Cycles

[David L. Pelovitz]

andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk (Andrew Dinn)  wrote:

>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. 

But int the discussion between Ombindi and Enzian on the most
erotic act (which is, o course, suicide) this little
snippet occurs:

	"It's a non-repeatable act."
	"Firing a rocket?"
	"No, because there's always another rocket."
		(GR, 319)

I agree with Andrew that GR is not a cycle a la Joyce,
But I do believe it to be a repeatible act.  The active
metaphor is that of harmonic motion.  The rocket's
arc is the same pendular swing we see infesting V.,
simply turned upside down.  That turning should render
it non-repeatable, but as Ombindi reveals, it's not.
the movement from Weissman's firing (which occurs,
prior to the events that preced it in the novel, right?)
to 1970 is just like the temporal yo-yo we see throughout V.

If the cycles structured much of Joyce's writing, the yo-yo
structures much of Pynchon's.  At GR's end we are in a
theatre, awaiting a rocket's fall and the there is a reference
to a dream (in the look on the screen figure's face -
I don't have the reference handy at the moment).  At the 
start of the novel, we are in a dream, awaiting a rocket's fall
and we are told "It's all theatre."  But moment's later,
the dreamer is awake and watching a rocket being launched.

More a reversal than a cycle, but a structure that
remarkably avoids inevitable destruction. But if you ask me,
the point of Pynchon is not that we only have a second
to kiss our collective asses good-bye.  It's that
an awful lot can change in any delta-t and even
if death is always the most likely case, it is not 
inevitable until it occurs (and perhaps not even final
once it has taken place).
	
David Pelovitz - PELOVTZD at Acfcluster.nyu.edu