Pynchon's titles (was ...

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 21/08/2005, at 10:18 PM, Michael J. Hußmann wrote:

> As Otto remarked, the parabola has no ends, strictly speaking, but then
> the rocket's path has -- the launch site and the impact site.
>
>> I'd assume
>> that most German readers would also be well aware of what the English
>> title was, and so the notion of "the end of the rainbow" gets factored
>> into the equation there as well.
>
> I guess so. But then, at what end of the rainbow/parabola is the pot of
> gold supposed to be -- at the impact site, where Slothrop finds (pre-
> impact) his girls in London, or at the launch site, especially that of
> the 000000?

I think of it in a less literal sense, that everyone tends to envisage 
a successful end point towards which their life is constantly 
gravitating, as in a path or arc. But the universe doesn't have a moral 
conscience, life and death is a cycle rather than an arc, and 
invariably our lives don't pan out in the way we hoped or believed they 
would, and once we realise this we (might) respond in manipulative or 
destructive or defeatist ways. Pointsman is a case in point, but so is 
Slothrop -- in fact, just about all the characters are. So it's a 
bittersweet take on the old fable about there being a pot of gold at 
the end of every rainbow, but the cautionary insight was always already 
there in the fable itself, because part of it was that the seeker could 
never actually find the end of the rainbow. It is forever elusive.

In terms of the rocket, many of those who designed and built the rocket 
envisaged that it would be "one great leap for mankind", as one of our 
modern heroes once said, that it would bring "progress". Others, 
politicians, bureaucrats, saw it in selfish terms of power and control, 
the fabulous advantages -- prestige and status -- and the material 
wealth which would come with having the most powerful weapon: imperial 
conquest, the subjugation and looting of colonies, war and world 
domination. Both these impetuses get brought together in Blicero's 
vision of a "new Deathkingdom" on the moon (722-3). As with just about 
everything in Pynchon, however, it's not a totally black and white 
situation or presentiment -- "good" and "evil" are relative categories 
(cf. Enzian and the Schwarzkommando and their rocket). Also:

	. . . 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, the two perpetually in struggle. (727)

But note how Enzian is embroiled in a struggle against the Empty Ones 
who are themselves bent on racial suicide and obliteration, while 
Blicero sees with sadness and clear vision the evils of imperialism and 
at the end of the novel offers up his "son" as a sort of (perverse) 
votive sacrifice. As once also did "God".

best