Actually about Gravity's Rainbow

[David Casseres]

Answering my question of why I only noticed one creation myth in GR, and that one is about the creation of Them, Andrew sez

>Perhaps you have answered yourself. The serpent eats its tail because
>it has no beginning and no end, it just recurs on itself - nature only
>knows transformation, after all (and don't forget all those aromatic
>rings transferring their structure on through from one generation to
>the next, saying Fuck You to Ole Mr Death He Self).

Very good point.  It would reinforce the idea that the end of the book is also the beginning; it would also make that passage about Kekule one of the most important thematic expositions in the book.  Pynchon seems to be saying, Nature is cyclic and self-renewing, a closed loop; evil arises in the breaking of the cycle, and its demotion to mere technology, the machinery of forward progress toward an endpoint.  The Grail quest; the Rocket's arc; the search for the 00000 and the Schwartzgerät; and of course all the poor preterite, for whom death is not renewal but a mere end.

It reverses the tragic law that says to recur upon oneself, like Oedipus, like Hamlet, like those homecoming Greek heroes, is to be destroyed, and it would return if it could to something more ancient, like the Hereros planting themselves in the Erdschweinhöhle to be renewed.  But that cycle, it looks to be pretty broken by now, unless that final hymn is meant to offer hope of repairing it....


Cheers,
David