AtDTdA: (9) 253

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Jasper led our attention to Tarot card XVI, The Tower:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tower_%28Tarot_card%29

On the simplest level, this card of course prefigures the fall of the San 
Marco Campanile (AtD, 256), but it may also point us back to Pynchon's 
oblique version of 9/11 - the fall of the towers - in an earlier chapter.

As Chick informs us: "In Protestant lands such as England [...] those who 
read these cards believe that The Tower signifies the Church of Rome." In 
GR, where The Tower also turns up in Weissmann's Tarot, Pynchon elaborates 
this a bit:

"Of 77 cards that could have come up, Weissmann is "covered," that is his 
present condition is set forth, by The Tower. It is a puzzling card, and 
everybody has a different story on it. It shows a bolt of lightning striking 
a tall phallic structure, and two figures, one wearing a crown, falling from 
it. Some read ejaculation, and leave it at that. Others see a Gnostic or 
Cathar symbol for the Church of Rome, and this is generalized to mean any 
System which cannot tolerate heresy: a system which, by its nature, must 
sooner or later fall. We know by now that it is also the Rocket." (747)

So the card is BOTH the phallic Rocket AND the fall of the patriarchal 
System which the Rocket stands for, and as such it is an extremely 
significant card in GR. Its importance to that novel is further underscored 
by the fact that a trial cover design for GR featured an updated version of 
The Tower. In his bibliography Clifford Mead reproduces this trial cover 
with the title "Gravity's Rainbow" (Mead, p. 11). I haven't been able to 
find that version online, but here's an alternative version with GR's 
working title "Mindless Pleasures":

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Mindless-Pleasures.jpg

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