Tabbi: Pynchon's Psychology of Engineers

[jbor at bigpond.com]

This also:

... the more relaxed -- and, to this extent, the *weaker* -- recent 
novel, _Vineland_. (169)

And of Pynchon's portrayal of Blicero:

... Yet, in Pynchon's surprisingly sympathetic portrait, most of which 
concerns Blicero's dying days in Holland after the war, we are often 
made to regard this character less with fear or disgust than with a 
certain nostalgia for a power that, in late 1945, was already passing. 
Blicero's story, told in Rilkean tones and in a prose that luxuriates 
in the details of a decadent sexuality ... (171)

The point about the Irving book which Tabbi notes as a definitive 
Pynchon source is that *all* of Irving's work, even before the absolute 
uproar created by his Hitler book in the late '70s, leans towards 
revisionism. There's no need for "denazification" or whatever the 
attempted obfuscation is about, because Irving was regarded by pretty 
much everybody as a reputable historian in the '60s and early-to-mid 
'70s. But still the point remains that in this book, _The Mare's Nest_, 
Irving was working to debunk or ameliorate Nazi "crimes". And, as an 
aside, you'd think that Tabbi, writing in 1992, might have been a 
little more upfront about what, by that date, David Irving clearly was 
and is.

 From _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_: "to find a mare's nest 
- to make what at first appears to be a great discovery but that proves 
to be nothing at all."

Anyway, Tabbi's really is an essay worth reading.

best

On 11/08/2005, at 8:53 PM, jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> Something which caught my eye:
>
> [...] Pynchon's own sources, David Irving's _The Mare's Nest_ and 
> James McGovern's _Crossbow and Overcast_, show that the looting of 
> German technological achievements did in fact go on among competing 
> Allied powers, much as Pynchon describes it in _GR_. (172-3)
>
> Irving, David. 1964. _The Mare's Nest: The Secret Weapons of the Third 
> Reich_. William Kimber Ltd, London.
>
> http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/MaresNest/
>
> best
>
> On 10/08/2005, at 8:13 AM, jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
>
>> One of the classic critical essays on _GR_:
>>
>> '"Strung Into the Apollonian Dream": Pynchon's Psychology of 
>> Engineers'
>> by Joseph Tabbi, _Novel: A Forum on Fiction_ 25.2, Winter 92, pp. 
>> 160-180.	
>> Abstract:
>> Examines the related, yet contrasting, symbolism in Pynchon's book 
>> _Gravity's Rainbow_. It is a novel famous for its treatment of 
>> science and technology, with many references to tarot cards, 
>> witchcraft and primitive religion. Technical images; Rocket, the most 
>> dramatic symbol, embodies immortal dreams and aspirations of an 
>> entire generation; Technology becomes a means of unifying the psyche.
>>
>> Begins:
>> It is a curious fact that _Gravity's Rainbow_, a novel famous for its 
>> treatment of science and technology, should include amid all its 
>> technical detail so much that is dreamlike, spiritualistic, or in 
>> some other way "non-scientific." For every equation or popularization 
>> of science cited in the text, there are again as many references to 
>> tarot cards, witchcraft, and primitive religion, while more often 
>> than not Pynchon's most complex technical excursions are embedded 
>> within dreams, hallucinations, or psychic transactions among the 
>> living and the dead. The book's central symbol--the rocket--might be 
>> described equally by mandalas as by ballistics, and that unimaginable 
>> corporate totality--the Firm--seems to employ as many psychics as 
>> scientists. To the reader looking to sort out the significance of 
>> Pynchon's many technological metaphors, analogies, and images, this 
>> is all very disconcerting. One can try to ignore the extraneous 
>> details, but sooner or later the most single-minded investigator into 
>> the novel's technological material must be "thrown back," like Tyrone 
>> Slothrop at the height of his quest, "on dreams, psychic flashes, 
>> omens, cryptographies, drug epistemologies, all dancing on a ground 
>> of terror, contradiction, absurdity" (p. 582). [...]
>>
>> Pdf available.
>>
>> best
>>
>