Cycles

[Andrew Dinn]

Dkipen at aol.com writes:

> Two more narratives with their tails in their mouths: the first Moebian story
> in John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, and the choral part of Beethoven's
> Ninth Symphony, which begins and ends with the same sung line (which,
> considering how many other times it crops up in between, you'd think I'd
> remember...)

I'm sorry to poop on this party, something I seem to be doing quite a
lot these days, but, entertaining as it is hypothesiswise, not only am
I not particularly convinced by the `Now everyone - A screaming...'
juxtaposition that `Gravity's Rainbow' has it's tail in its mouth, as
'twere, moreover (hey, you're lucky I didn't throw in a
notwithstanding) - moreover, I don't see anything else in the book to
make the presumption of such a cycle respectable. Joyce had reasons of
his own for making his story repeat itself - not the least of which
being Finnegan, begin again (let's not re-enter that debate). But did
Pynchon?

Sure there are cycles all over the place. But there are all sorts of
other structures too, most notably the rocket parabola. I have written
before that motion under a central force can also include hyperbolic
and elliptical trajectories, a circle being a special (very special)
case of the latter but... it looks pretty unequivocal that in this
case the rocket is on the downside of a parabola, only a small delta-z
above impact. It would be a pretty (beautifully) transcendent miracle
if *any* rocket resisted that ole gravity and escaped into elliptical
orbit (or better still hyper(bolic)space). `You didn't think you would
be exempt' THEY inquire rhetorically of Slothrop, poor sap - who, it
turns out, *does* escape at a bare crossroads, denuded of cares, `just
feeling'.

But I think Pynchon's message is all too clear, foax. It's 1970 and
this rocket that was launched 25 years ago is going to hit ground
pretty soon and unless we take evasive action there will be time for
nothing more than to join hands with the people in the neighbouring
seats or put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye -
now there's a latter-day Ourouboros, full of cosmic resonance for this
shit-recycling society we live in. So you can all pray that by some
miracle the book is pointing us back into its own hermetically sealed
script but it takes the neck of an ostrich to stick your head that far
up your own backside and I think TRP knows way too much about human
biology (and its psychic correlates) to recommend such a trick.


Andrew Dinn
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O alter Duft aus Maerchenzeit / Berauschest wieder meine Sinne
Ein naerrisch Heer aus Schelmerein / Durchschwirrt die leichte Luft