Sex & a Wimper

[Mo Man Tai]

In TRP's novels, the sciences cannot be easily separated
from the Religions.   When I tried to figure out how the
characters in GR deal with or cope with entropy or
entropical history, I realized that one of the most
important ways they deal with it is to have sex. 

["Be compassionate. But don't make up fantasies about them.
Despise me, exalt them, but remember we define each other.
Elite and preterite, we move through a cosmic design of
darkness and light, and in all humanity, I am one of the
very few who can comprehend it in toto." The SM of Gravity's
Rainbow is a religious bond. The archetypal relationship is
that
of Blicero and Gottfried-both males. We did not discuss
Greta
much, but we know that she is the white women or V and so
"each time Thanatz brought the whip down on her skin, she
was taken, off on another penetration toward the Center"
(509 TRP's Capitalization). The whip scars become text to be
read. The Center, the All, the Absolute, these are all
perverse inversions of various religious or transcendental
experiences.  In V., the destroyer and the destroyed are
united by acts of narcissistic historical violence, but in
Gravity's Rainbow these acts are solopsisticlly and
eschatologically motivated--to escape the human condition
and unite with the Absolute or as we read on page 662, pass
"into the All" (TRP's capitalization). Some critics read
Gravity's Rainbow  as a secular attack on Religion, as
anti-Christian, but such claims are absurd to anyone that
takes the time to read the books religious references. The
Center or the All or the Absolute is not Christian, but
human, it is only figuratively here, the Merkabah, the
antechamber of the Throne, but it is present in various
forms throughout the book ranging across dozens of
religions, Eastern, Western, Ancient and Modern.  Of course,
TRP has a more intimate understanding of the Christian
religion and so do most of his characters and most of his
readers. It's not odd that Pointy is a Knight or Slothrop is
St. George or that Pudding's war sins are  "purged" through
a Jewish mystical journey on his way to communion with the
body
and blood of Christ defiled and corrupted in SM ritual. No,
it is not coincidental that both Enzian and Gottfried are
the ritual sacrifice, the "pure word." It is no coincidence
that the book of Isaac is a Pynchon favorite. ]


Orgies, parties, sex, that is what they do. Sex in GR, be it
an orgy on a "religious vessel" or in the presence of the
"throne of god almighty" is a religious experience: Slothrop
has his "Tannhauserism" (GR 88. 299, 364, 393, 532-33);
There are the Grail quests (GR 321, 487. 517, 701, 739);
There are all the "sick" and infected religious systems--
not a one whole and not perverted--;  And there are the
Kabbalisms and
Gnosticisms. These two are very important, and I will post
more on these, but what do they have to do with V.? Not
much, so if you are not already
filtering these stupid posts you can delete now. 


Entropy is a "centrifugal force" in GR (302, 324).

We can think of it as a fictional analogue to the physical
process we find in the second law of thermodynamics.  Henry
Adams was an
important (perhaps as important as Rilke was to GR) source
for the novel V..  And it's my guess that TRP's interest in
these ideas has a lot to do with Adams, so TRP is not so
much interested in the second law of Thermo-D as
he is in its application to a whole bunch of subjects,
including, sociocultural phenomena, like religion and
characters like Slothrop. 

In GR, Entropy operates on not only the cosmic level, the
Big Bang (no, not an orgy, the theory-396), but also in
physical processes like radioactivity (479), mineralization
(167,351), and vegetal and organic decay (10, 166, 678,
688,). This natural death, decay,  (what about Benny's
decay?) is
contrary to the "Death" of the characters-fictional/cultural
"Death", a "Death" that is transfigured-Fear of God becomes
fear of
cultural "Death." 

In the Zone, zones scatter and cities crumble  entropically
(519,524, 3-4, 682, and, as I will try to demonstrate, the
history of the Jews (again see that wonderful essay on Dante
by Santayana), the Gypsies, the Herero, and Slothrop's own
family religion, are all subject to entropical forces (391,
737, 318, 170,). 


But it is the holy SOULS of the characters, their living
selves, that are most affected: Pointsman (142) , Katje
(209), Enzian (321) and Slothrop, who scatters or
disintegrates in a lot of ways but certainly spiritually,
emotionally, psychologically, physically,
characteristically, and most importantly, isotropiclly. 
 
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper. 

- T. S. Eliot (1925)