von Braun in the Rainbow

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          If your take-away is "good guys and bad guys and morals to 
          be learned," Robin, I honestly don't see why you bother with 
          Pynchon. Comic books have that (a-and lively illustrations too!) 

That not my take-away, that's reductionism. I can clearly see that you
are much closer to the circle of very influential thinkers whose opinions
you're echoing than I can or will ever be. Your take-away will always be 
to view these sorts in a different light than us ill-informed preterite.

Your circle includes Physicists, mine includes Witches. We have different 
ways of illuminating the texts. In point of fact, witches and comic books 
have as much presence in Pynchon's texts as delta-ts and Passchendaele.

Dante has good guys and bad guys. Voltaire has good guys and bad guys.
Swift has good horses and bad guys. All satirists choose sides, it's in the
very fabric of their writing. When you finish Gravity's Rainbow you are left
with the Bomb hanging over your head like the sword of Damocles, the 
terror of a great impending illumination. I have no doubt that Our Beloved 
Author has the ability to render technocrats as fully realized humans, but 
when you close the book, you're left with "The Bomb." That's my "take-away" 
of Gravity's Rainbow, and it's different with all the other books. I thought
that folding Werner von Braun into Pynchon's broader themes of paranoia 
and Gnosticism was a neat little hat trick. Clearly I've haven't figured out the 
Masonic handshake.

Guess I'll go back to today's comic book, see what M. de Charlus is up to.