Hi,
Per the previous entry, this is the spot to post re the latest chunk of Gravity’s Rainbow. For chat, please scroll down to the next entry below.
Note: And for completists, don’t forget to take a stroll through the first batch of comments this week, over in the original Week 3 thread.
Thankee, -Cecil
Came across this groovy little rhyme in the very first paragraph of the new section:
And the crowds they swarm in Knightsbridge,
and the wireless carols drone,
and the Underground’s a mobscene,
but Pointsman’s all alone.
A future Brautigan poem of the day?
Fell behind, but am now catching up. Interesting sex. Candy was hysterical–the inspiration for the famous dinner scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, perhaps?
pynchon exhausts my not-worrying-about-not-fully-understanding muscle in my brain
somewhat like joyce he rewards you for just going with the flow, but my need to know and understand is so ingrained that it is like yoga letting go of it.
on some level, i would hope this is deliberate in that he is going cross-purposes to the whole traditional idea of a coherent story that’s in a sense simpler than real life rather than reflective of its ambiguities and unknowableness.
if it’s not deliberate, then it’s self-indulgent underedited “I meant to do that” type writing that may already feel dated, if not positively Victorian.
re xian’s observation: it feels very deliberate to me. those gallons and gallons of words are constantly pulling you down into the each person’s thoughts and fantasies; and then there’s a little respite after each dive. the cacophony is necessary–the style of writing plus the abundant content plus the pace = the experience of thought. we’re not usually privy to the voices inside someone else’s head, but, i dunno, it feels pretty realistic to me. so it’s a story and a structure and an experience. i don’t want to understand all of that in one gulp; the really good friends are the ones you can happily spend years learning to understand.
From the “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” Files:
“The real movement is not from death to any rebirth. It is from death to death-transfigured. The best you can do is to polymerize a few dead molecules. But polymerizing is not resurrection.” (Gravity’s Rainbow, T. Pynchon, 1971, p. 166, Penguin edition)
“From the acetone bath, the cadavers are transferred to the whole-body plastination chamber, a cylindircal stainless-steel tank filled with liquied polymer. A vacuum attached to the tank lowers the internal pressure, turning the acetone to a gas and drawing it from the body. … I asked Dean Mueller, a southeastern Michigan funeral director whose company, Eternal Preservation, offers mortuary plastination for about $50,000, how long he thoght a plastinated specimen would last. He said at least ten thousand years.” (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach, 2003, p. 289, Norton paperback edition)
I hope everyone will excuse the extended quotations, and yes, ten thousand years does not a resurrection make. I’m just diggin’ all the ghosts, angels, mediums (or contacts), “Death the Impersonator” stuff going on here. The implied question seems to be, Can the tools and methodologies of science be used to explain (or control) the paranormal? Wouldn’t be surprised if Pynchon was a big Twilight Zone fan in his youth.
p.s. Good read, Stiff.
Whoo, I’m pretty dang lost. Just finished reading the Jessica going to leave Roger section, and I think my brain is bleeding. I don’t remember a resolution to their relationship. I guess I’ll keepin poking forward.
In other news, I just discovered that Tim Ware who runs the ThomasPynchon.com site lives in Oakland. I’ve given him the link to our effort at one point. When we have the wrap party, should we see if he’s invitable?
Came across an interesting piece on the BBC history web site concerning Hitler’s desperate measures to turn the tide in WWII as things started turning nasty for the Nazis:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/desperate_measures_01.shtml
All about the V-rockets (I for one did not know that “V” stood for vergeltung, which means “retaliation”) and child soldiers. Consider it either a quick bit of historical context or a nice diversion from considerably more challenging prose of Mr. P.
Following the Xian thread, I also think it’s very deliberate. Usually it comes as we enter the thoughts of another character, and it’s as hallucinitory (sp?) and disorienting as it probably would be to drop into someone else’s neurotic tangential wanderings. The more concrete narrative is usually written in a more objective voice and the interactions and context are more clear. But it is a lot of work to stay tuned in, and often it feels like I’m just getting too much information about the other person. Which is probably how it would feel to get into their head for a while. It’s cool and creepy, but not practical for reading in bursts — seems to work best when I have time to sit thru a full chunk at a time…
I’m losing sense of where we are supposed to be right now. This is the end of week 3, right? so around 150, right? Sorry to bring the philosphical conversation down to the mundane, but, on a personal note, my life is nuts right now, so just tell me what damn page I’m supposed to be on.
Seriously, I’m enjoying everyone’s comments, even if I don’t have the time to check web sites. I’m finishing part 1. Still think the rainbow metaphor is just so rich – up and down are another binary and can stand in for so many things it just all connects. Not very specific, I know, but it’s all I got this week. Onward to Part 2 and France…