Center of Gravity

[OUTRSPACIA at aol.com]

"With only that warning, in blinding concussion the Icy Noctiluca breaks,
floods through the white tunnel. For a minute or two nobody in here can see.
There is only the hurtling on, through amazing perfect whiteness. Whiteness
without heat, and blind inertia: Slothrop feels a terrible familiarity here,
a center he has been skirting, avoiding as long as he can remember -- never
has he been as close now as now to the true momentum of his time: faces and
facts that have crowded his induenture to the Rocket, camouflage and
distraction fall away for the white moment, the vain and blind tugging at his
sleeves it's important . . . please . . . look at us . . but it's already too
late, it's only wind, only g-loads, and the blood of his eyes has begun to
touch the whiteness back to ivory, to brushings of gold and a network of
edges to the broken rock . . . and the hand that lifted him away sets him
back in the Mittelwerke --
. . .
pp. 311, 312, Gravity's Rainbow

Maybe you've all gotten here before. I don't know. But I believe this is the
center of the book. GR begins on a train. This section takes place on a
train, that is rolling through the Mittelwerke, where they are making the
Rocket. It makes a fine transition. Then at the other end of the line, the
end of the book, of course, we have the Rocket. What is a train, if it is not
a rocket? Perhaps it is a missile, a rocket bound to the ground, merely
lacking the power and the guidance to escape the earth. I've forgotten all
that math stuff, but maybe the train is a linear equation and the rocket is a
differential equation, or something like that. The parabola/rainbow of the
rocket arcing/screaming across the sky. The train merely screaming across the
landscape. If nothing else, the train is a predecessor to the  Rocket. The
Rocket is the natural extension of the industrial revolution which for a
period in time had as its most powerful example, the train. And the
description of the train traveling through the light of the phosphorus flare
could easily describe the flight of the Rocket.

But the passage has more than the train/rocket motif to argue for it being
the center of the book, the apogee of the parabola that is the book.
Slothrop, if he is the central charactef of the "novel", is certainly lucid
and solid and aware of himself here. Whereas, at the end, he is
disintegrated.

The white motif is certainly vivid here.

And this idea of "feeling a terrible familiarity here, a center he has been
skirting," "never has he been as close as now to the true momentum of his
time," sounds like a writer who has found his place, a writer who has hit his
stride, a writer who sees at least in one white blinding moment, that he
has/is creating something greater than he might have imagined. Slothrop is
Pynchon here in this moment.

Further down on p. 312:
"The flare has begun to die. Shadows are reoccupying the mouths of the
Stollen. The cars ahead of Marvy hit the obstacle a solid WHONK! doubling up
in an inverted V -- . . . Then Slothrop and Glimpf are around the last curve
of the integral sign, and there is another huge crash behind them, screaming
that prolongs, echoing, as they see now the entrance ahead, growing parabola
of green mountainslopes, and sunlight . . ."

The inverted V is an arc screaming across the sky; the last curve of the
integral. You can probably describe the linear path of a train with an
integral differential equation. As I say, I'm way too rusty on this math
stuff.

But there's a lot here in these few paragraphs. I know the book has been
described as a mandala, and recently as a baseball diamond. But finally, it
makes a great deal of sense to think of the book as a parabola, and this
could very well be the center, the peak of its rainbowed arc.