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 Come from nothing.

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Sure, sure. Come from "nothing". If we regard light as nothing then this statement makes sense. And isn't that the essence of the religious experience? If we disregard, or remain ignorant, of the things which cause the thing to happen, then we witness God at work. We see a miracle. We see the rabbit appear from an empty hat and we gasp and yell, "Praise God!" We see an endless supply of handkerchiefs come from the robes of the Bishop and we shout, "Hallelujah!" We see the sun disappear in the middle of the day and we cower in fear and repent our sins.
    Or we don't and we realize that the only thing to come from nothing is nothing. There's always an explanation. Unless you're Soy Rakelson in 1988 and you're trying to show all of your friends how stupid they are by not believing in God with a bunch of tricks you learned from C. S. Lewis. Although, really, his biggest trick was "Nothing comes from nothing! Therefore, God!" which is what I've been trying to explain away with the same trick! Soy could just never get a handle on the whole "Nothing comes from nothing, therefore something we just currently don't understand about reality." It's weird to go straight to God when you don't know the answer to something since God works differently than every other answer we have to questions. Our answers always play by reality's rules. And if we don't know the rules yet, we figure we'll learn them at some point. But God is like playing The Game of Life and when you need to pay your taxes, you just grab some money out of the Monopoly box.

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 And Merle saw the image appear.

* * * * * * * * * *

Out of nothing, something. Merle's having a religious experience now. The Ur religious experience. The Creation Myth. We know Merle's suffering from a religious experience because he becomes completely wrapped up in photography after this moment. I used the word "suffering" because who needs a religious experience? It's more pain than it's worth. It's like getting arthritis but for your consciousness. And, yes, this is science and it can all be explained so as religious experiences go, it's pretty crap. I would have simply said this was a moment of true wonder for Merle or that he was stunned into amazement. But that's not what Pynchon's going for here. He wants us to witness Merle witnesses the profound, visualizing a miracle of the 19th Century.

Also this is still about writing! The writer does all stuff with mixing the big words and dumping them onto a plate (page!) so that readers can see the story.

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 "Now watch."

* * * * * * * * * *

Boobies.

*drools in my drool cup*

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 Stirring it all in a beaker, he put the plate in a developing tray and poured the mixture over it.

* * * * * * * * * *

If I ever write a novel that involves a scene that relies heavily on science, I'm not going to research how it's done at all. I'm just going to write, "Then the scientist mixed the mumblemumble up with the hydrogen . . . other stuff . . . and poured it in the thing that made it work." If my editor gets upset, I'll just point him to this scene and be all, "It was good enough for Pynchon!" Then I'll immediately run out of the room so I don't have to hear his logical and rational reasons for how Pynchon made his scene work by having the viewpoint be from a person who doesn't understand what he's watching so it shouldn't all make sense. But then I'll scream from down the hall as I wait for my escape elevator, "WELL MY SCENE IS FROM MY POINT OF VIEW AND I DON'T KNOW SHIT! CHECKMATE, BITCH!"

Um, I think this scene is more stuff about the alchemy of writing! Pynchon pointing out that writing is like photography. You think of a scene and do some mumbo-jumbo science and/or magic to develop that scene into the image you want the reader to imagine in their head. Then the reader either pictures that scene or has to re-read the scene because they suddenly realize they were just picturing boobies in their head for the last half a page. Don't you hate when you do that? Man, sometimes I even do that while looking at boobies in Playboy! Then I'm all, "Man! Now I have to flip back and re-look at all those boobies because I was picturing so many other boobies!"

Man, now I have a craving for boobies.

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 Started measuring out liquids from two or three different bottles, keeping up a sort of patter meantime, hardly any of which Merle could follow—"Pyrogallic, mumblemumble citric, potassium bromide . . . ammonia . . ."

* * * * * * * * * *

Sometimes Pynchon is just writing about the effort it takes to read what he's written. And then he ends in an ellipsis in a closed quotation mark without adding a period outside the quotation mark to indicate the sentence is over and it's time to move on. But when you do move on as if the sentence were continuing outside of the quotation mark, the next sentence begins with a capital letter so, apparently, the sentence did end?
    I'm not an expert on punctuation or grammar or writing or the English language (being that it's my native language, I don't have to actually know anything about it. That's how native languages work! You're just an amateur speaker your entire life unless you actually take some time to learn about it) so I'm probably just mixed up because of those reasons. I'm sure Pynchon did everything exactly correct here. Especially in his use of an em dash and the word "mumblemumble". Perfect! No complaints!

"keeping up a sort of patter meantime"
That's Pynchon. Keeping up a sort of patter for 1100 pages.

"hardly any of which Merle could follow"
Merle's us trying to read those 1100 pages and constantly saying, "Duh?" while scratching our heads and asses. I try to keep a drool cup next to me while I read Pynchon so I can discreetly hide my idiotic shame when I'm done by dumping it down the toilet instead of wearing my "incomprehension drool" on my chin and shirt. That's a free tip for other readers!

"Pyrogallic"
I'm not going to look this word up because I'm pretty sure it means an arsonist from France.

"citric"
Like a lime or an orange or that comedian, Citric the Entertainer.

"potassium bromide"
This pair of words has both "ass" and "bro" in them so you might think it has something to do with a Fraternity. In actuality, it's used to treat epilepsy in dogs. Which is weird because where did the epileptic dog come from and what's it doing in the dark room? Oh wait! It's also used in developing photos as it "improves differentiation between exposed and unexposed crystals of silver halide, and thus reduces fog" according to Stephen Anchell and Bill Troop in their fascinating book, The Film Developing Cookbook (which I did not read. I just got the quote from Wikipedia).

"ammonia"
This is also part of the magic solution which creates photos from light stained on glass. Oh, did I not mention that another thing I'm not an expert in is science and photography?