VLVL2(3): Hector's fall

[Mary Krimmel]

Thanks to those responsible for suggesting the hint of possible 
Christ/Satan duality.

Hector's fall is slightly reminiscent of Satan's in Milton's "Paradise Lost".

  "... among the fallen, he [Hector] had fallen further than most, not in 
distance alone but also in the quality of descent having begun long ago 
concentrated and graceful as a sky diver..."

"   From morn
To noon he [Satan] fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with the setting sun
Dropp'd from the zenith like a falling star."



>but--the
>tostada procedure was minor evidence--he growing less
>professional the longer he fell, while his skills as a
>field man depreciated."  (VL, Ch. 3, p. 29)
>
>"fallen" = preterite?  tragic?  But note as well ...
>
>
>"to take apart piece by piece and reassemble"
>
>Main Entry: anal·y·sis
>Pronunciation: &-'na-l&-s&s
>Function: noun
>Inflected Form(s): plural anal·y·ses  /-"sEz/
>Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, from analyein to
>break up, from ana- + lyein to loosen -- more at LOSE
>Date: 1581
>1 : separation of a whole into its component parts
>2 a : the identification or separation of ingredients
>of a substance b : a statement of the constituents of
>a mixture
>3 a : proof of a mathematical proposition by assuming
>the result and deducing a valid statement by a series
>of reversible steps b (1) : a branch of mathematics
>concerned mainly with functions and limits (2) :
>CALCULUS 1b
>4 a : an examination of a complex, its elements, and
>their relations b : a statement of such an analysis
>5 a : a method in philosophy of resolving complex
>expressions into simpler or more basic ones b :
>clarification of an expression by an elucidation of
>its use in discourse
>6 : the use of function words instead of inflectional
>forms as a characteristic device of a language
>7 : PSYCHOANALYSIS
>
>http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
>
>Cf. ...
>
>"There has been this strange connection between the
>German mind and the rapid flashing of successive
>stills to counterfeit movement, for at least two
>centuries since Leibniz, in the process of inventing
>calculus, used the same approach to break up the
>trajectories of cannonballs through the air."  (GR,
>Pt. III, pp. 406-7)
>
>    "Three hundred years ago mathematicians were
>learning to break the cannonball's rise and fall into
>stairsteps of range and height, delta-x and delta-y,
>allowing them to grow smaller and smaller, approaching
>zero as armies of eternally shrinking midges galloped
>upstairs and down again, the patter of their
>diminishing feet growing finer, smoothing out into
>continuous sound.  This analytic legacy has been
>handed down intact.  It brough the technicians at
>Peenemunde to peer at the Askania films of Rocket
>flights, frame by frame, delta-x by delta-y,
>flightless themselves ... film and calculus, both
>pornographies of flight." (GR, Pt. III, p. 523)
>
> From Michael Berube, Marginal Forces/Cultural Centers:
>Tolson, Pynchon, and the Politics of the Canon
>(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992) ...
>
>"Dwight Eddins has even suggested there is an antidote
>to pornographies of flight, for 'when we integrate, we
>return to integrity, to all that the original,
>unbroken arc means by way of momentary grace,
>momentary
>freedom, and the natural triumph of gravity' ([The
>Gnostic Pynchon] 1983, 78).  But this 'reintegration'
>is itself an already performed illusion, already part
>of the structure of film and calculus: both are forms
>of dismemberment and reconstitution which are
>reassembled into illusions of unity--in this case,
>unified and continuous motion.  For as Pynchon writes
>elsewhere in Gravity's Rainbow, the pornography of
>film
>and calculus is not that they carve up originary
>unities, but that they feign such unities: 'There has
>been this strange connection between the German mind
>and the rapid flashing of successive stills to
>counterfeit movement, for at least two
>centuries--since Leibniz, in the process of inventing
>calculus, used the same approach to break up the
>trajectory of
>cannonballs through the air' (GR 407).
>    "In my reconstruction, then, 'pornography' in
>Gravity's Rainbow describes a regressive anamnesia
>that recreates illusory, prelapsarian (or
>preliguistic) unities through a complex mechanism of
>dismemberment and reconfiguration; and since nostalgia
>itself works by much the same dynamic, Pynchon's
>'pornography' gives us fresh purchase on the cultural
>critique of nostalgia as well.  His novel offers us a
>veritable miscellany of macropolitical nostalgia and
>fantasied 'restoration': in its American version, the
>myth of the virgin land ...." (pp. 247-9)
>
>"... the 'falsity' of Pynchonian pornographies lies
>not in their rituals of dismemberment but in their
>fetishistic reassemblies, not in their cutting up of
>organic (w)holes but in their recomposition of
>inorganic wholes that fetishize the very idea of
>organic wholes.  At the very least, we should be wary
>of endorsing the book's various depictions of
>nostalgia, return, 'Diasporas running backwards' (GR
>737); ideally, we should also be wary of approaching
>Gravity's Rainbow as if fragmentation were a problem
>to be solved by critical intervention ..." (p. 251)
>
>http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0010&msg=50144&sort=date
>
>And see as well ...
>
>http://www.2street.com/cyborg/pynch1.htm
>
>http://www.2street.com/cyborg/pynch2.htm
>
>http://www.2street.com/cyborg/pynch3.htm
>
>http://www.2street.com/cyborg/pynch4.htm
>
>In the novel Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon uses
>the term "pornography" to denote modes of
>representation and reproduction which fragment
>continuous experience into discrete, quantifiable,
>replicable units -- modes of representation/
>reproduction which simulate fluid movement while
>relying upon discontinuous, static elements. Pynchon's
>Gravity's Rainbow focuses chiefly upon two specific
>varieties of such "pornography": calculus and film. It
>is clear, though, that Pynchon's definition of
>"pornography" would apply equally well to digital
>information processing (or, indeed, to any mode of
>representation which can be mechanically reproduced).
>Like a movie, which approximates continuous motion by
>speedily scrolling through a series of discontinuous
>static images, and like pornography, which relies upon
>the dismantling of a (usually female) body, digital
>technology splinters unified experience into an array
>of pixels, samples, or bits.
>
>http://www.2street.com/cyborg/porn.htm
>
>http://www.2street.com/cyborg/top.html
>
>The societal effects of the technological exhumation
>and circulation of dead matter are reinforced by the
>implementation of mathematical "Analysis" in Gravity's
>Rainbow. Whereas Rocketry components are derived from
>the inorganic chemistry of the benzene ring, the
>Rocket's flight trajectory is made possible by the
>"analytic legacy" emanating from the calculus of
>Leibniz. However, calculus (and film) are "flightless
>themselves" and are instead "pornographies of flight."
>In expressing the desire for real and living flight,
>Leibniz's dream of reducing the world to the ones and
>zeroes of binary code actually produces a simulation
>or pornography of flight.
>
>http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/spencer24.htm
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
>http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com