Fifi and Paisley Discuss the Flow of Time in Mandelbrot

 

Fifi: The way that time unfolds in Mandelbrot is confusing, and it makes the story line hard to follow. 

Paisley: I didn't have a hard time following the narrative, but I found it impossible to follow the story line. 

Fifi: I don't understand the distinction you're making between story line and narrative. 

Paisley: For me, a storyline implies events unfolding in a linear fashion -- like on a line. When I think of the word storyline, I think of a distinct past, present and future. A narrative, on the other hand, is the way in which the events are portrayed. It's a perspective or philosophy of the word

Fifi: So I guess our Noah is trying to show us that the world is fragmented and chaotic, 

Paisley: The Noah does seem like he is very much interested in Chaos Theory. I suspect, however that his conception of chaos is different than the convention. Fragmented, but in a sense connected at the same time. 

Fifi: This reminds me about a time the Noah was listening to Charles Ives' fourth symphony. He was saying something about different melodies forming layers that drifted into each other. The music to me sounded fragmented, but also part of a greater whole. 

Paisley: Perhaps, it was like a musical lasagna that has had time to age in the refrigerator. There are different layers of ingredients, but their flavors interfuse into each other. They are both separate and together.

Fifi: Perhaps with the narrative in Mandelbrot, the Noah is creating a "time lasagna" so to speak. When I think of it that way, I can imagine different layers of time. 

Paisley: Yes, on one level there is time from the perspective of life on this planet that was emphasized at the very beginning of the story

Fifi: To me, that section seemed more like the development of consciousness, not so much biological life.

Paisley: Maybe those are two interfusing layers.

Fifi: I think there is also time from the perspective of Gregor, the main character

Paisley: He's sort of a main character, but then he transforms into that weird "Hectic Norder." 

Fifi; Yes, as I remember Hectic's body was an amalgamation of many different animal parts fusing into each other. It was almost as if he represented the aspect of interfusing itself.

Paisley: There was also time from the perspective of the development of modernity.

Fifi: I think I understand how this interfusing connects with fractals. Themes from each layer repeat themselves on smaller scales throughout the book. That sounds like a difficult undertaking.

Paisley: I wonder what inspired him to write a book in such a complex manner.

Fifi: Why don't we explore that at another time. 

 

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.