PYNCHON IN PULSE

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

jody porter speculates:

> But you just noticed? American Culture began an inevitable decline after
> the publication of GR, with GR representing a transitional work at the
> peak, and probably uniquely dependent on the work of Gaddis (and everything
> else) which preceded it. In that sense, GR is the apogee of one culture's
> passage. GR feels "self-conscious" of its position there, and seems
> "self-aware" that it was helping to effect the end of the "polyphonic
> freedom" of the many cultural threads which theretofore had been fugally
> streaming until the "power loom" of TRP brought them together into the
> fabric of GR.
> 
> If GR was an apogee, then one can speculate on when "brennschluss,"
> somewhere earlier in the culture's ascent, actually occurred. Accepting
> some of the usual Pynchonian guidepost's- and opinions are sure to differ
> on exactly when the culture "ran out of steam," or at least began to
> sputter- but the fin de siecle, haunted by the spirit of Henry Adams, feels
> about right. I.e., there was continued ascent, but it was purely ballistic.

well, seeing that American Death came to Europe in WW2, and that 
Columbus was already a wrong 'un, I'd speculate that the point is 
somewhere between 1000 and 1492, although The Socratic Moment 
qualifies equally well, as does the "hubba hubba brorx marx smuhh!!!" 
exclamation by Grork the Cave Dweller upon smelling what 
turned out to be a mammoth freshly struck by lightning, a smell not 
quite unlike that Pizza Hut aroma, or, if we're quite honest, that 
delicious banana breakfast....

hg
hag at iafrica.com