"The Man in the High Castle" and its impact on Pynchon's work

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

When we consider the US-American literary field and look for 
predecessors of Pynchon's
project, namely his opus magnum "Gravity's Rainbow", there are two 
famous novels that seem
to be especially relevant.

Both of them were written by men with a profound knowledge of German 
culture.

 From Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night" (see my p-mail 'WvB in Vonnegut's 
Mother Night'), our
author got the idea to use the realmetonymia Operation Paperclip to 
picture the neo-Fascist
aspects of postwar American culture.

Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" seems to have an even 
stronger influence. There you
have all the crucial items of TECHNOGNOSTICISM, a project which started 
on a large-scale-level
with Nazi Germany. Unfortunately it didn't vanish with the Nazis' 
downfall. So what are the basic
characteristics of TECHNOGNOSTICISM?

a) Imperialistic hightech wars (including genocide).

b) Space travel ("grumpy Germans walking around on Mars").

c) The flooding of the world with synthetics.

What these three issues - Hey, you V-readers out there! - respond to, is 
"the longing of the
inanimate" (chapter 3). Now you may say: Come on, it's an alternate 
history novel and things did
not really run this way. True, but PKD is quite a tricky writer, and at 
the novel's end the nature of
reality itself gets questioned. The different characters in the novel, 
apart from the personal relations
some of them have, are connected by two things. One is the I Ching 
(which Dick himself made use
of all his life). The other thing connecting the book's characters and 
making their life a little more bearable is the knowledge of (or at 
least: about) the novel 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy' by Hawthorn 
Abendsen, in which the Allies won WWII. Ontological stability gets 
heavily shaken in the end when I Ching and 
alternate-history-novel-in-alternate-history-novel do work hand in hand 
to bring on some truly disturbing outcome.  Juliana Frink, the Judo 
instructor and female protagonist, has finally managed to find Abendsen 
and discusses his novel plus its 'spiritual' implications. In the last 
chapter we read:

"'It's Chung Fu,' Juliana said. 'INNER TRUTH' [my emphasis.kfl]. I know 
without using the chart, too.
And I know what it means.'
Raising his head, Hawthorne scrutinized her. He had now an almost savage 
expression. 'It means,
does it, that my book is true?'
'Yes.'
With anger he said, 'Germany and Japan lost the war?'
'Yes.'
Hawthorne, then, closed the two volumes and rose to his feet; he said 
nothing.
'Even you don't face it,' Juliana said.
For a time he considered. His gaze had become empty, Juliana saw. Turned 
inward, she realized.
Preoccupied, by himself ... and then his eyes became clear again; he 
grunted, started.
'I'm not sure of anything,' he said.
'Believe,' Juliana said.
He shook his head no."

The real trick here is played on the reader. Up to that last chapter one 
can simply enjoy the show,
being glad one does not have to live in a world where Nazi Germany did 
fuck up the planet. But this
last chapter (Hawthorne to/about Julia: "Do you know what you are? ... a 
daemon. A little chthonic
spirit") installs a gloomy ontological pluralism. As readers of PKD's 
alternate history novel we are
structurally connected to Juliana's reading of Abendsen's (counter!) 
alternate history novel. So if Abendsen's 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy' 
reveals the (novel-related!) "inner truth" (s.a.) that Japan
and Germany lost the war, then PKD's "The Man in the High Castle" 
reveals to us readers the
(reality-related!) inner truth that deadly TECHNOGNOSTICISM has survived 
Nazi Germany and
keeps on rocking especially inside the USA. The flooding of the world 
with plastic materials, space travel, imperialistic wars and more. And 
so an at first glance harmlessly looking sentence like "They bought him 
a nice tailored suit of one of DuPont's new synthetic fibres, Dacron" 
(chapter 13) is perhaps not harmless at all. Interesting for Pynchon 
readers it should be in any case.

Kai

PS: For a great new alternate history novel (which also includes the I 
Ching) do see - - -
Christian Kracht: Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten 
(Köln 2008).