Week 11. I mean, are you kidding me? Seriously. 11? This is ridiculous!
I my own self have fallen back behind. Caught a wee spot of the old TB this last week. But I’m bouncin’ back (coughhack!) bouncin’ back I tell ya! On to next week: Let’s make camp at page 580 (p/v) where “Jamf was doing it in the least obvious there was.”
8 comments for “The Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 11”
Other Dan
March 22, 2005 at 9:28 am
I’m playing catch-up, not even being a frequent visitor at the Florida South Hospital can stop me from finishing the rainbow.
I think I’m in love with every female character he introduces. They are all sufficiently fucked up enough to warrent a second date.
Welcome back, Rib! & Other Bill. Now where’s the Mage? Out for donuts?
e., S-C Bill, heuser, Cap’n M.-I’m totally with you that the druggy confusions of the Zone are there on purpose. To the excellent quotes you found about that, I’d add that great passage on p. 520 where Enzian thinks of the Zone as Text, “to be picked to pieces, annotated, explicated, and masturbated till it’s all squeezed limp of its last drop.” I guess P.’s warning us not to try that at home.
What I’m wondering is: if Pynchon’s doing this on purpose, what’s the purpose? To throw a postmodernist Bronx cheer at the idea of meaning? Strike a blow for carnivalesque anarchy at the expense of corporate ‘synthesis and control’? Critique Slothrop and whatever slice of America he’s meant to represent for his hedonism and thinning, a la p. 509 (and likewise growth his Preterition sure.)? Be playful like Rossini amidst an otherwise pretty grand and Beethoveny sort of subject? What do you think?
“‘I can’t guarantee anything,’ sez Gerhardt von G’ll.” Amen.
Rodney says: “If Pynchon’s doing this on purpose, what’s the purpose?” To which I’d say, I’m not 100% sure there is a purpose, or at least not one that TP could coherently explain. Based on my limited experience of being on a creative roll, or “in the zone,” as it were, it’s always seemed that when you’re firing on all cylinders, things just create themselves, and you figure out what they mean later. Or, if you’re a famous author, literary critics do it for you.
Then again, maybe the purpose is to fill up several hundred pages in the middle of the book. Could be that TP had decided to write a Big Book and needed something to separate the beginning from the end. It happens.
“I can’t guarantee anything.”
-Gerhardt von Gölll.
“I promise nothing.”
-Sanjay Nahasapeemapetilan
hmmm. pynchon wrote–“in your worst times of night, with pencil words on your page only delta-t from the things they stand for”–and i’m thinking this has something to do with what you’re both saying above (and others last week). is tp talking here about the imprecision and uncertainty built into this writing itself? we want this story to wrap it all up neatly the way we want science or religion or slothrop’s paranoia to get to the truth. possibly we’re not going to get what we want.
what if life’s a trajectory in search of certainty, constantly pushed off and then back on the hunt by random hedonistic/human urges and distractions? what if pynchon’s ok with the human longing for certainty and also tender about/fascinated by those distractions and is directing his criticism at those who have the balls to think they can successfully predict and therefore manipulate the “patterns”? or not….
Polymer alert! This may not seem relevant to where we currently are in the book, but having posted something back in week 1 or 2 about polymers and plastination, I just had to share this with you all. There’s an exhibit at the Masonic Center in SF (on Nob Hill, across from the cathedral) called “The Universe Within”. You can see gin-yu-wine plastinated bodies, all exposed in their gorey glory. The exhibit opens day after tomorrow (March 31). I, for one, will definitely check it out. Certainly Jamf would have appreciated it. http://www.theuniversewithin.org/
Right now, I’m feeling like I have to quell my impulse to comment on some of the questions everyone is raising. You may not get the answers exactly, but the questions are great.
Just two quick notes – there’s a lot of really great commentary throughout the book thread. Don’t forget what TRP told you up front, “this is not a disentanglement from, this is a progressive knotting into.”
On the Orpheus comment: Dwight Eddins in his book The Gnostic Pynchon argues for Pynchon’s technique as “Orphic Naturalism.” And the influence of Rilke’s “Sonnets to Orpheus” is rampant in GR.
