Slothrop's Ancestors & the triumph of lawlessness

[Terrance]

On May 15, 1911, the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution
of Standard Oil              Company, ruling it was in
violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Lotza good stuff in that Oklahoma City Law Review:


In Gravity;s Rainbow, the lawlessness of international
cartels permeate every echelon of the war: the complex,
behind-the-scenes interweave of General Electric and Siemans
and Shell with I.G. Farben and Krupp that helped give the
Germans a guidance and control system for launching V-2s on
London; technology for developing plastics; and information
for controlling precious metal prices.

Pynchon suggests that war is buying and selling on an
immense conspirational scale where the Elect are hidden and
the Preterite individuals merely victims, from Slothrop's
ancestors to starving inmates at the concentration camp at
Dora who assemble the V-2 rockets underground. 

Heller, in Catch-22, allows us, as readers, to experience
Yossarian's catharsis, his escape "into" responsibility.
Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow, forces us, as readers, to
become "knotted into" the fourth, sixth, and twenty-second
catch of launch and film--reel AND real--where we face the
holocaust possibilities of our own imminent destruction. In
contemplating such terror, the reader and Pynchon no longer
need to see Tyrone Slothrop. Lawlessness has triumphed. 

CATCH-22, GRVITY'S RAINBOW, AND LAWLESSNESS, BILL McCARRON,
OAKY CITY LR.VOL.24.#3 FALL1999.665-680. 



http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0515.html#article

http://www.history.rochester.edu/fuels/tarbell/MAIN.HTM