Chasing ... Cutting

[Dave Monroe]

Again, think archaeology, layers, strata, folds.  Subtexts, contexts,
intertexts.  Collage, montage, superpositons, palimpsests.  A filmic,
cinematic novel, indeed.  With illustrations by Robert Rauschenberg.  One can
have their Krisatllnacht AND their Crystal Palace, too.  Very wide bandwith
here, but with no small amount of signal bleed from channel to channel.
"Several levels," "words on your page only delta-t from the things they stand
for," "secrets [...] preserve[d centripetally] against centrifugal History"
... kinda sorta how poetic, literary language (for starters ...) functions,
no?  Allusively, not exclusively ...

There is much in Gravity's Rainbow that is anachronistic, if one has limits
contexts to the presumably immediate, historical ones of the narrative at any
given point.  And it DOES rather end during the Vietnam War, Cold War,
Postcolonialism, Civil Rights, Gay Liberation, et al.   It certainly was
written, published at the height of such tensions, certainly can, perhaps
should, be positioned there ...

Paul Mackin wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Yessenia Perez wrote:
>
> > TRP gives the history and
> > he, significantly it is through Weissmann, links the history
> > of the Herero genocide with the  history after the failure
> > of the German revolution, with both world wars and the nazi
> > holocaust. But the holocaust is not the focus of this
> > linking. It is not the holocaust that is alluded to in the
> > opening scene of GR. No, that would fuck up the novel,
> > sorry. TRP situates the novel, and jbor has been right on on
> > this, and see Charles Berger's essay "Merrill and Pynchon
> > Our Apocalyptic Scribes", "just BEFORE the beginning of the
> > atomic age proper." The fall of the crystal palace is not an
> > allusion to the start of the holocaust but to the end of the
> > second industrial revolution.
>
> I can see that you are taking the commonsense view that the novel
> is situated at--and starts at--the end of WWII at the beginning of atomic
> age--not, say, in 1938 when the Jewish persecution was getting underway,
> and not at the height of the Vietnam War, and of course I agree. But
> are you leading up to some additional nonliteral truth here as
> well? Curious.
>
>                         P.