GR excerpts right on target.

[Jasper Fidget]

This is the "autobiographical" passage-- page 739 in the penguin edition
(the red one with the rising sun on the cover anyway).

Jasper Fidget

----- Original Message -----
From: "Samuel Moyer" <smoyer at satx.rr.com>
To: <barbara100 at jps.net>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: GR excerpts right on target.


> What edition is this.  Mine has page numbers up to 760 (Penguin).  I don't
> recall that last paragraph you quote at all.
>
> Thanks,
> Sam
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <barbara100 at jps.net>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 11:12 PM
> Subject: GR excerpts right on target.
>
>
> Readings from Gravity's Rainbow today on the afternoon train:
>
> "But the Rocket has to be many things, it must answer to a number of
> different shapes in the dreams of those who touch it--in combat, in
tunnel,
> on paper--it must survive heresies shining, unconfoundable...and heretics
> there will be: Gnostics who have been taken in a rush of wind and fire to
> chambers of the Rocket-throne...Kabbalists who study the Rocket as Torah,
> letter by letter--rivets, burner cap and brass rose, its text is theirs to
> permute and combine into new revelations, always unfolding...Manichaeans
who
> see two Rockets, good and evil, who speak together in the sacred idiolalia
> of the Primal Twins (some say their names are Enzian and Blicero) of a
good
> Rocket to take us to the stars, an evil Rocket for the World's suicide,
the
> two perpetually in struggle.
> "But these two heretics will be sought and the dominion of silence will
> enlarge as each one goes down...they will all be sought out.  Each will
have
> his personal Rocket. Stored in its target-seeker will be the heretic's
EEG,
> the spikes and susurrations of heartbeat, the ghost-blossoming of personal
> infrared, each Rocket will know its intended and hunt him, ride him a
> green-doped and silent hound, through our World, shining and pointed in
the
> sky at his back, his guardian, executioner rushing in, rushing closer...."
> (GR 848)
>
> "He [Enzian] must tell Christian everything he knows, everything he
suspects
> or has dreamed.  Proclaiming none of it for truth.  But he must keep
nothing
> back for himself .  Nothing is his to keep.  'They have lied to us. They
> can't keep us from dying, so They lie to us about death.  A cooperative
> structure of lies.  What have They ever  given us in return for the trust,
> the love--They actually say 'love'--we're supposed to owe Them? Can they
> keep us from even catching cold? from lice, from being alone? from
anything?
> Before the Rocket we went on believing, because we wanted to.  But the
> Rocket can penetrate, from the sky, at any given point.  Nowhere is safe.
> We can't believe Them any more.  Not if we are still sane, and love the
> truth.'" (GR 849)
>
> "Between two station marks, yellow crayon through the years of grease and
> passage, 1966 and 1971, I tasted my first blood. Do you want to put this
> part in?] We drank the blood of our enemies.  That's why you see Gnostics
so
> hunted.  The sacrament of the Eucharist is really drinking the blood of
the
> enemy.  The Grail, the Sangraal, is the bloody vehicle.  Why else guard it
> so sacredly? Why should the black honor-guard ride half a continent, half
a
> splintering Empire, stone night and winter day, if it's only for the touch
> of sweet lips on a humble bowl?  No, it's mortal sin they're carrying: to
> swallow the enemy, down into the slick juicery to be taken in by all the
> cells.  Your officially defined 'mortal sin,' that is.  A sin against you.
> A section of your penal code, that's all. [ The true sin was yours: to
> interdict that union.  To draw that line.  To keep us worse than enemies,
> who are after all caught in the same field of shit--to keep us strangers."
> (GR 862)
>
>
>
> I LOVE THOMAS PYNCHON !!!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>