Hume: Perspectival Subtext in GR

[jbor at bigpond.com]

Meanwhile, another interesting essay from one of the more prominent 
critics of Pynchon's work:

'Views from Above, Views from Below: The Perspectival Subtext in 
_Gravity's Rainbow_'
by Kathryn Hume. _American Literature_ 60.4, 1988, pp. 625-642.	
Begins:
With "a screaming comes across the sky," _GR_ wrenches us into the 
world of The Rocket. Just so, the V-2 magnetically draws the novel's 
characters into that same world, its fields of force generating the 
major actions and informing the images. Time and again, the rocket 
imposes its code on elements of the story: Tyrone Slothrop becomes 
Rocketman; marriage turns into union with the rocket; orgasm 
corresponds to launching; towers and chimneys are called stationary 
rockets; a graffito-mandala proves to be a schematic of a rocket seen 
from below; future urban life is invoked as Rocket-City ...

Out of this nexus of the ballistic missile and everything associated 
with it, especially the bombs, a rocket subtext crystallizes. Forty 
times, or every nineteen pages in this mega-novel, Pynchon works 
another variation on his basic elements, which consist of an aerial 
force of destruction, the targeted city, and the cowering creature 
awaiting annihilation. Significantly, the image-complex is not rendered 
from the sidelines, from the distanced perspective of bystander or 
artist. Rather, readers experience these views as if from above and 
below, mostly directed down toward or up from within a city. Not all 
the elements of the image-complex are present in each manifestation of 
the subtext, but in the course of the novel, these vertiginous vantages 
and labyrinthine cityscapes cumulatively cohere into an icon outside of 
space or time. We ultimately experience the viewpoints of rocket and 
victim through dual or simultaneous vision.

This subtext is central to the organization of _GR_ in at least three 
fashions. (1) In philosophical terms, it sheds light on the hotly 
debated values of the novel. Intrinsic to these aerial views of the 
city are answers to such questions as "what kind of action is open to 
individuals?" or "why does humanity not change the behavior that 
imperils its existence?" The individual's relationship to history, as 
seen by Pynchon, emerges through these perspectival images. [...]

Goes on to address Pynchon's "chief method of multiplying levels of 
reality", and his use of ekphrasis and mise en abyme, within the 
context of Michael Riffaterre's notion of the function of the literary 
subtext. Pdf available

best