Von Braun in the Rainbow

[David Morris]

Again, nice post Monte.

Gravity's Rainbow is the trajectory of the weapon's rocket, most
definitely a perversion of the boyhood masturbatory dream of a space
rocket.  And, yes, Pynchon's ruminations on Good and Evil in GR are
never simple, and seek roots that are inherent in everyone's being.
The layers of depth in GR are forever overlapping and morphing.  Thank
Jeebus for that!

David Morris

On Jan 2, 2008 9:04 AM, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:

>  all these years I'd been under the impression that
>
> (1) the (emblematic, Judeo-Christian) rainbow was a promise from YHWH, Mr. Sky God and Written Lawgiver par excellence, pretty much the opposite of the chthonic and intuitive powers that the creators of the Old Testament rejected and condemned
>
> (2) the (scientific, analytic) rainbow is produced by sunlight and airborne water droplets, not as far as I know by the fecund mud of Bad Karma
>
> To me, Gravity's Rainbow is about the *perversion* of transcendent impulses (Rilke's gone wrong in the "apolitical" wandervogel youth every bit as much as Oberth's gone wrong at Peenemunde). That's much richer and more interesting to me than root-and-branch condemnation of the impulse itself. .
>
> By the same token, I think there's more to be learned from the von Braun who enthralled Rotary Club luncheons in New Mexico and Alabama, who fit so perfectly into the quintessentially American medium of Walt Disney TV, than from righteous indignation at the War Criminal Among Us.
>
> I find it hard to believe that Pynchon has absorbed and pondered all that science and technology simply to proclaim that it's eeeevil, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. I think he is so eloquent and provocative about the von Braun "project" in GR (like the Enlightenment "project" in M&D, the modernist "project" in AtD, etc.) precisely because he feels and acknowledges their promise as much as he mistrusts it. Why anyone would want to shoehorn that into a neat little framework of Them (mad scientists) vs. Us (good humanists) escapes me.