Question

[Marshall Joseph Armintor]

In response to Richard Muller's question about Slothrop's tendency to stutter
his "ands" so it looks like: "a-and"...just this.
  While I was reading Gravity's Rainbow for the first time, I was also heavy 
into Deleuze and Guattari.  In Dialogues, Deleuze declares that the superiority
of anglo-american literature derived from its maniacal heterogeneous inclusion-
the conjunction "and" signfied the constant branching out into new subjects
(just like Slothrop does when he's outlining the conspiracy to capture him, 
etc.)  This idea is also in "Rhizome," the opening chapter of Thousand 
Plateaus.  
    Also in Dialogues there's Deleuze's exhortation to "stutter in one's own
language; in other words, to disrupt the false sense of logic and security 
language may give you - to understand things in a completely new way.  Compare
Slothrop to Stephen Dodson-Truck [joyce), who waffles on about languages,
myths, sigils, god knows what else; he is also completely sterile, sexually
isolated, ineffectual.  The dangers of being too entranced with language.
   Just a thought.  Warning: y'know, I've got the feeling we're catching the
upsurge of a giant black wave that's about to crash over academia - and that's
this burgeoning interest in Deleuze.  It fits almost a text you can think of
(Pynchon's things, pretty well, but GR and Anti-Oedipus are exact contemp-
oraries - it's a product of the age thing), but doesn't have to be grounded in
anything at all or used responsibly to sound cool or be interesting.  So...
thought it needed to be said.

marshall