MDMD(3)--commentary

[Doug Millison]

Call me a fool, but this passage from M&D, when I first encountered it, and
what it points to back in GR, suggests that Pynchon comes down firmly on
the side of a higher power, spirit, God, as the motivating force in the
universe. Andrew does a wonderful job of tracing this M&D passage back
through an extremely relevant and important GR passage. I think Pynchon's
serious about this -- although he serves it up with all the contradiction
and paradox and eclectic knowledge and wisdom that his childhood Catholic
Church typically leaves out in its fervor to offer exclusively the one true
way to salvation -- the wonder and the terror of living in such a universe,
with such a power at its center, "Your saviour, you see..."
-Doug

>> Chapter 10 of Mason & Dixon opens with an astonishing image "quoted"
>> from the Reverend Wick's Cherrycoke's `Unpublished Sermons':
>>
>>     As Planets do the Sun, we orbit `round God according to laws as
>>     elegant as Kepler's.  God is as sensible to us, as a Sun to a
>>     Planet. Tho' we do not see Him, yet we know where in our Orbits we
>>     run, -- when we are closer, when more distant, -- when in His
>>     light and when in shadow of our own making. We feel as
>>     components of Gravity His Love, His Need, whatever it be that
>>     keeps us circling. Surely if a Planet be a living Creature, then
>>     it knows, by something even more wondrous than Human Sight, where
>>     its Sun shines, however far it lie.  -- Revd Wicks Cherrycoke,
>>     Unpublished Sermons (M&D 94)
>>
>> Astonishing, that is, to anyone familiar with Gravity's Rainbow. That
>> capitalised mention of `Gravity', those planets as `living
>> Creature[s]' should do more than ring a few bells - the Fire Brigade
>> should be assaulting your consciousness. `Gravity His Love'. Now there
>> is a Key fit to grace any map-maker's Legend, simple and direct enough
>> to inspire the driest of Casaubons. And if this is a pointer back to
>> Gravity's Rainbow then the `Unpublished Sermon' credit suggests maybe
>> that this is an image retrieved from the cutting room floor, one of
>> those 300 or so pages rumoured to have been edited from the XL size
>> book still often rejected as Dr Pynchonstein's `monster'. Perhaps this
>> piece was pruned in error, thereby depriving us of a metaphor which
>> sheds light not just on the title but also on many of the other motifs
>> which appear in Gravity's Rainbow.  First, let's consider that
>> title. If gravity is `God's Love, His Need, whatever it be that keeps
>> us circling' then what does that make `Gravity's Rainbow' but that
>> which is ever cycling in greater or lesser orbit, moving sometimes
>> nearer, sometimes further away, but always kept in its track by that
>> continuous fall (Fall?) towards the centre.  Each planet in this solar
>> model is a living creature, be it a human soul or a lesser, lapsed
>> deity: Venus, the planet of Love, Mars, the planet of War, the Moon, a
>> dead Goddess, Pluto, the planet of Riches or is that National
>> Socialism? The Constellations, Virgo, Leo etc form the backdrop
>> against which this model operates.  What then to make of those
>> shadows, turnings-away or towards. What of eclipses? Tidal pulls?
>> Orbital perturbations caused by the approach and departure of our
>> neighbours in orbit. Our solar system model seems to be capable of
>> integrating religion and astrology into a common metaphor for the
>> mechanics of the human condition and its psychic eruptions. Pynchon's
>> figure drawings from Astronomy display her in clothes which would look
>> more appropriate (to our modern eyes, at least) on her whorish twin
>> sister. Not that Astrology is thereby smuggled into the realms of
>> Reason, rather it seems that she embodies a symbolic framework for the
>> working out of Mental and Spiritual Truths. And in its concentration
>> on Arcana and Gnostic systems Gravity's Rainbow certainly goes to
>> great lengths to overwhelm us with the historical significance of such
>> lore - arguably its spiritual significance too.  Let's look for a
>> specific parallel in Gravity's Rainbow. I'll pick an example which I
>> located whilst following up another idea but I suspect that one does
>> not have to go far to find opportunities to apply the Gravity/God's
>> Love equation elsewhere in the novel. A key image which is referred to
>> again and again in Gravity's Rainbow is the Diaspora, the Talmudic
>> myth of the scattering of seeds at the Creation. Here is a dialogue
>> between Gwenhidwy and Pointsman towards the end of part 1 of the
>> novel.
>>
>>     "[. . .] And the Jews! The Welsh, the Welsh once upon a time were
>>     Jewish too? one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, a black tribe, who
>>     wandered overland, centuries? oh an incredible journey. Until at
>>     last they reached Wales, you see."
>>
>>     "Wales . . ."
>>
>>     "Stayed on and became the Cymri. What if we're all Jews, you see?
>>     all scattered like seeds? still flying outward from the primal
