fractals/GR

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

 Ok.  I'm still working on it, but I'll try to give a conceptual sketch of 
what I'm thinking.

Basically, GR has a mandala structure, "a red circle with a thick black 
cross inside" (100.)  Visually, we are priveleged to note that red 
imagery pervades the text--with the (black) text itself as the center of 
our attention--black on white.  So from a macroscopic view, we see GR as 
the mandala as described on page 100.  Scaled down, at the microscopic 
level, we invesigate the "white" and the "black" throughout, here and 
there noticing that "red" on something like "white," but more neutral, 
like "flesh," or "skin" (I'm not quoting here, just making distinctions.)

Black against white images, as we know, appear throughout.  But many of 
them can be further disinguished as having a characteristically jagged or 
rough shape--this is a feature of fractals.  These shapes are seen as 
usually sharp dark brown or black features that impress upon white or 
flesh (like Enzian/Blicero.)  A defining moment (an I go off on this 
trajectory here), this meeting.  Here, you can see the kind of syntatic 
link that the fractal image provides.  We glimpse the mandala and then 
look inside:  "Outside, through the dirty periscope, gnarled fog uloosens 
the bright zone of frost that belly-bands the reared and shadowy rocket, 
. . .[further descriptions of the Bodenplatte] (100.)  Then:  "the symbol 
used is a rude mandala, a RED circle with a thick blac cross inside. . ." 
(100.)  This, in the context of the Enzian/Blicero alliance.  Here also, 
a micro view of another fractal image that recurs and is used 
synatically throughout--"Shiny BLACK India-rubber cables SNAKE away into 
the forest . . ." (101.)  The snake, serpent, dragon, image recurs and 
operates syntactically, linking episode to episode in the text.  The 
Christian implications are too clear.  But Pynchon uses them with perhaps 
a more complex intent (it seems, in my view, and other disclaimers.)  
Using the language of phsyics and chaos, he describes the action of 
physics in the WWII era--"What is framed, dirt-blurry, in the prisms, the 
ritual, the daily iteration inside these newly cleared triangles in the 
forests, has taken over what used to be memory's random walk, its 
innocent image-gathering" (100).

For simplicity's sake, I'm going to mention just pages with snake, 
serpent references.  You can look them over to see how they act 
syntactically--proximity alone should imply my meaning.  See 11, 101, 
136, 139, and this becomes more complex later, in Octopus Grigori's 
tentacles, Kekule's dream, etc.  One of those is a ref to tea leaf 
patterns in the botton of the cup.  

RElevant to the above cited passage, we can think of triangles, v's, w's, 
x's (all of which are, according to Marija Gimbutas, symbols associated 
with early civilizations that worshipped the Goddess--see _God's and 
Goddesses of Old Europe_) as they cut across the land, sky, etc.  See the 
fence at the White Visitation, The shadows cast from eyelashes 
(Jessica's, Katje's, Darlene's)--a-and this moves back and forward from 
abstraction (black on flesh--think Jessica's hair on Roger's skin, 
Enzian/Blicer0) to certainty--"perhaps the black girl is a genius of 
meta-solutions--knocking over the chessboard, shooting the referee. . ." 
(102).  More include Pirate's message (72), words (100), Katje's face 
(108), which also leads to another synactic link (one with cinematic 
bent), the turning of the face or the glance of an eye (see 3, 142, 129, 
108, 62, etc.)

One image that has a particularly fractal feel, esp. if you;ve seen many 
images generated, is red (blood) on white (flesh)--syntactically 
speaking, we can see, on 69, "fangs just tickling the foreskin, . . . " 
the insuing blood. . ."blood darkened and crusting at the lesion in his 
neck. . ." 69-70 (I'm leaping all over now) to a disc.of the White 
Visitation (next section) "Graffiti of ice the sunless day, glazing the 
darkening blood brick and terra cotta as if the house is to be preserved 
weatherless in some SKIN of the clear museum plastic . . .an 
old-fashioned apparatus whose use is forgotten" (72-3). More uncertain, 
weather, "Ice of varying thickness, wavy, blurred, a legend to be 
deciphered by the lords of winter, Glacists of the region, and argued 
over in their journals" (black on white, shadow, etc.) (72-3.)
Anyhow, the blood:  "Katje, kneeling,  is obliged to cut her lips and 
tongue, and then kiss blood-abstacts across the golden ungessoed back of 
her 'brother' Gottfried" (95.)  Later, "Captain Blicero, all his fair 
skin stained by afternoon a luminous syntheitc orange she has never 
before associated with skin [a move between black and brown--Enzian], his 
penis a blood monolith, its thickly . . ." (95).  then, "the strags and 
whips leathern, real in his hands which still feel, her cries, the RED 
WELTS ACROSS THE BOY'S BUTTOCKS, their mouths. . ." (97) [yeah, I know, 
it's all porn, but it's continuous--a linking device].  Then, on 100, we 
see the macro view that suggests the text (say, the house in the woods, 
child's fairy tale story) as the crosshairs within the red circle that is 
the mandala.  WE move to more mandala/black on white images, along with 
"the charts coffee-ringed across the low tables, teh cream papers stamped 
PURPLE AS BRUISED FLESH" (105.)At the close is the camera image of this, 
viewed by the serpent-like Grigori (if in tentacles alone--just in terms 
of visuals, fractal imagery) Katje.  This links the next section, where 
we SEE  "her crumples chiffon handkerchief:  featherd blots of blood in 
and out the convolutions like a floral pattern" (115).

Add to the serpent/snake fractal, more , by way of scorpions (150), and 
dragons (151).


Forgive me for rambling.  What I'm saying is that these visual images 
move together as more than just what we traditionally call "recurring 
images."  They seem to generate visuals much like fractal images I've 
seen.  They operate in such a way as to piece together a larger image 
that IS  the whole of the text, visually represented, as well as 
thematically.  

Again, this is what I see.  I plan to develop more fully with a view 
toward explicating on fractals, describing their relation to the 
structuring of literature, and particularly their action within Pynchon's 
GR.  It's important to suspend your literary faculties, a bit.  What I 
mean is that you might try to think solely in images, not necessarily in 
terms of any particular critical vein, in order to see _Gravity's 
Rainbow_ in terms of a whole not "and its parts," but as a dynamic system 
that operates in ever-shifting patterns that do, at times, follow certain 
paths, mirroring, in this way, the orderly disorder of chaotic systems as 
described by contemporary chaos.  I am not suggesting anything about what 
Pynchon knew or didn't (although I suspect he was and is fully aware of 
these sci developments.)  I am making an observation about the pictures I 
see and how they work as a recursive storyboard with which readers can 
recognize a kind of order in GR that serves our visually-oriented 
epistemologies (to which Pynchon speaks overtly with the cinematic 
qualities discussed over and over.)

I do apologize for the chaotic nature of my post.  I am trying to get 
something down for those who asked, without giving the full essay here.  
It's also kind of half-baked just now.  I'm open to comments but 
discourage any lashings you may feel necessary as these are innocent 
observations.  I know there are lots of sci folks on the list.  Please, 
be gentle.  I do welcome any help, especially if you know of published 
work on these topics in Pynchon.  Thanks.

Bonnie