Entropy by Thomas Pynchon
"Entropy" is a short story by Thomas Pynchon that explores themes related to chaos, order, and the interconnectedness of life. The narrative unfolds during the chaotic final hours of a party thrown by Meatball Mulligan, which serves as a backdrop to the introspective thoughts of Callisto, an upstairs tenant. Callisto lives in a warm, plant-filled apartment, carefully nurturing a sick bird, which symbolizes his struggle against the inevitable decline represented by entropy.
As the story alternates between the lively party below and Callisto's contemplative state, it delves into philosophical musings on thermodynamics and the concept of heat death, suggesting a parallel between physical entropy and societal decay. The juxtaposition of the vibrant party atmosphere with Callisto’s isolated existence highlights the tension between chaos and the desire for order. The narrative culminates in the bird’s death and a symbolic shattering of glass, signifying the merging of the insulated warmth of Callisto's world with the cold, chaotic reality outside. Pynchon’s work invites readers to consider the implications of entropy not only in physics but also in their own lives and social structures.
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Entropy by Thomas Pynchon
First published: 1960
Type of plot: Allegory
Time of work: February, 1957
Locale: A suburb of Washington, D.C.
Principal Characters:
Meatball Mulligan , the proprietor of the lower floor of the house in which the story occursSandor Rojas , a former Hungarian freedom fighterSaul , Meatball's friendCallisto , a nihilistic philosopherAubade , Callisto's female companion
The Story
The narrative opens with an evocation of the fortieth hour of Meatball Mulligan's lease-breaking party, complete with drunken revelers, much debris, and loud music. The latter awakens the upstairs tenant Callisto from an uneasy sleep, and the scene shifts to his apartment, which is a kind of sealed hothouse luxuriating in plants and protected from the wintry weather outside, where it has been, the reader learns, precisely thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit for three days running (despite announced changes in weather by the newscasters).
Callisto has been nursing a sick bird back to health, attempting to keep it alive with the warmth and energy from his own body—as if their continuous existences were a single system, an enclosed heat engine (into which the tropically warm room has, in effect, been made). For several pages, the story shifts back and forth from the thoughts and occasional audible remarks of Callisto to Meatball's party downstairs. The latter includes a brief conversation between Meatball's friend Saul, whose female companion Miriam has recently left him, the intrusion of a group of drunken sailors on shore leave and in search of a party, and the eventual decision by Meatball to attempt to quell the anarchy that ultimately breaks out and to attempt to keep the party going for several more hours. In the meantime, Callisto reflects on the concept of entropy, on the possibility that the universe will ultimately suffer heat death and cease to act at all (the first sign of which is the constant thermometer reading outside his window), and on the possible implications of the laws of thermodynamics for social existence (this with some help from those investigators who had appropriated the term "entropy" from physics to information theory). The story ends with the death of the bird and with Aubade's breaking the glass that separates her and Callisto from the cold outside, as the two of them await the equilibrating of the temperatures between outside and inside, the ultimate consequence, for them at least, of the principle of entropy.
Bibliography
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Copestake, Ian D. American Postmodernity: Essays on the Recent Fiction of Thomas Pynchon. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.
Grant, J. Kerry. A Companion to "V." Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001.
Hite, Molly. Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1983.
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Mead, Clifford. Thomas Pynchon: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Materials. Elmwood Park, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 1989.
Patell, Cyrus R. K. Negative Liberties: Morrison, Pynchon, and the Problem of Liberal Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
Seed, David. The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1988.
Walhead, Celia M. "Mason and Dixon: Pynchon's Bickering Heroes." Pynchon Notes 46-49 (Spring-Fall, 2000-2001): 178-199.