grgr (21): "you used to know what these words mean" (p. 472)

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 there's an important article by brian mchale (- m&h as caps), which uses this  
 line as title. the subtitle is: "misreading  g r a v i t y ' s   r a i n b o w"
 it was published in "language and style" in 1985, pp. 93-118. i give you the 
 last para (113):

 "pynchon's captain blicero imagines a lover, or rather an antilover, african 
 and black where his northern katje is blond, superior to the 'oven-game' they  
 play where katje seems trapped in it. 'perhaps', he muses, 'the black girl is a 
 genius of meta-solutions - knocking over the chessboard, shooting the referee' 
 (102). the metareader of  g r a v i t y ' s   r a i n b o w, overturner of 
 chessboards and shooters of referees, is called upon to be a 'genius of 
 metasolutions' by every second-person pronoun in the novel."

 though i find his way to get there sometimes a little complicated and even dry, 
            i whole-heartedly support mchales pleading
                      for  o n t o l o g i c a l  p l u r a l i s m !

 see also "modernist reading, post-modern text: the case of gravity's rainbow". 
 in: poetics today, I (1-2), 1979, pp. 85-110.

 "from first to last, the reader's experiences proves that  g r a v i t y ' s   
 r a i n b o w   will not boil down quite so readily to intelligible patterns of 
 theme, or indeed to any of the patterns which we have learned to expect from  
 modernist texts. reading  g r a v i t y ' s   r a i n b o w  is good training  
 in negative capability." (p. 108)

 was "finnegans wake" (- finished 1939, the year of oz) the first "postmodern" 
 text?!
                                              kai frederik