Ratner's Star

Through the mohole.

Utterly impenetrable, I couldn't summarize the whole plot if you asked me to, but there were some astonishingly beautiful passages. Also I do genuinely love the ending, for all I'm probably misunderstanding it.

A rounded-up five stars to reflect my reading experience and to respect these 438 pages of pinned, maxed, honed, redolent, amusing, inventive, insane, intelligent, wise, perfectly phrased, flowing, individuated, ribald prose. It's mid-'70s meta maximalism, for sure, its density eased by stretches of typically DeLillo-n dialogue in which characters speak past one another, but also I read it as a major source of inspiration for Infinite Jest, a sort of unfulfilled precedent that DFW pounced on, filling this one's "void core" with at least a semblance of emotion/sadness.

Billy, fourteen-year-old from the Bronx, Nobel Prize-winning math genius for his work on zorgs, presages Hal in IJ, and instead of the tennis academy it's a think tank with a long name, the acronym for which spells CHRIS. In IJ, they play "Eschaton," and in RS there's halfball, a similar sort of wholly complicated stickball-like game that DFW elevated and extended to fulfill in reality the fictionalized description of the work of the Great Writer in RS, Chester Greyleg Dent, who lives in a submarine tens of thousands of feet under the sea, awarded the Nobel Prize for "epic, piquant disquisitions on the philosophy of logic, the logic of games, the gamesmanship of fiction and prehistory . . . ethereally select realms of abstract mathematics and the more palpable subheights of history and biography, every published work of this humanist and polymath reflective of an incessant concern for man's standing in the biosphere and handblocked in a style best described as undiscourageably diffuse." (pg 307). Chester Greyleg Dent, himself, is a great addition to the list of great authors in great novels: Benno von Archimboldi/Hans Reiter in 2666, Bergotte in Proust, Paul Arnheim in Musil, et al.

And the more I think about this one the more I consider my reading experience "great" in that I read it daily and happily, walking and reading again at lunch for a couple miles (changed my profile pic back to the walking reader pic to honor the renewed practice), rediscovering again how effective that technique is for me, how it helps me concentrate, particularly when reading dense, mostly plotless, hyperbolic, hyperattentive prose. Reading this while walking I rediscovered my love for reading, which had lapsed post-pandemic, in part because the time I had to read on the train was gone with commute-less WFH-ing.

But mostly the prose is so compelling, amusing in its awesomeness, from the first page, which introduces a "somnolent horizon" as a fiction that leads to fresh dimensions. Very quickly into this my metafictional sensors engaged, on the lookout for commentary on the book itself ("content isn't the issue"), which was easy enough when it centered around cracking "the star code," a series of pulses from a distant star, possibly a binary star (binaries are a thematic key), or a transmission warped by dark matter (moholes) sent from some other region of the galaxy, or a transmission actually from ancient humans on earth -- like all great literature, the search for the meaning is the meaning itself, the interpretation. What I'm doing now is what it's about, making sense of the mess(age), not so much character or plot or emotional catharsis, rising action, climax, denouement, etc -- instead its about Billy's father hauling the ungainly TV set around the apartment to get a moment of clear signal. Metaphors for reading and meaning and interpretation like that abound, like the old guy going on and on about the ein sof and sefirot and other kabbalistic ideas, an ancient religious mystical search in a way to break the star code to fill the void core, or the whirling aborigine no one sees, or any number of oddball scientists and astrophysicists etc, all trying to figure it all out, man.

It's a mid-'70s novel, and the second section involves characters that didn't cohere as well for me as some in the first section, lots of amusingly described intercourse between Softly (DFW's inspiration for the name Steeply), a very pale child-size man, and a woman who's ultimately writing a novel filled with blank pages, beyond interpretation, as they all work on a super-logical content-less language any reasonably advanced intelligent alien society would be able to understand.

