Slothrop's Disintegration (was: GRGR2: Hawthorne & Pynchon)

[Charles R Wolfe]

On Fri, 4 Oct 1996 22:14:24 -0700 (PDT) plachazu at ccnet.com (jm) writes:

>Slothrop does indeed disintegrate as GR winds down, but the causes
aren't really >clear.  The rocket or the dope or The Zone or
paranoia--all seem like possible >causes.

And his temporal bandwidth is starting to go as early as p. 21 ("A lot of
stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now."), so whatever is behind
Slothrop's disintegration is apparently already at work.  This is
pre-zone -- the rocket & the paranoia are already there, don't know about
the drugs.  Is the shrinking of t.b./disintegration Pynchon's way of
showing our increasing tendency in America (and maybe elsewhere) to live
only in the present -- instant gratification, et cetera -- losing the
sense of context provided by  memories of the past and anticipation of 
the future?  This relates to self-centeredness (what I'm doing is all
that matters), which relates to paranoia (the purpose behind these events
is to get me).  It might be interesting to trace what changes, if any, we
can see in Slothrop that could lead to his eventual breaking-apart. 
"Once upon a time Slothrop cared."  (also p. 21)  Cared about what?  What
happened?  The rockets started, for one thing, screwing up our
perceptions of how time should behave.  Is this somehow analogous to
technology's radical compression of time during this century --
everything happens NOW. ??  I dunno . . . just some random thoughts on a
nice, crisp fall morning . . .

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