Repost: "The Big One"

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

         Paul Mackin:
         I thought we were talking about what the Tarot passage 
         conveys--not the views of the "far left" (presume you 
         mean people who blow shit up) or the "fun with the 
         revolution" left (Abbie Hoffman).

Yes, it does seem like we have traversed quite far from the original
post and my original intent. 

          Something I have yet to hear mentioned here: 
          What if “Against the Day “ turns out to be “The Big One”, 
          the one that ties it all together?

I know that right now and for most of you, that's heresy.

Heresy is huge in Pynchon's world, something I've been 
tracking for some time now.

I read Gravity's Rainbow fairly obsessively between 1980 and 1983, 
throwing Moby Dick and Ulysses [Joyce] into the mix, working from 
the assumption that there was kinship twixt these books. Saw the 
amazing film version of Gunter Grass "The Tin Drum" at the time.
Read Gravity's Rainbow the first time while living on the site of the 
"Northern" [Novato California] Renaissance Faire.

Fortune tellers and crafts folk of all sorts lived on and hung out at the site. 
It was California's "Zone." Lotsa underground everything was passing
through Ron & Phyllis love childe. LIke the remnants of Owsley's band.
R.D. Thomas—Bob Thomas—the first music director of the
Renaissance Faire was the artist responsible for the album art of 
"Live Dead.", cooking up Grateful Dead's iconic little bears on
the side. He had lots of other interesting responsibilities "back in the day":

http://www.deaddisc.com/disc/Live_Dead.htm 

Bob was at the center of a circle of buddies who hung out at the Faire.

I remember Bob Thomas' words to me prior to my heading towards 
Livermore Labs for a massive anti-nuclear protest and mass 
arrest—"Walk slowly and drink plenty of water." That was 1983.

Context is everything. Did I also mention all the card readers at the 
Faire? The Gypsy carts? Again, if the State of California ever had 
a "Zone", the Ren Faire was it. "Der Platz" was the Muhlla's Coffe 
shop, where Osbie Feel and Säure Bummer can be found smoking 
Lebanese Hash and drinking Don Brown's mud while belly dancers
twirl in the background. All that's missing is Anton Karas playing the 
"Third Man" theme. But the gypsy band play for the girl lifting her 
three skirts all at once will do just fine. 

Context is everything.

I looked at the first press release for "Against the Day", noted the time 
frame and places on the map, put two and two together and realized 
that the time frame easily covered a period of time of great expansion 
of interest in all things metaphysical, particularly hidden insights from 
the "Mystic East." That would be the rise of the Theosophists. Following 
that the Golden Dawn appeared [sorry,that's how the history goes].
Crowley, in a Promethean move that predictably burned his ass real 
good, split off from the G.D., joined forces with the German O.T.O. and
did a number of other interesting things to insure that his face would
appear in the press daily, inspiring all sorts of shadowy subtexts for 
mystery writers to play with. What's worth noting here regarding OBA
is Weissman's Tarot in Gravity's Rainbow. 

Whatever you might think of the Tarot, OBA takes it seriously enough to 
make a believer out of me, G-D's honest truth. Steven Weisenburger's
"A Gravity's Rainbow Companion" effectively deciphers many of 
Pynchon's references to Ceremonial Magick. They're scattered 
throughout Gravity's Rainbow, sometimes with such density that it's
easy, like Miles,to trip over them.

When I saw Pynchon's descriptive blurb for "Against the Day" I noted
a few obvious reference points:
          
          "Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most 
          part stupid songs. Strange and weird sexual practices take place. 
          Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. 
          Contrary-to-fact occurrences occur. Maybe it's not the world, but 
          with a minor adjustment or two it's what the world might be."

Pynchon's previous book—Mason & Dixon—was rife with olde 
metephysical language, Vineland seemed in many ways one 
long zen koan, even more Road-Runner Cartoons in blank verse.
Ah, but Gravity's Rainbow [think Leporello's big aria from Don 
Giovanni, Pynchon did] is incredibly dense with cross reference 
with the inner teachings of ceremonial magic, in particular the 
Golden Dawn.

So, when I saw those dates and the locations and the cast of characters:

          "Anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug 
          enthusiasts, innocents and decadents and stage magicians, 
          spies, dectectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are 
          cameo appearances by Nkola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and 
          Groucho Marx." 

. . . . my mind registered "Gravity's Rainbow Backstory."

In terms of tying together the threads that I've been persuing in 
Pynchon's books—and I really did read them all, you know, one 
over 50 times—"Against the Day" turned out to be "The Big One".
It may not be your cup of tea, you probably find it too long, too 
'joke-y', too spread out, too much to keep up with, profoundly 
boring and so on. 

But for me it illuminates "Gravity's Rainbow."

When I first wrote the post, I was taking an educated guess as to 
what the content might be of a book that I did not have access to.
As it turns out, "Against the Day" includes Crystal Magic, the
Theosophists and the search for Shambahala, old fashioned 
stuff from Bulgaria [& even cooler—he links the musical traditions 
of that region all the way back to Orpheus in the process teaching 
us the "Pythagorean way of knowledge"] , the T.W.I.T. with A.E. 
Waite a few blocks away, Psychic readings, riffs on Tibetan 
Buddhism, Shamans with crystal skulls and peyote: the
only thing that's missing is Shirley Maclaine in a Morrocan 
bernoose and cowl, advertising for the "Psychic Hotline." 
It's all there.

That's my initial point.

As regards Weissman, for me he is the walking moral black hole
of GR, I find nothing even vaguely romantic about him. The thought 
that he, once routinized by "The System", manages to slither his
way into whatever high-end post he ends up in the states hockets
just fine into Shell = Nazi. When I read Weissmann's Tarot my 
reaction is just like my reaction concerning any news involving 
Karl Rove—"He's really getting away with this shit, isn't he?"

I don't think any of us know where "White Man" ends and "They" begin.