Ultimately, I looked forward to reading this when I wasn't reading this, in part maybe because its total commitment to undiscourageably diffuse language and all the various searches for meaning felt meaningful to me after months of being otherwise exposed to signals coming in maybe a little too clearly and insistently delivering warnings about worldwide health and sociopolitical relevance. Like all great literature, it offered an escape into the utopian realm of language in which instruction and the general fabric of reality are abstract and ambiguous, a blast from the past I found for the most part fun to read, although I agree with DFW that its void core could use filling with a semblance of emotion.

And now I'll try to read all in a row the remaining "lesser" DeLillo novels I for some reason haven't yet gotten to: Americana, Players, Running Dog, The Names, Cosmopolis, Zero K, Point Omega, and the forthcoming The Silence (and I guess The Angel Esmeralda, too). I hope to continue to have low expectations widely exceeded by these.

What a load of pretentious, incoherent nonsense this was. The author is undoubtedly tremendously intelligent, or at least educated, and he knows it. And he will make absolute sure that you will, too. But aside from that it would be nice if he could write a paragraph that holds together, which, I grant you, is not a fashionable thing to do in the period we're talking of.

Цікаві часи були в ті 70-ті роки. Цікавими були й читачі. Просто нагадаю, що в те десятиліття вийшли такі романи: "Веселка тяжіння" Т. Пінчона, "Плюс" Дж. Макелроя, "ДжАр" В. Ґеддіса, "Публічне спалення" Р. Кувера та купа іншої елітарної хардкор-літератури. Дон Делілло вирішив не залишатись осторонь та три роки готувався, щоб запилити свій найскладніший та найпостмодерністськіший роман "Зірка Ратнера".

"Зірка Ратнера" - це подорож кротовою норою Аліси в науковий Дивокрай. Де замість Чеширського кота та Капелюшника не менш дивні та з не менш дивними іменами науковці. Серед близько ста персонажів можна відшукати таких героїв як Грбк, Калліопа Шрап, Кізіл, абориген, шимпанзе Трімен (Treeman, тобто деревна людина) другий та мій улюблений Н.Л.О. (U.F.O.) Шварц, який спостерігає за прибульцями. Це роман, де читач, немов спускається у наукове пекло, але якого супроводжує ��е Вергілій, а обдолбані Ньютон з Піфагором.

Структура роману досить складна. Першим шаром все будується на математиці: наприклад, зашифрований сигнал 14 28 57 - це перше значення після коми ще Архімедового числа Пі (3.142857...), просто нагадаю, що нині відома Пі має таке значення: 3,141592; флешбеки з дитинством героя з'являються у розділах 1, 2, 4, 7, 11 і це ніщо інше, як прогресивний ряд; головний герой Біллі мешкає в Бронксі на вулиці Кротона (Crotona Avenue), що є прямим натяком на стародавнє місто Кротона (нині Кротоне) в якому Піфагор створив свою філософсько-етичну школу. І таких задачок (не завжди математичних, але точно пов'язаних з математикою) там пітьма, про які Делілло, як справжній постмодерніст не розповідає)

Другим шаром йде дзеркальність (або як називає це дослідник Делілло Том Леклер "бумерангова система"). Коли початок перегукується з кінцем. Це відстежується і в словах, написаних задом наперед (star - rats), дзеркальних подіях, так і сценами, що на початку роману можуть бути звичайними метафорами, а в кінці стати цілими епізодами.

Третім шаром йдуть перегуки з двома романами про Алісу за принципом перегуків Уліссу та гомерівщини. Перша частина "Зірки Ратнера" дублює 12 розділів "Аліси в Дивокраї". Друга частина - ледь помітні, але перегуки зі світом Задзеркалля.

Все що йде глибше - шукайте самі)

А паралельно оцьому всьому розповідається історія математики з часів Месопотамії аж до 19 століття.

