Jumbled Thoughts Falling Into Place

Thomas Pynchon’s “Entropy” reads as a collegiate anecdote with the rambles of Kerouac and the refinement of Fitzgerald. By comparing and contrasting two very different settings, Pynchon examines public and private spheres in a physical sense as well as a social analysis. He carefully assembles the initial party scene with delicate allusions to his finer taste (exclusive LPs and cannabis sativa) among strews of passed out girls. I imagine Meatball's shabby apartment occupied by drugs, bottles, and grad students; an intellectual bender in which beatniks sport horn-rimmed glasses and talk physics. From here, he moves to a quieter realm: Callisto’s sanctuary upstairs. Intensive attention to detail creates a fine balance of feng shui central to Callisto’s need for absolute harmony: “Hermetically sealed, it was a tiny enclave of regularity in the city’s chaos, alien to the vagaries of the weather, of national politics, of any civil disorder. Through trial-and-error Callisto had perfected its ecological balance, with the help of the girl its artistic harmony, so that the swayings of its plant life, the stirrings of its birds, and human inhabitants were all as integral as the rhythms of a perfectly-executed mobile.”  Ironically, Castillo’s perfectly-crafted world depends on the unpredictable forces of nature (birds and plants) and mankind (himself and Aubade): “He and the girl could no longer, of course, be omitted from that sanctuary; they had become necessary to its unity. … They could not go out.” According to the laws of thermodynamics, this man-made ecosystem could not remain in perpetual balance unscathed by outside forces. Eventually, Castillo’s entire world would implode in spite of his countless efforts to maintain it. As Meatball's party raged into its 41st hour, the slowing heartbeat of a dying bird one floor above determines the final state of whirling matter. Objects remain at rest as Aubade's fistfuls of broken glass bring the outside world into focus and, "the hovering, curious dominant of their separate lives should resolve into a tonic of darkness and the final absence of all motion."