>>     fist so long ago. Man, I believe that."
>>
>>     "Of course you do, Gwenhidwy"
>>
>>     "Aren't we then? What about you?"
>>
>>     "I don't know. I don't feel Jewish today."
>>
>>     "I meant flying outward."
>>
>>
>>     He means alone and forever separate. Pointsman knows what he
>>     means. So, by surprise, something in him is touched. (GR 170.24-37)
>>
>> Oh boy what a touch! Tie that creation myth to the Big Bang and then
>> ask yourself: do we fly outwards forever into greater and greater
>> separation? is there a centre around which we will circle, stable in
>> our track, basking in the warmth of the mysterious attraction we sense
>> "by something even more wondrous than Human Sight, however far it
>> lie"? or will those scattered seeds eventually halt and then collapse
>> back into the centre to be reassembled as the Talmud
>> suggests. Gwenhidwy continues:
>>
>>     "Pointsman, do you want to hear something really paranoid?"
>>
>>     "You too?"
>>
>>     "Have you consulted a map of London lately? All this great
>>     me-teoric plague of V- weapons, is being dumped out here, you
>>     see. Not back on Whitehall, where it's supposed to be, but on me,
>>     and I think it is beast-ly?"
>>
>>     "What a damned unpatriotic thing to say."
>>
>>     [. . .]
>>
>>     "They're falling in a Poisson distribution," says Pointsman in a
>>     small voice, as if it was open to challenge. "No doubt, man, no
>>     doubt -- an excellent point. But all over the fuck-ing East End,
>>     you see."
>>
>> This is not literal but metaphorical truth. Gwenhidwy is speaking it
>> as an `exorcism [. . .] the poet singing back the silence, adjuring
>> the white riders, and Gwenhidwy knows, as Pointsman cannot, that it's
>> part of the plan of the day to sit inside this mean room and cry into
>> just such a deafness' (GR 172.28-31). The centre has been shifted, at
>> least in perception, if not in reality, and it is a Political
>> shifting, sliding *down* [my emphasis] a `gra-dient of wretchedness'
>> (GR 172.36). The threat is `From the East, you see. And the South:
>> from the mass of Eu-rope, certainly'. (GR 172.40-41) The gradient does
>> not arise from immediate human concerns, `shipping', `pat-terns of
>> land use', ancient tribal tabu'. (GR 172.38-39) No, it is some deep
>> fear embedded in the City itself - `Perhaps of being swallowed by the
>> immense, the silent Mother Continent?' (GR 173.6) The `City Paranoiac'
>> (GR 173.3) has reorganised itself to resist Gravity and in doing so
>> the strong have moved West (turning away from the Sun) and the weak
>> been pushed Eastwards towards the front (and towards the Sun). Is
>> there a suggestion here that wealth implies a flight, or at least a
>> flinching, away from Gravity, from God; that poverty forces one to
>> confront His power all the sooner and more immediately? Or does it
>> just mean the poor will die quicker? Is the fact of such a realignment
>> along the gravitational gradient an image of Original Sin on a
>> planetary scale? cities, whole continents dividing and betraying each
>> other? Or is it an indication of some fundamental injustice in God's
>> Creation? Perhaps that there is no God, no centre at all. Gwenhidwy's
>> subsequent speech suggests that the cosmos, if not its creator is
>> somewhat more even handed.
>>
>>     He is out with the festive bottle of vat 69 now, and about to pour
>>     them a toast.
>>
>>     "To the babies." Grinning, completely mad.
>>
>>     "Babies, Gwenhidwy?"
>>
>>     "Ah, I've been keep-ing my own map? Plot-ting da-ta from the
>>     mater-nity wards. The ba- bies born during this Blitz are al-so
>>     fol-lowing a Poisson distribution, you see."
>>
>>     "Well -- to the oddness of it, then. Poor little bastards."
>>
>> The scene then switches to the water bugs which emerge at night to eat
>> Gwenhidwy's beans and lentils, `agents of unification, you
>> see. Christmas bugs.' (GR 173.39) If nothing else at least the bugs
>> are doing their bit to restore the cosmic balance, concurrently
>> integrating and reducing the Creation. These same bugs were `deep in
>> the straw of the manger at Bethlehem' (GR 173.40), their world one of
>> apparent disorder and danger of sudden, unaccountable death. The bugs'
>> innocent gnawing might disturb some `mysterious sheaf of vectors that
>> would send neighbour bugs tumbling ass-over- antennas down past you as
>> you hold on with all legs in that constant tremble of golden stalks.'
>> (GR 174.2-4) But even in this world in miniature there is an order and
>> significance behind this apparent chaos, some distant, powerful being
>> which, through the divinity of its actions, causes yet also mitigates
>> these - literally - world- shattering events and it is expressed using
>> the Revd Wicks Cherrycoke's image in miniature: `the crying of the
>> infant reached you, perhaps, as bursts of energy from the invisible
>> distance, nearly unsensed, often ignored. Your saviour, you
>> see. . . .'  (GR 174.7-9)


D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com