І це я ще не говорю про дихотомію та символізм. Це світ, в якому тісно переплетені наука та віра, логіка та математика, наука та псевдонаука, а також, де співіснує минуле з теперішнім та як одне впливає на інше.

Головний сигнал (який може й не був нічим іншим окрім похибки) бувши посланням з попередженням для майбутньої цивілізації, в результаті стає посланням від автора читачам. Послання, яке нам також непогано було б вчасно та правильно розшифрувати.

Загалом, це складна, але прекрасна книжка, яку ніхто не розуміє))) всім раджу))

This is another try at science fiction for me. I keep hoping to find more books in the genre that I will love, but so far I can count on one hand the number of them that I have loved. This one is not among them.

DeLillo has many ideas, and it is obvious that he is intelligent and well-informed. In this novel, he experiments with mathematics, science and logic. He obviously did his research, and his discussion of the world of science is at times quite beautiful. It is difficult and dense and yet somehow the science felt accessible to me. I like this part of the book. Unfortunately that was the only part of the book that I enjoyed though. I simply didn't connect with the characters in any way, and didn't care about the story either.

DICHOTOMY & SEQUENCE:

Hard Books

"[Don DeLillo's] books are hard: all of them expressions of someone who has ideas (I don't mean opinions), who reads things other than novels and newspapers (though he clearly reads those too, and to advantage), and who experiments with literary convention."

Frank Lentricchia

) -: 0/0 :k. : k' ""( -( .

"...epic, piquant disquisitions on the philosophy of logic, the logic of games, the gamesmanship of fiction and prehistory, these early efforts preparing the way for speculative meditations on 'the unsolvable knot' of science and mysticism, which in turn led to his famous 'afterthoughts' on the ethereally select realms of abstract mathematics and the more palpable subheights of history and biography, every published work of this humanist and polymath reflective of an incandescent concern for man's standing in the biosphere and hand-blocked in a style best characterised as undiscourageably diffuse."

Don DeLillo on the writings of character Chester Greylag Dent

"It’s an experimental novel, an allegory, a lunar geography, an artful autobiography, a cryptic scientific tract, a work of science fiction."

Don DeLillo on "Somnium" (1608) by Johannes Kepler.

Most of these descriptions can be applied equally to "Ratner's Star".


REVIEW:

A Mere 438 Pages

“Ratner’s Star” is funny, playful, intelligent, mathematical, mystical, demanding, stimulating, and ultimately rewarding.

It is not suitable for every reader, which is why I have dropped it a star. However, it does deserve to be read by more fans of Post-Modernism who are labouring under a misapprehension about which authors are truly worthy in that space.

The novel packs more into its 438 pages than most Post-Modernist or maximalist books two or three times longer (at least those I’ve read, and I’ve read a few).

It’s also worth reading because it was influential on David Foster Wallace’s n  “Infinite Jest”n and, I would argue, on Joseph McElroy’s n  “Women and Men”n and William H. Gass' n  "The Tunnel"n (one of DeLillo's characters lives in a hole, and tunnels into a hole within the hole).

14 Year Old Math Wiz

Fourteen year old (little) Billy Twillig (a euphonious contraction of Terwilliger) is the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. He is invited to fly to “a distant land”, where he becomes part of a scientific team that wishes to decode and respond to a radio signal that has apparently been received from another planet (which orbits Ratner’s star). The project morphs into an attempt to develop a language (Logicon) which can be used to communicate with all potential aliens.

Mathematics has a central role in the novel, but it needn’t intimidate readers who are not mathematically (or geometrically) inclined.

If anything, the novel is just as much interested in the shortcomings of mathematics, if only in the context of the radio signal project. While we do learn the source and significance of the radio signal eventually, it’s not due to mathematical reasoning, but more to spontaneous intuition.

The narrative arc follows the increasing scepticism about mathematical logic. Initially, it is respected for its objectivity:

“There is no reality more independent of our perception and more true to itself than mathematical reality.”

