 131, 136–37, 138; DeLillo grapples with quantum theory for, 5, 137; fiction’s first quantum character in, 102–3; opening lines of, 7, 100, 101; paper clip episode, 101–2, 137; quantum theory influences, 43; rampant discontinuities in, 80; on seeing as skill, 81; style in, 100–105 Bohm, David, 15 Bohr, Niels: on abstract quantum description , 18; atomic model of 1913, 49; as comfortable with ambiguities and contradictions, 24; on complementarity , 15, 37–38, 48, 49, 52, 174; in DeLillo’s notebooks, 5; in Grimes’s The Old Wine Shades, 53; on the irreducibly inaccessible, 70, 75; on language and quantum realm, 16, 51, 62; on particle-wave duality, 2; on perceptions trapping imaginations, 130; and postmodernism, 35; on quantum and macroscopic worlds, 55, 63; on quantum theory as shocking, 7; radical epistemology attributed to, 47–49, 76; on thermodynamics, 61; vision as having permeated our conceptions, 41; visual concept of electron, 19 Bolles, Edmund, 24 Boltzmann, Ludwig Eduard, 29 Book of Common Prayer, A (Didion): causal connections break down in, 44; disruption of narrative in, 87–92; final design absent in, 92; first-person narrators in, 88, 143; inaccessible mystery in, 108; mystery genre transformed by, 47; origins in, 156; quantum theory influences, 43; style in, 106 Book of Illusions, The (Auster), 148–54; bizarre, episodic plot of, 151; death in, 131, 148, 149–50, 151, 153, 154 Born, Max, 16 Bowen, Zack, 198 Browne, Malcolm W., 81, 137–38, 168 Bruno, Giordano, 125 butterfly effect, 28, 199 cause and effect: in American idea of progress, 84; in Auster’s The Book of Illusions, 154; in Auster’s Leviathan, Index : 211 144–45; in Auster’s Moon Palace, 85, 115; in big bang theory, 25, 26, 27; causal plots, 52, 58, 180; in chaos theory, 28; in classical thought, 48; deconstruction of, 43; in DeLillo’s Libra, 79; in DeLillo...