GRGR23(1) - W-what happened? Anything at all?

[Seb Thirlway]

From: Terrance Flaherty <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>

>   The System won away from Nature, beyond life and
>> death – perhaps  that We Must Fight, it’s something that
Katje,
>> Slothrop, every one of the characters does every time they
wake
>> up in the morning and behave with a sense of purpose.

>True, this System is not something that only They practice,
>but the question GR poses, is not about escaping the system
>or fighting the system or practicing the system, but about
>synthesis and control, freedom and identity.

Well put in very few words.  My assertion is that this only
starts becoming clear quite late in the book - the focus
gradually drifts away from "escaping/figting/practising the
system" to, as you put it, synthesis/control,
freedom<->identity: - on a more generalised, personal level.  It
starts to look as though the System that the earlier parts of the
book focus on is inevitable; something that is there a priori in
every character as part of them, but reified to an extreme level.
I like the Counterforce section which is fast approaching, where
the ground is cut out from under any delusion that the Us vs
Them, Me vs The System structure is real, or at least more real
than anything else - how does Pirate put it?  The Counterforce is
necessary not because the System Must Be Destroyed, We Must Fight
Against It but just because a Them-structure demands an
Us-structure - it's not exciting in the least, it doesn't point
the way out of this whole mess, but it's something to do.
Pirate's episode in the taffy-corridors is one of the most
horrible and moving parts of the book.

I only realised this on this particular reading of GR - what a
weird and wonderful book - I always enjoyed the parts following
Peenemunde before, but didn't really understand why the whole
thing had become so disappointing - which it is, if you expect
the story to follow the rules it set up earlier and conclude with
a resounding victory of Us over Them.

Another weird thing about GR - you can say "it's about synthesis
and control, freedom and identity", which is true, but the book
escapes definition.



seb