Enzian

[jbor]

>  Mark David Tristan Brenchley wrote some interesting comments about 
>  Enzian/Ensign, his insights etc
(sorry, but I've deleted the actual post)

You might be interested in these comments from Raymond M. Olderman:

      In making vertical connections the reader or character brings together
    two or more whole systems of metaphor -- two or more *sets* of
    horizontal connections. Connecting psychological systems to economic
    systems, for example, we connect, as Enzian does, everything related to
    the individual's domimation by a father figure to everything related to
    proliferating cartels -- the connection reveals the shape of the white
    man's fascination with a single authority, with absolute dominance and
    submission, with winning and losing, with sadomasochism, racism, shit,
    the penis, the Rocket's penetration, sexism, death, resistance to
    change, manly pursuits, masculine technologies, manipulation of the
    market, accumulation of power, political intrigue, and so on. Although
    Enzian makes these vertical connections, he is also somehow infected by
    their substance, as he is infected by Weissmann, as by implication we
    all are. If Enzian ever does launch anything, it might be something
    *opposite* to Weissmann's rocket, but not, I believ, essentially
    *different*. They exist within the same dying metaphoric system. it is
    after all Thanatz -- death -- who gives Enzian the last clue necessary
    for launching.

In the previous paragraph Olderman sets out what he believes is the novel's
"demonstration of underlying connections between all our systems of order
and explanation":

     ... There are horizontal connections and there are vertical
    connections. The horizontal connections provide a series of insights
    into relationships *within* a single metaphoric system. A reader, or
    character, can get lost tracing down all the connections that relate,
    say, within the psychological system of metaphors -- the Freudian
    connections of sex, shit, and death; the Pavlovian connections
    concerning the operations of the opposite; the introduction of
    behaviouristic connections, and so on. Pynchon warns against this trap
    repeatedly by continually making overt vertical connections *between*
    metaphoric systems -- the connection of "shit, money, and the Word", is
    a shorthand example of how psychological, economic, and religious
    systems of metaphors have some deeper underlying structure.

                            (Olderman, 'The New Consciousness and the Old
                            System', in Charles Clerc ed., _Approaches to
                            Gravity's Rainbow_, Ohio SU, Columbus, 1983,
                                                                p.209)

It's interesting that even amongst the published critics there are so many
different and yet very perceptive interpretations of Pynchon's work. I think
the openness of his texts -- the fact that they don't judge or condemn -- is
one of the reasons for this.

best

(PS I had thought for a long time that you were one of Terrance's silly
personas. Making up identities and posting from hoax email addresses is one
of his, and another lister's, annoying habits around here. It's pretty
transparent who they are when they do it, but ... Sincere apologies if you
are indeed a real person.)