Von Braun

[Monte Davis]

Dave Monroe quotes:

> "Manicheans [...] see two Rockets, good and evil [...] a good 
> Rocket to take us to the stars, an evil Rocket for the 
> world's suicide, the two perpetually in struggle." (GR, Pt. 
> IV, p. 727)

Yes indeed, about as good a sample of one pulse/impulse in GR as any single
quotation could be. Where light's rainbow had been simply and singly God's
promise of forgiveness, Gravity's version is ambivalent: either part of an
orbit or a ballistic parabola from brennschluss to target. Kubrick was on
the same scent with his weapon-bone-turned-satellite. 

That's not to say Pynchon *endorses* the Manichaean view, because he is
obviously drawn to science and technology every bit as much as he rages
against the machine. The book remains worth re-reading (and von Braun
remains worth debating, rather than pigeonholing), because Pynchon also
hears the whisper of Heraclitus and Nietzsche and all the other cryptic,
elliptic old paradoxers: that the upward way and the downward way are one.

Which can make it hard at times to distinguish the buoyant Inconvenence from
Kit and Renzo's dive bomber (p. 1070)...