At 11:19 AM 6/3/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>Another subtitle is "Some notes toward the modular calculus, part one."
>(And an appendix is part two; and the Neveryon books continue the
>series.) The "modular calculus" is, or is supposed to be, simply the
>study of what must be present in both A and B (or what must pass from B
>to A) for us to meaningfully say that A models B. Frankly, I have never
>quite worked out what the story of TRITON had to do with the modular
>calculus...

Perhaps it's because I empathize so strongly with Bron (TROUBLE ON TRITON
is the example which taught me that "A satire, to be useful, must be
misunderstood"), but it seems fairly plain to me:

The chief practitioner of the modular calculus in the novel is Bron. The
discipline was founded by another straight guy from Mars. Although Bron, no
intellectual or philosopher, doesn't appreciate the foundational works, the
one character in the novel who's met both Bron and the discipline's
originator comments on how much alike they are.

Only someone ill at ease with an accepted model -- of logic, for example --
seeks alternatives to it. Only someone like Bron, who remains unable to
choose between apparently distinct logical choices and unable to agree with
reasonable arguments while also unable to let go of the appearance of
disciplined rationality, would have such a knack for the modular calculus.

What this suggests is that not only can you always find someone who will be
unhappy in a social system, no matter how utopian, but that such unhappy
people will, despite (or because of) their many misperceptions, be able to
perceive (or create, if you prefer) otherwise unperceived aspects of
reality, and be able, at best, and very much along with their continued
unhappiness and pointless destructiveness, to achieve positive advances
that those who are more happily socialized cannot.

To put it another way: the young Delany idealized the
outsider-artist-criminal, and then the wide-open boho hippie community of
outsider-artist-criminals. In TRITON, he posits that in the land of
sophisticated beatniks, it's the uptight square who would be placed in that
outsider-artist-criminal part.

It's true that Bron himself achieves little within the book except
pointless destruction. But the novel ends on a low note of sublime hope,
with Bron finally realizing a dramatically shared experience. Whether he
recognizes it or not, and what he afterward does with the recognition if he
gets it, is left unwritten. But we've followed him out of a rigid lack of
possibility to a point at which possibilities finally re-open.

Best,
Ray