Sympathetic Magic & Cybernetics

[Jane Sweet]

Mark David Tristan Brenchley wrote:
>
> 
>         This is in relation to GR I presume. The point about Gravity's
> Rainbow, I thought, is that it describes a circle (much as the book with
> its
> linked first and last line of the book can be described as a parabola that
> describes a circle in time), thus avoiding the trap of linearity (a circle
> eventually comes to have no end and no beginning). Sort of a Rilkean idea
> of Transcendence, I guess.
> maybe.
> Travesty


Right, cool, but we can see that the "reality" of GR, the
theatre, where all the world is a stage, or all the Earth is
a stage, this perhaps not too firm, but fleshy planet,
infirm perhaps, a weary planet earth; its proscenium the
parabola,  that shape we have all come to know so well,
"that shape latent in the sky" that fascinates all,
fascinates and frightens all the characters in GR. The
theatre
is also the theatre of War of course and  it is also that
theatre in which we will all be sitting at the end of the
book, even if, to use Wiener's metaphor, we have not yet
picked up the Rocket (pencil), a deta-t finality.  This
image, and  the symbolism associated with it, of the
Parabola/Theatre is
constructed by the narrators, readers and characters and
acts
as a containment structure for the action of the novel. On
one level, it is the achievement, the success of Their
interests, the world stage that Wiener says, is the "world
of Belsen and Hiroshima...the concentration of power in the
hands of the most unscrupulous."  Their interest is in war,
power, control, commerce, electricity, money, work, "death
transfigured." And the War and ironically the peace, is
controlled by Them, thereby creating a fracturing
anachronism in time, halting on the point of a paradox, the
last delta-t where we
will all be faced with another--the abstraction of the
delta-t, a way to deal with Zeno's paradox of motion,
confronts in that theatre the conscious life of the mind
pushed to choose a last action in a crisis of decision
almost out of time. The Angel of Death in its silence will
shatter the image of the film and be followed by a screaming
like the one that we hear at the beginning of the book.
Isn't this an 
ironic Return? Dave Monroe's point I guess?  
Ironic, yes and this is the big one isn't it? The
destruction of the theatre(s), the World, where there is no
deposit, no return, no salvation, no Cycle, because the
rocket demands not deposit, no return by its very structure
(BLICERO)--the
parabola, "that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no
return. The ineluctability of Gravity bends tangents beyond
the Zero of Brenschluss to any determined Point." 

So Mandela, circle back runriverrun Jimmy see Jimmy and Nora
run, but all the action in GR transpires beneath the
Rocket's parabola (this is  central metaphor), the structure
of containment in the book which becomes, as I say,  the
proscenium of the
Orpheus Theatre, where the scenes and acts are ordered
according to "the Present Dispensation." The novel, the
story demands choices by characters. They are fictional
characters questing, they are on a fictional journey. The
old journey to knowledge we might say. But for the
Postmodernist/Modern protagonist of TRP's fiction at least, 
the Quest, the Journey to knowledge, to self-discovery, does
not offer the reward of a propitious return, a home-coming
and the reestablishment of harmony made possible through
action inspired by knowledge acquired on the journey. The
Prodigal Son can never go home again. He's not Wise or
tested and hardened or a MAN now, and you know all that, go
home quest rites and ritual archetypal,  use your own terms
and names
dropped here, Jung, but it's religion/myth and feel free to 
put
it in quotes if it's easier on your knowledge of these or
your politics or whatever.  The reader, while he/she is not
a character can never go home again either. A biblical and
Rilkean reference. Surprised?? What's keeping Slothrop from
returning Home? What if Odysseus never got Home? Paola does,
but 
Moral certainty has become difficult,
the Quest has been a secular one and  in a world bereft of
any deity, any god that we may be a Job to or a decedent of
Job to, a Moses to our people negotiating with a terrible
god,  a Prodigal Son to the Father, a Prometheus,
a singer of the song of King Lud, a culture that may rebel
against the machine, rage against the V and not seek Death
and
annihilation.  What ever we think of gods and
goddesses, of Christianity, of
Plato,  of Jesus, of the Pope, all is changed, changed
utterly and Personally I believe
that some beasts have been born in Bethlehem, the Bomb for
one, but a terrible beauty has been born as well. 

Fausto Maijstral sums up the predicament faced by all the
characters:

"The street of the 20th century, at whose far end or
turning--we hope-- is some sense of home or safety. But no
guarantees. A street we are put at the wrong end of, for
reasons best known to the agents who put us here. If there
are agents. But a  street we must walk."


And the seasons they go round and round
and the painted ponies go up and down
we are captives on the carousel of Time.