Paisely and Fifi commentary on Offshoot One

 

FiFi: I find this book so confusing. The Author (Noah) does not use chapters to organize his work. Instead, he uses this strange organization of Offshoots, Roots and Rootlets. I don't get it. 

Paisley: I agree that it is weird. However, I happened to be awake when our Noah was discussing this with our Libby. At the time, he had convinced Libby to watch a documentary on something called the Mandelbrot Set. Inherent in the concept of the Mandelbrot Set was the concept Chaos Theory and Fractals. I believe the documentary was called "The Colors of Infinity." 

Fifi What is chaos theory?

Paisley: I don't think I can answer that quite yet, but I'm sure it has something to do with the novel. Getting back to Fractals, they were self-similar shapes in Nature that repeat themselves on different scales of size, The documentary mentioned cauliflower as an example. If you break off a piece of a cauliflower head, that piece will resemble a microversion of the whole. If you then break off a smaller piece from that piece, you get an even smaller microversion of the whole. From what I gathered, this pattern is most iconically represented by the Mandelbrot set. 

Fifi: and what does this have to do with the organization of the book?   

Paisley: I think the Mandelbrot Set inspired the Noah, and he wanted to organize his book in a fractal pattern. The book is called "Mandelbrot the Tree," and it's broken down into Offshoots, Roots and rootlets. 

Fifi: I think The Noah has watched The Colors of Infinity many times before. I think I remember seeing it too. One of the commentators on that documentary described the fractal shape at the heart of the Mandelbrot set as looking like a bug. That reminds me of the scene in the first few pages of the novel when a bug emerges out of the main character's belly button. And, it just occurred to me that the Mandelbrot set is very colorful,

Paisley: That's right! It's like the novel is saying that chaos breeds life or that maybe chaos is life. 

Fifi: Now I'm beginning to get some sense of the Novel's Fractal conception. There are images reminiscent of birth, death, rebirth and evolution repeated on different levels with images that are similar, but not exactly so 

Paisley: Yes, the novel begins with a double-helix image and that image repeats itself in different forms in later pages, 

Fifi: and maybe this concept of fractals might explain why the narrative unfolds in fragmented time.

Paisley: Yes, but let's save our discussion of time for the next blog post.