GRGR(9): Welcome

[David Morris]

>From: keith woodward <woodwaka at uwec.edu>
>To: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: GRGR(9): Welcome
>Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 14:18:07 -0500
>
> >>From: keith woodward
> >>Welcome past the Zero
> >
> >from David:
> >Would you (or anyone) care to 'splain?
> >Seems to me that Slothrop's not yet been launched, let alone reached the
> >zero...
>
>Well, I can answer that question quite easily, David.  Just kidding.  I
>don't know if there is a final answer to this question, it's the same one
>that's been asked a number of times during the reading: what is the Zero?

I'm certain there are many zeros in the text: death, nativity, brenschluss 
(sp?), numerous interfaces between this and that.

>To connect Slothrop's having been launched or not having been launched with
>the zero is to make an associative claim about the meaning of zero, I
>think.  If the zero is internal, he's reached it.  If it's external, where
>is it?  DOES it have to do with launching?  A-and I might suggest that
>Slothrop has been launched: from London to the casino.

That's one reading.  I'd say he's being fuelled up at the Casino, soon to be 
launched into the zone.  Somewhere into the zone is where he'll hit the apex 
of the parabola, that zero...

>I think, wherever we are, we're beyond the zero, cos that's what
>the page tells us.

WHAT page?  See my comment below

>I'm not
>sure that it helps us approximate what the zero is, though.  Just gives us
>a more slippery understanding.  We're outside of London (ground zero) and
>Slothrop, losing his identity, is equivalent to zero, etc, etc.  If yeh
>don't know what zero is, how do you get beyond it?
>
>Keith W

Well, SOMEBODY suggested we've moved beyond the zero in the text... I was 
just trying to make some sense out of that framework, see if the proponents 
of that view want to support it.  In the most literal sense we BEGAN the 
book at _Beyond the Zero_, the title of the first section.  Now we're BEYOND 
_Beyond the Zero_.

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