Gravity's Rainbow Group Read (GRGR05)--One More Time-LONG, pt.1

[Meg Larson]

Let's try this again, foax.  If any of the following is being addressed by 
others as I write this post, sorry.  While I am no GR expert, I'm going to 
post a few things from the first section that we may wish to consider, 
discuss, or totally dismiss in order to continue this faux group read.  For 
brevity's sake, I will not be addressing the Holocaust, various meanings of 
the word "evacuation" and whether MalignD should be lumped in with the 
wankers.

(I am using the Penguin Books edition, published in 1987, assigned in a 
course at Acme Looniversity and so well-worn that the book has split in 
two).

In this first section, there are at least two passages that have been 
overlooked so far as serious consideration goes.  Here is the first, 
followed by the second in a separate post.
1.  "Some wait alone, some share their invisible rooms with others. 
Invisible, yes, what do the furnishings matter, at this stage of things? 
Underfoot crunches the oldest of city dirt, last crystallizations of all the 
city had denied, threatened, lied to its children.  Each has been hearing a 
voice, one he thought was talking to him only, say, 'You didn't really 
believe you'd be saved.  Come, we all know who we are by now.  No one was 
ever going to take the trouble to save _you_, old fellow . . .' (p.4, 21-7).

This passage indicates that one of the (major) motifs in the novel is 
preterition, which Louis Mackey says is tied to the motif of paranoia, which 
he argues, that in GR, "is manifestly a religious attitude . . . [p]aranoia 
is described at one point as a 'Puritan reflex . . . seeking other orders 
behind the visible' ("Paranoia, Pynchon, and Preterition." _Thomas Pynchon's 
"Gravity's Rainbow"_, Harold Bloom, ed. 1986).  Further, Mackey argues that 
this is a tenet of New England Calvinism, the core of which is the "doctrine 
of predestination.  God . . . has from all eternity relentlessly elected to 
save a few out of the corrupt mass of fallen humanity.  The rest he passes 
over and allows to fall into hell borne down by the weigh of Adam's and 
their own sin.  All men are either Elect, the handful chosen for salvation, 
or Preterite, passed over and tacitly consigned to damnation" (Bloom, 
pp54-5).

One other point that Mackey makes is that not only are the preterite passed 
over for salvation but that this division between Elect and Preterite can be 
further refined to include the Reprobate, "whom God designates for damnation 
. . . damned because they were always meant to be damned, and the preterite 
who are damned because they were never meant to be saved" (Bloom, 56).

So what does this mean for the book?  What do we make of this?  Is Slothrop 
merely preterite, or more sharply, a reprobate?  A-and does it matter?  As 
we go farther into the novel, and we learn more about Slothrop, we can see 
how deeply tied to his being is his religious upbringing.  What implications 
does this bring to his work at ACHTUNG, if any?  Or am I just full of 
shit???

This is just one of the things I think merit consideration, as I said, as it 
is a major motif in the novel.  A-and I've put this post together rather 
hastily, on the fly, so if it's just a crock, well, exxxcccuuusssse me.  It 
just seems a logical jumping-off point to begin some serious discussion.

Flame away,
Meg 

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