Dr. Vitz
Is this an unqualified late hit? I’m still plugging but back around 400. Enjoyed the section about competing Russian alphabets — another example of Man fighting over how best to impose order on randomness. Reminded me of Catch 22 a bit, where bureaucracies are named after weirder letters that suit their status or mission.
I’m playing catch-up, not even being a frequent visitor at the Florida South Hospital can stop me from finishing the rainbow.
I think I’m in love with every female character he introduces. They are all sufficiently fucked up enough to warrent a second date.
Welcome back, Rib! & Other Bill. Now where’s the Mage? Out for donuts?
e., S-C Bill, heuser, Cap’n M.-I’m totally with you that the druggy confusions of the Zone are there on purpose. To the excellent quotes you found about that, I’d add that great passage on p. 520 where Enzian thinks of the Zone as Text, “to be picked to pieces, annotated, explicated, and masturbated till it’s all squeezed limp of its last drop.” I guess P.’s warning us not to try that at home.
What I’m wondering is: if Pynchon’s doing this on purpose, what’s the purpose? To throw a postmodernist Bronx cheer at the idea of meaning? Strike a blow for carnivalesque anarchy at the expense of corporate ‘synthesis and control’? Critique Slothrop and whatever slice of America he’s meant to represent for his hedonism and thinning, a la p. 509 (and likewise growth his Preterition sure.)? Be playful like Rossini amidst an otherwise pretty grand and Beethoveny sort of subject? What do you think?
“‘I can’t guarantee anything,’ sez Gerhardt von G’ll.” Amen.
Since we’re talkin’ ’bout opera and all – how about Slothrop as Orpheus?
Rodney says: “If Pynchon’s doing this on purpose, what’s the purpose?” To which I’d say, I’m not 100% sure there is a purpose, or at least not one that TP could coherently explain. Based on my limited experience of being on a creative roll, or “in the zone,” as it were, it’s always seemed that when you’re firing on all cylinders, things just create themselves, and you figure out what they mean later. Or, if you’re a famous author, literary critics do it for you.
Then again, maybe the purpose is to fill up several hundred pages in the middle of the book. Could be that TP had decided to write a Big Book and needed something to separate the beginning from the end. It happens.
“I can’t guarantee anything.”
-Gerhardt von Gölll.
“I promise nothing.”
-Sanjay Nahasapeemapetilan
hmmm. pynchon wrote–“in your worst times of night, with pencil words on your page only delta-t from the things they stand for”–and i’m thinking this has something to do with what you’re both saying above (and others last week). is tp talking here about the imprecision and uncertainty built into this writing itself? we want this story to wrap it all up neatly the way we want science or religion or slothrop’s paranoia to get to the truth. possibly we’re not going to get what we want.
what if life’s a trajectory in search of certainty, constantly pushed off and then back on the hunt by random hedonistic/human urges and distractions? what if pynchon’s ok with the human longing for certainty and also tender about/fascinated by those distractions and is directing his criticism at those who have the balls to think they can successfully predict and therefore manipulate the “patterns”? or not….
Polymer alert! This may not seem relevant to where we currently are in the book, but having posted something back in week 1 or 2 about polymers and plastination, I just had to share this with you all. There’s an exhibit at the Masonic Center in SF (on Nob Hill, across from the cathedral) called “The Universe Within”. You can see gin-yu-wine plastinated bodies, all exposed in their gorey glory. The exhibit opens day after tomorrow (March 31). I, for one, will definitely check it out. Certainly Jamf would have appreciated it.
http://www.theuniversewithin.org/
Right now, I’m feeling like I have to quell my impulse to comment on some of the questions everyone is raising. You may not get the answers exactly, but the questions are great.
Just two quick notes – there’s a lot of really great commentary throughout the book thread. Don’t forget what TRP told you up front, “this is not a disentanglement from, this is a progressive knotting into.”
On the Orpheus comment: Dwight Eddins in his book The Gnostic Pynchon argues for Pynchon’s technique as “Orphic Naturalism.” And the influence of Rilke’s “Sonnets to Orpheus” is rampant in GR.
Dr. Vitz
Is this an unqualified late hit? I’m still plugging but back around 400. Enjoyed the section about competing Russian alphabets — another example of Man fighting over how best to impose order on randomness. Reminded me of Catch 22 a bit, where bureaucracies are named after weirder letters that suit their status or mission.