GRGR Finale: launching the 00000

[Dave Monroe]

"Purely symbolic" ... densely figurative, yes, but "purely symbolic,"
well, no ... this is merely (...) aestheticist depoliticization here.
Something, by the way, Gravity's Rainbow borders on itself in not quite
assimilating Hiroshima to Christian mythography (the Ascension, which
falls on August 6th in the liturgical calendar) and astrology (that
"pale Virgin," which also certain has little signal bleed to/from that
Christianity channel there).  But Gravity's Rainbow is undeniably a
political, politicized text, tracing indeed those convergent arcs from
"the Manhattan Project, the german rocket program, the death camps" to
Hirsohima, and, beyond that, the space race, the Cold War, the arms race
("Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?").  A warning, a caveat, a cautionary
tale, a jeremiad, a sceular apocalypse of sorts ...

That Evil Hour ("at certain hours, a round white light" [V137/B160] et
al.), that Radiant Hour (V674f./B785ff.), that Rocket Noon
(V500ff./B584ff.), referring not only perhaps to the launching of the
Rocket 00000, of Mutually Assured Destruction in general, but to that
asymptotic (at least in terms of the narrative, which, of necessity
["absolutely and forever without sound"], stops just short ...) moment
just beyond that "final delta-t"--?  See
http://www.bullatomsci.org/clock.html ... the current issue, by the way,
discusses Carl Sagn's involvement in "a secret military project
researching the idea of detonating a nuclear device on the surface of
the moon" ("mostly the military just wanted to see what would
happen"--http://www.bullatomsci.org/ ).  See Keay Davidson's Carl Sagan:
A Life, apparently ...