10 weeks — 10! And now we’re roughly two-thirds of the way through. What’s left? Just a pamphlet really. A hop, a skip, and an analepsis.
Last week was challenging for different folks in different ways. Some of us battled with the lengthy Pokler section, which I loved, perhaps because I read most of it on a flight back from Vegas, the way it was meant to be read.
Me, I was displeased with the Bianca/Slothrop section, which left at least some others unphased.
What will this week bring? More Zone? Oh yes. Count on it.
Next week: Page 532 (v/p) aka 620 in (b), and all those “good-bys in his pockets warming his empty hands….”
Hey Cecil, I was shut out trying to post yesterday. Man, are you trying to be cheap? Save on a few mugs? Geez. Anyway, I’m here, I’m reading – covered about 100 pages in the last 5 days, still behind by about 100, so obviously can’t really contribute much, but I will be there next week like a Rocket Man on a bale of weed.
yep — we did have a technical problem last night which would have should people out for a spell. Now fixed, thanks to excellent long-distance tech support from xian.
So consider yourself fully in the mug-race. Glad you’re still out on the trail.
-Cecil
Is it just me, or are Pynchon’s pyrotechnics starting to cloy? I feel like I’m on a film shoot (apt, given the Greta/von Göll dyad) with some Cecil B. Demented clapping for new sets every few minutes, all rolled out with mechanical precision, all perfectly realized down to the S-shaped handles on the peepshow machines, but ultimately kind of … flat.
Like e. points out, maybe we’re supposed to be feeling this way by now: the reader-as-Slothrop. But why? Slothrop’s all but forgotten the S-Gerät, the ‘They’, old pals like Tantivy, the elaborate IG conspiracy involving his little Slothrop child self, the mysteries of Brennschluss, predestination, even dear blonde Katje, and frankly so have I. I’m more like the reader-as-Säure right now—sit back, take a hit, and enjoy the trippy visions. All of which you dimly remember seeing before …
Which is still great fun, but markedly different from the payload of ideas we started with back in rocket-pocked London. I wonder if the ‘drop’ in tone has anything to do with the ‘Beethoven or Rossini?’ question on p.440. Grand synthesized plot (“What is the real nature of synthesis?”) or rollicking good tunes? You make the call!
I’d say it’s not just you, Rodney. As a first-time reader, not knowing where he’s heading, it seems to me there’s a tension to this spot in this book, where it all starts to feel stretched a tad thin and mebbe even a bit formulaic.
Curious to see how things develop from here….
Say, on a different note, here’s an excerpt from the GR companion (by Steven Weissburger) that I found interesting this morning. “the Anubis: This boatload of degenerates is named for the jackal-headed god of Egyptian mythology who conducted the dead to judgement.”
Rodney says: “Slothrop’s all but forgotten the S-Gerät, the ‘They’, old pals like Tantivy, the elaborate IG conspiracy involving his little Slothrop child self, the mysteries of Brennschluss, predestination, even dear blonde Katje, and frankly so have I.”
Agreed…we’ve been wandering around in the Zone for a while now, and everything has kind of melted into a dreamy haze. I don’t think all the drug references are accidental; it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that big parts of this book were written under the influence. These were the 70s, after all. Pynchon clearly is a huge talent, and hugely self-indulgent as well. If he can think it up and write it down, it’s in there. There doesn’t seem to have been any editor standing over his shoulder going “Gee, Tom, that’s great and all, but where are you going with this?”
Then again, all the wandering around is not unpleasant (well, most of it isn’t). And Pynchon does have a fondness for paying out a lot of rope and then slowly, slowly pulling it back. A lot of the individual sections are like that, and I have a feeling the overall structure of the book may be as well. I have faith he’s going to make it all worthwhile in the end.
