Perplexidade

é aquilo que naturalmente experimentamos perante as obras de escritores como Donald Barthelme ou Thomas Pynchon (cuja imagem aqui reproduzo aquando da sua aparição nos Simpsons); autores que a crítica encerrou numa gaveta designada meta-ficção.
Muita dessa perplexidade decorre dos insistentes diálogos que esses autores exibem com diferentes campos do saber.
No caso de Pynchon, em particular de The Crying of Lot 49, emergem conceitos como entropia.
Anindita Dutta analisa-os em The Paradox of Truth, the Truth of Entropia.
Deste ensaio que podereis ler na íntegra em
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/papers_dutta.html
deixo-vos o passo seguinte:

"Thermodynamic entropy is the measure of this disorganization in the universe. In a closed, isolated system, the total quantity of energy remains the same, but irreversible transformations or chemical reactions within this system cause a loss in the grade or quality of the energy. In The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa Maas realizes that she is within "the confinement of [a] tower"(pg.20), similar to the closed system in which entropy thrives. If she does not open her system, her energy will slowly degrade, till she is nothing more than a body of random disorder. Towards the end of the first chapter, Oedipa goes into the bathroom, and "[tries] to find her image in the mirror and couldn't. She had a moment of nearly pure terror"(pg.41). An image is created when light or other radiation falls upon an object of different densities, causing light scattering that is reflected in the mirror. If there were no differences in density, and only random, disordered motion, there would not be a projected image to project."