Team America, f*ck yeah!

[Cometman]

just kidding, this post has nothing to do with that movie.
Gurka gurka, bakalah

>From: jporter 
>Subject: GRGR 1,1: Pirate's Ascent/Desent

>I see the tide is inevitably moving into section 2. Just a few
>comments before I trundle along...late, as usual.

see, I KNEW we hadn't exhausted 1,1!!!!!!

>There is something familiar about the presence of an upper level
>climate controlled area sitting over a chaotic first floor, populated
>by a profane group determined to get as wasted as possible. Is this a
>reprise of that same form used by Pynchon in his short story, 
>"Entropy," with some significant differences?

Pynchon dissed the story in Slow Learner, didn't he?  But that doesn't
mean it's not good.  "the upper room" of course hearkens back to the
source of much great imagery, the Xian canon, but for this scene it's
just Pirate and the plants.  I'd pose a dichotomy between mechanized
death and the lovable vegetable kingdom, but Pynchon's come out against
jaquardism, or what's that movement where they break the looms?

>This time, there is communication between the two levels. Pirate
>is our emissary. In preparation for his ascent to the rooftop
>garden, he first evacuates his unconscious- by dreaming- and
>then, his conscious mind- while voiding. He seems to be
>"purifying" himself, somehow, before ascending to the "sacred"
>garden.

I think Pirate is important, too.

>This garden, however, is an open system- the very opposite
>of the closed and sterile environment shared by Callisto and
>Aubade. It has-

	an impasto feet thick, of unbelievable black
	topsoil in which anything could grow.

not only that, but even though he obtained the bananas from South
America, he's using his own labor and ingenuity to grow them, not
following the colonialist exploitative pattern of enslaving the natives
and stealing the (literal) fruit of their labors

>It's dawn, and Pirate is ascending to the garden to gather fruit
>for breakfast. While on the roof, in his purified state, his vision
>is captured by a recently launched V-2. He shares with us his
>classified knowledge about this "Most Secret German rocket
>bomb'", and his concern about "doing something". He is
>distracted, but using his commando skills he is able to re-empty
>his consciousness and re-focus on the task at hand: "Pick
>bananas." He has completed a transformation hinted at a few
>sentences earlier, allowing him to become oblivious to time:

	Pirate looks at his watch. Nothing registers.

>becoming, in effect, a barely historical creature, totally absorbed
>by the present.

temporal bandwidth

>Task completed, he pauses momentarily on the roof gazing eastward.
>The contrail is gone. He sets up the reversal of blast and incoming
>scream of the rocket, which will be important later, and then, in a
>Newtonian moment, imagines the point of the missile in contact with
>his scalp. Blessed, thus, by gravity, he descends, ape-like, down the
>corkscrew ladder.

>A few observations:

>Entropy is the basis of evolution. It is the cause of variation
>in otherwise perfectly transmitted genetic messages, which
>are then  "selected" by the "context" of the environment. In the
>garden, in concert with the molecular basis of life, entropy causes
>the natural production of waste that will be transformed into
>fecundity, the conjuror's secret, as it were.

>As someone else pointed out on the list, long ago, Pirate is
>a 'Prentice conjuror (Gilbert & Sullivan- Pirates of Penzance).

>Gravity, on the other hand, is responsible for the molecular
>basis of life, having caused the second and third re-aggregations
>of the dust of super novas back into stars, only to explode again.
>That led to the formation of elements heavier than hydrogen and
>helium, allowing for the possibility of life. Much later, Gravity
>organized the random dust into the earth and the rest of the solar
>system, i.e., Home.

>The intersection of Gravity and Entropy providing the basis of and
>ensuring the evolution of life and the descent of man, down that
>"double helix", into the warm glow of civilization, seems to be one
>interpretation of the themes woven together in the final scene
>of the first section. It suggests hope in contrast to the
scream/dream.

>One other thing nagging at me, however, before I put away
>section 1, is the von Braun quote. Wernher, creator of that other,
>anti-fruit, balanced like an apple on Pirate's head, 

do Tell!

>suggests a dark
>inversion of the natural

	Everything science has taught me, and continues
	to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity
	of our spiritual existence after death.

>What's the formula for that, I'm wondering.

>jody

my undoubtedly fallacious interpretation has already changed several
times.  I want Gravity's Rainbow to be a tenacious affirmation of life,
so I see in the quotation something that Blicero would never have said:
ie, the real world is better than the nightmare, von Braun doesn't map
directly onto Blicero (his eigenvalue is different?) and in the old
hotel, a gathering-place for what Pynchon will eventually develop into
Thanatoids, but also a contemplative figuration of history developing
in a student's mind.  
Theodore Roosevelt, a cheerful survivor of battle and leader of men,
plops down from the upper level (saved from debalustration by Pirate's
quick reflexes) in the person of Teddy Bloat to be 2nd witness to the
sunlit arc.
I just have this urge to put TR into the mix because of the Rough
Riders.  It's hard to imagine any current US politician daring to march
in front of armed soldiers into battle, let alone face enemies.  And
because he started the national park system, but also because he had a
jovial way of presenting militarism so that the absurd propositions
detailed so well by Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler in
"War is a Racket" http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/racket.html were
(and continue to be) swallowed whole by so many.