I still miss those Paranoid Proverbs!
my inclination right here is to say wawawawa, put my fingers in my ears, and keep my eyes tightly closed against the whisperings about this section. i like my authors to be cult leaders–they’re in charge, and we both know they know best.
but, yes, the story’s seeming off right about now. like the 4th snowball fight in ground hog day–his heart doesn’t seem to be in it. looking back, i’d say that the the thinness made a first appearance even before the pockler stuff (which i really liked). i noticed it when margherita showed up. slothrop’s hanging out and hanging on with her seem out of character then. and now with all the history we’ve been handed about her, she’s coming off like a plotbot.
but what the hell do i know? this is just one misgiving in 400+ pages of swell stuff. and damn it, i want to believe.
from p. 489:
“…radio messages following them in clear one day and code the next, an early and shapeless situation, dithering between executioner’s silence and the Big Time. There are international reasons for an Anubis Affair right now, and also reasons against, and the arguments go on, too remote to gather, and orders are changed hour to hour.”
Is this T.P. speaking to us again?
I know I’m a little behind (just finished the Bianca scene), but I’m thinking Mr. P has gone from using sex as a weapon, ie Slothrop having sex & rocket dropping, to here’s another shocking scene I can write. Hopefully, Mr. P will rein it all back in and get back to the original mystery of his rocketman.
cynical mug-raking deadline post but catching up on vaca this week, I hope!
here’s a comment on the thinness mentioned above, and it comes straight from TP: “Slothrop, as noted, at least as early as the Anubis era, has begun to thin, to scatter.” seems that slothrop’s “now” wasn’t covering enough of his past and future, and it was the narrowness of his sense of now that was taking a toll on the solidity of his persona, making him a bit tenuous. ok, i’ll buy it; all is forgiven….and on to the springer rescue, where the now is playing out like a barrel of monkeys. yay!
I guess at this point we’re in so many points in the book that I want to be careful not to give away any spoilers for anyone. So, generic comments before specific.
Yeah, I definitely think this book is getting thin and filled with fast action scenes and sex. But I’m not sure that this is accidental. Like e, I would like to think that the author, especially TP, is a bit omnscient of his own book. (Heck if he doesn’t understand it, who does?) When we hit the halfway point I did have the joy in my heart of the parabolic peak. From here on it was downhill. When I think about how hard it was to start this book, and how hard it was to launch Slothrop on his journey, it makes sense that the book show how hard it was, but then also pick up speed as it approaches it finale. For Slothy, he’s been aimed towards a goal, he’s now rushing out of control towards a random target. Where will he hit? Somewhere with a mathematical randomness. He is completely out of control of his London handlers (although others do seem to still have some control).
I read this book so long ago, that it surprised me how little I remembered about it this time around. I seem to have remembered most of his liasons, but precious little else. Characters seem to disappear into ambiguity rather than come to any final climax. I can’t even recall what happens to Slothy. It might be because it was a more difficult book for my younger self, or it might be that it became more formulaic towards the end. I guess I’ll have to see again.
Now, onto Spoiler stuff. To me the recounting of the scene between Slothy & Greta over the toilet seems to be the most important scene in a long time. Here are real clues towards the S-gerat, imipolex & Blicero. I was really put into mind of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Promethea. She is a bringer of metaphysical light, on a Kabbalic quest, charged by her mother, The Whore of Babylon, to bring about the end of the world. In Greta’s story, whe enters the world of archetypes, and helps through sex create the end device. Blicero has become, an avatar, a living god. “They” are beyond humanity in their drives, and can do things (control Slothrop?) that humans cannot.
We also get our shots of the world to come, with the understanding of radiation starting to leak out. Morituri (my latin is weak-impending death?) wants to go back to Hiroshima. Of course the joining ot the rocket and the bomb is the opposite of the joining of the rocket with the astronaut.
I personally like the scenes of action in Peenemunde, and I’m always a fan of chimps. But yeah, I do want to see where this creature is going to hit.
If the classical myth involves a trip to the underworld (see Joe Campbell) somewhere in the middle of the story, the Zone certainly seems a good candidate and the Anibus a good ship to ferry our Slothrop across the Styx (sorry for mixing my myths). Am just shy of 500 so hopefully this will still be a good working theory in 32 pages- you know, so I’m REALLY contributing to the discussion. (Considering 32 pages is 4.2% of the book, I’m probably ok.)
Have fallen behind. Goal is to catch up by this weekend.
I can see the obit now in Time magazine–Died, Rib, 300 pages shy of the finish, of exhaustion.
–A Determined Rib