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

[Henry Musikar]

I have a lot of thoughts on the temporal bandtwidth question, but 
isn't it just a little to early in the read to bring Slothrop's 
dis-integration (think calculous). But I believe a brief response is 
called for, to whit:

There is a strong ambivalence towards "here and now." In Huxley's 
"Island" parrots fly around the utopian isle squawking "Here and now, 
boys, here and now." There is the Zen master whack on the head to get 
the acolyte out of his mind and into the here and now. It is 
Slothrop's very "caring" about There and Then that makes him 
paranoid and uncomfortable. He may not be "sane" and useful at the 
end of the book, but he is no longer in pain and paranoid. Sad, but 
true.

On the other hand, wither goest politics, society, culture without 
Then Future and Then Past. Perhaps some form of integrating this 
dichotomy would be called Then Buddism <groan expected>.

DCNY...

On  5 Oct 96 at 9:43, Charles R Wolfe wrote:

> >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 . . .
> 
>  Skip
> 

Keep Cool, but care. -- TRP
http://www.nicom.com/~gravity/mypage.htm