The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 7, Book thread

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• So-Called Bill | February 22, 2005 1:04 PM | Reply

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  Definitely worth the effort. In fact, Cecil, I think that this is one of the best ideas you've ever had. If it weren't for the Deathmarch I would never have known that the narrative settles down like this and gets pretty damn compelling. I feel daily more like a real English major and less like a brain-dead poser. Not that I'm getting even half of everything that's going on, but...well, I went on this brutal, muddy hike in Hawaii. My arms and legs got scratched to shit and we had to traverse four miles of underground tunnels covered with six to twenty inches of water. We had to haul ass to make it back by sundown and there was time to appreciate only a fraction of all the beauty. But it was worth it.

• Cecil Vortex | February 22, 2005 1:42 PM | Reply

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  thanks so-called So-Called Bill. Props to so-called Zoro, with whom this idear was hatched....

  And dead-on comparison, re your Hawaii haul.

• rodney k. | February 22, 2005 2:04 PM | Reply

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  I'm with you, Other Bill. This section was the most fun yet! The RaptorMage's Campbell talk got me tripping on how deftly Pynchon works in all this German folklore. The Harz mountains (site of the Mittelwerke) are where the Brothers Grimm collected many of their tales, and to Blicero's Hansel & Gretel fantasy Pynchon stirs in Geli the Witch, Walpurgisnacht (famous from Goethe's Faust), Tannhauser under his mountain, the Niebelungen (dwarves hoarding treasures under the earth, etc.), and a Master architect, not so unlike the myth-drunk Richard Wagner, who builds things to fall (that nutty rocket logic again, what goes up must come down).

  Then there's the American myths, comic books. Was it just me, or is there more than a little of Stan Lee in this wacky Nazi rocket hideout? Marvy's madcap chase? The secret society of, um, neo-tribal space age Rocket-mythologizing Hereros? Is that what Enzian & co. are up to? Returning science to myth?

  Here's a sample of Pynchon's astounding knack for local detail: the Brocken Specter (pp. 329-31) http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/droplets/globrock.htm

• Dr Vitz | February 23, 2005 7:08 AM | Reply

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  Although I'm still checking in on the discussion, I'm not crossing referencing to the text to see where you are. Have you gotten up to "Sold on Suicide" yet?

  Dr Vitz

• cecil vortex | February 23, 2005 7:09 AM | Reply

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  "Have you gotten up to 'Sold on Suicide' yet?"

  yep -- just got past that section....

• Dr Vitz | February 23, 2005 8:03 AM | Reply

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  I am going to put forth a theory at this point.

  We are told about the song "Sold on Suicide" that, "The trouble with it is that by Godel's Theorem there is bound to be some item around that one has omitted from the list, and such an item is not easy to think of off the top of one's head, so that what one does most likely is go back over the whole thing, meantime correcting mistakes and inevitable repetitions, and putting new items that will surely have occurred to one, and - well, it's easy to see that the "suicide" of the title might have to be postponed indefinitely!"

  I think this says a lot about Pynchon's view of apocalypse. Yes - the second law of thermodynamics ensures the death of the universe. But there is an infinite number of possible delays between now and then. It's sort of like Zeno's paradox. You're always getting closer, but you are never there.

  Dr Vitz

• Al Diablo | February 23, 2005 11:47 PM | Reply

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  I just realized I'm reading the wrong book.

  Will I still get credit for reading "Swim Naked, Defy Gravity & 99 Other Essential Things To Accomplish Before Turning 30"?

• captain marsupial | February 28, 2005 6:46 PM | Reply

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  I had this goofy theory way back that I was hoping might pull through into the book further. I don't think it's there, but I'm going to slap it in anyway. (At least file under the "Book as Conspiracy Between Author & Reader" section.) Slothy made a journey from the New World back to the mother country of England. Then goes into France, through Holland (figuratively) with Katje, and is wending his way through Germany. To me he's climbing back up the evolutionary rungs of the English language.

  Then we get to Tchitcherene (sounds like a Russian plastic) who spent his years in the steppes cleaning up rogue letters and trying to slap a grid of language onto Central Asia. (It'll kill off the lovely oral culture shown by the two young lovers in the insult song.) I'm not sure if this theory will go anywhere, or if I'm just making shapes out of clouds. But I figured it's worth a spill.

  I wanted to say big thanks for the link to the Brocken Specter. Anybody know anything about the Kirghiz Light?

  BTW, I was really hoping Gerhardt von Goll was a real person, but it appears he's another figment. I was hoping to find one of his films. sigh

• Other Dan | February 28, 2005 8:55 PM | Reply

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  everybody likes a good scavenger hunt. i had to set the book down while i thought about going on one myself. one that possibly ends up finding drugs at the base of a rainbow.

• cecil vortex | February 28, 2005 11:09 PM | Reply

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  my thought for the day is that he's an omniscient, writing this for other omniscients. you know, the way he repeatedly refers to stuff we mortals couldn't possibly know -- either things too obscure or things he hasn't told us yet. But the omniscients he's talking to, they know. They live backward and forward in time.

  All of which is just to say it's designed to be read a couple of times, and that's wonderful. But I like picturing him as some omniscient, talking to another omniscient. And us listening in.

• zoro | March 1, 2005 5:01 AM | Reply

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  Hey all! I'm dragging by about 70 pages, but enjoying still. The dialogue above is mystifying without having actually read up, but it does encourage me to find a few hours and sit still to catch up in the next few days... Thanks!

• the RaptorMage | March 1, 2005 6:39 AM | Reply

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  "it is herself, her Central Asian giantess self, that is the Nameless Thing she fears." The "omniscient" '70s writer tags an anachronism here, WWII Galina = the USSR. "Lots of Muslim countries ending in -stan," as Tom Clancy once wrote, seem to be have been held together by fear for decades, if not centuries. Starting in Britain, touching on the Americas, then southern Africa, then central Asia (the Uzbeks, the Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz, the rest)... One by one we're told that each place in the world is full of and ruled by fear.

  OK, I wasn't expecting chase scenes and slapstick pratfalls. But he has gone there a few times now, enough that I'm certain he isn't just poking fun at comic relief but actually striving for it. Is this the refuge of the fearful? Do the Stooges succeed because their audience wants to stop trembling?

• the RaptorMage | March 1, 2005 6:41 AM | Reply

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  Was I wrong to cap "stooges"?

• the RaptorMage | March 1, 2005 6:44 AM | Reply

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  Is that a GR question, or a question of politics?

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