Chasing ... Cutting

[Dave Monroe]

... whereas, recalling that "pointed tip of the Rocket, falling nearly a mile per
second, absolutely and forever without sound"--because there'll soon be no one left
to hear that final "screaming," there might not even be anybody left to do a little
screaming of their own ("there are no mouths and we must scream") ...--"reach[ing]
its last unmeasurable gap above the roof of this old theater, the last delta-t," I
read that dash perhaps as that "point," as that "last delta-t," and then--

That white, blank, blanched, bleached, bliceroed, blicerated, oblit(c/z)erated
("Blicero," "oBlicer ....") page (what IS the last page of Gravity's Rainbow?  THAT
one, I'd venture ...), that thermonuclear flash (pikadon, the Japanese call it),
thunderbolt, lightning.  "There is time," perhaps, but not for so nearly as much as
perhaps Prufrock found time for in that final delta-t "before the taking of toast
and tea."  I tend to complete that line, "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye,"
but(t) ...

But reading Gravity's Rainbow as "merely" an esp. long, esp. complicated meditation
(?(!)) on sex 'n' love 'n' death and the inevitaility thereof, of, at least, that
last element, is to ignore, elide, erase, white out (...) that pointed, indeed,
political con/sub/inter/jus' plain ol'/text that Pynchon "himself" nicely
summarizes in "Is it O.K. to Be a Luddite?," in re: that "factory system," those
"three curves" of (metonymically or otherwise) "the Manhattan Project, the German
long-range rocket program and the death camps, such as Auschwitz" ...

But, I agree, in the meantime, in that (thankfully, prolonged; hopefully, infinite)
"final delta-t" between the fall of the (textual) Rocket and the fall of the
(contextual, very real, dammit) ICBMs, "keep cool" (esp. keep at subthermonuclear
temperatures) AND "care," "make love, not war," "love the one you're with,"
whatever.  Not so sure about jacking off AS the Bombs are falling, but ... but taht
DOES seem rather Slothropian, no?  But thanks for taking the time for a few quick,
but, from what I can tell, for the time being, sufficient, satisfactory (emphasis
NOT on the "factory") answers ...



jbor wrote:

> That final beginning (is it an imperative? an admonition? a question? a
> statement? a lament?):
>
>      Now everybody--
>
> is, I think, amongst many other things quite probably, an invitation to the
> reader to act, or react perhaps, to what she or he has read; to go off and
> masturbate or hug a loved one or sing a hymn or take mortal comfort in the ways
> we usually have, unmoved by the arduous and breathtaking spectacle which we have
> just witnessed; or maybe to go out into that there real world where Slothrop has
> been dispersed and change the ways we interact with others if such changes are so
> indicated, maybe even strive a little harder to make changes for the better on a
> domestic, local or even professional basis, to "be nice to one another" which is
> the motto Otto suggested and
> which isn't quite as corny as it sounds when you consider how so very opposite of
> that people in general are to one another both on an individual and global basis,
> and that the only real message to come out of Pynchon's first extravaganza was to
> "keep cool but care".
>
> So, in order, my responses to your pop quiz are: OK; yes; yes, no; none; and,
> n/a.
>
> Ca suffit?