“There may be a lot of crazy things in the world that scare you and me but mathematics is the one thing where there’s nothing to be afraid of or stupid about or think it’s a big mystery.”

Ultimately, we discover that reason and logic are not sufficient to help us unravel the mysteries of the universe:

“It’s not inconceivable that some things exist beyond the borders of rational inquiry.”

Names and Numbers

Traditionally, our ability to understand the world depends on words and numbers, or language and counting. We can only understand what we can name (with a word) or count. You can see in this novel the origins of DeLillo’s interest in “names”, which he explored in his next novel, n  “The Names”:n

“Names tell stories and so do numbers.”

“Know the names of things and write them like a child in elemental lists. Who was it said names and numbers give us power over the world? Spengler no less.”

"The Unsolvable Knot of Science and Mysticism" (Fresh Dimensions)

In this novel, the real narrative arc seeks to go beyond words and numbers into “fresh dimensions”. Like Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49”, the quest isn’t necessarily successful. There remains a mystery that is unsolved. In the absence of a better word (or concept), what lies outside logic, mathematics and reason falls within the realm of mysticism.

“We can pretend a little, can’t we? We’re not so scientific that we can’t have a little make-believe, right. Then, if something drips through, there’s a continuation, another chance, the universe refreshed.”

“The history of science is crosshatched with lines of additive and corrective thought. This is how we try to arrive at truth. Truth accumulates.”

“Logic is the scrub brush the mathematician uses to keep his work free of impurity. Logic says yes or no to the forms constructed through intuition. So-called intuitive truths have to be subjected to the rigors of logic before we can take them seriously, much less use them in our work...

“What we’ve got to do is restate and strengthen our method of reasoning. Make it exact and supremely taut. Introduce distinctions and fresh relationships. Argue our propositions in terms of precise ideographic symbols. Submit our mathematics, in short, to a searching self-examination. In the process we’ll discover what’s true and what’s false not only in the work before us but in the very structure of our reasoning...

“This is a revolution in the making. All science, all language wait to be transformed by what we’re doing here.”

Truth needs a little belief and a little doubt, in order to advance.

Still, without the framework of reason, on the other side of mathematics lies the abyss:

“Existence would be sheer dread without the verifiable fictions of mathematics.”

We need some tools to help us negotiate it. Ironically, they lie on a continuum that consists of:

“Theology. Logic. Mathematics. Art.”

However, are these tools enough?

Elements of Madness

Even within high level science, there is a little madness and a few madmen willing to share theirs with us:

“The Cheops Feeley Medal is the underground prize, given for work that has an element of madness to it. Of course, no one says this openly. But we all know that madness content is a determining factor.”

“Only the fiercest risks make existence possible.”

“Alternate physics, if it teaches us anything, it teaches us that once you go across the line, once you’re over the line and left without your classical resources, your rational explanations, the whole of your scientific ethos, once this happens you have to pause...You’re over the line, sure, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep going or hurl yourself into the uncharted void. This is nonsense. You pause. You reflect. You get your bearings. Alternate physics, if it’s to move out of the theoretical realm, as it may have to one day, I guarantee you, with a vengeance, and into areas of direct application, must give us the bearings we need, or, lacking bearings to give, must soothe and support.”

The Nameless Being

The realm of the mystical is the realm of the unknown, the unknowable, the hidden, the infinite, the spiritual, what is not there:

“The en-sof is the unknowable. The hidden. The that-which-is-not-there. The neither-cause-nor-effect. The G-dash-d beyond G-dash-d. The limitless. The not-only-unutterable-but-by-definition-inconceivable. Yet it emanates. It reveals itself through its attributes, the sefiroth. G-dash-d is the first of the ten sefirothic emanations of the en-sof. Without the en-sof’s withdrawal or contraction, there could be no point, no cosmic beginning, no universe, no G-dash-d.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Sof

http://www.newkabbalah.com/einsof.html

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/art...



Esoterica

Some of this is hidden in secret writings, away from the religious or scientific mainstream (I have no knowledge or understanding of the Kabbalah):

“There is always something secret to be discovered. A hidden essence. A truth beneath the truth. What is the true name of G-dash-d? How many levels of unspeakability must we penetrate before we arrive at the true name, the name of names? Once we arrive at the true name, how many pronunciations must we utter before we come to the secret, the hidden, the true pronunciation?”

“All this esoterica. Born in the East. Moving as if by stealth to other parts of the world. Always this obscurity. This secret element.”

“The mystical writings. The mystical oral traditions. The mystical interpretations, oral and written. These exist beneath the main body of thought and thinking. You don’t go into a trance reading the everyday writings. The hidden texts, try them. The untranslated manuscripts. The oral word.”

“Don’t look down your nose at esoterica. If you know the right combination of letters, you can make anything. This is the secret power of the alphabet. Meaningless sounds, abstract symbols, they have the power of creation. This is why the various parts of the mystical writings are not in proper order. Knowing the order, you could make your own world from just reading the writings. Everything is built from the twenty-two letter elements. The alphabet itself is both male and female. Creation depends on an anagram.”

“When I go into mystical states, I pass beyond the opposites of the world and experience only the union of these opposites in a radiant burst of energy. I call it a burst.”

Pantheism vs. The Kabbalah

At times DeLillo approaches a form of pantheism:

“The universe is the name of G-dash-d. All of us. Everything. Here, there, everywhere.. time and space. The whole universe. It all adds up to the true name of G-dash-d.”

DeLillo never mentions Spinoza, but he seems to haunt the novel. Ironically (or perhaps not), the editor of some of Spinoza’s works was Joseph Ratner. It would be interesting to know whether this is the source of the character’s and the star’s name.

Nevertheless, DeLillo takes his novel on a journey from mathematics to metaphysics.

Fun and Gamesmanship

There are a lot of fun and games in the novel as well.

The radio signal project is stalked by a Honduran business cabal or cartel, which changes its identity to a consortium (because it sounds more credible and less corrupt), and its name to the more abbreviated ACRONYM.

Its leader speaks in an amusing pigeon English:

“Nothing trivionis about this operation...

“Try to forgive my wordage.

“We admit to a lust for abstraction. The cartel has an undrinkable greed for the abstract. The concept-idee of money is more powerful than money itself.

“We lease and sublease multi kinds of time - makeshift, standby, conceptual et al forth. Then we either buy, sell, retain or incite revolution, all totally nonprofitless, done merely to flux the [money] curve our way.

“There are things past spelling and far beyond counting. No word or number reaches there. You must live inside a schnitt not to know of this. I can only say tant pis, piccolissimo. I position you neither here nor elsewhere. Oblivio obliviorum.

“This is life as it is lived in the world of existenz. A nothingness full of pitfalls. Pitfallful. We’re forced to conclude you extemporarily from our cartel. Nihil ex nihilo. A thing deprived of living existenz.”

The Rules of the Game

DeLillo plays Nabokovian games with us throughout the text, but he always does it according to strict rules:

“Strict rules add dignity to a game.”

This novel is both playful and dignified, without being pretentious.


SOUNDTRACK:

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - "Woodstock"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrWNT...

"We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden..."

Luna - "Math Wiz"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FYUmVb6...

"A twelve year old math wiz
Came to me in my sleep
He knew all the answers
Which he kept to himself"

The Modern Lovers - "Dignified and Old"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKmgR...

February 6, 2016

If I don’t read a good DeLillo soon then I might not be able to consider myself a fan anymore. This was a slog and I didn’t get much out of it - like most of his books, it’s essentially a series of conversations, but these ones were so overwrought and painful to get through. I had heard that this was a detour for him, funnier than his other books, some comparisons to Pynchon… only one of these is true, and it’s not a compliment.