Rainbow-Files: "23rd card of the Zone's trumps major...." (p. 707)

[Alex Colter]

Brings to mind the Discovery of Uranus towards the end of M&D, gonna have
to go back and read it now...

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 7:18 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

> **
>
> In contrary to his more traditional take on it in AtD, Pynchon presents
> the Tarot in "Gravity's Rainbow" with an astonishing expansion:
>
> "Well, Under The Sign Of The Great Suckling. Swaying, full-color picture
> of a loathsomely fat drooling infant. In one puddinglike fist the Gross
> Suckling clutching a dripping hamhock (sorry pigs, nothing personal!), with
> the other he reaches out for a human Mother's Nipple that emerges out into
> the picture from the left-hand side, his gaze arrested by the approaching
> tit, his mouth open---a gleeful look, teeth pointed and itching, a glaze of
> FOODmunchmunchyesgobblemmm over his eyes. Der Grob Säugling, 23rd card of
> the Zone's trumps major...."
>
> Now, perhaps the idea --- think Jesus-and-Mary-chain --- is rooted in
> Pynchon's catholic childhood and adolescence. There is no 23rd Tarot trump
> card, however. Or maybe there is, but not in the traditional or classical
> modern decks. Certainly not in the Rider/Waite, painted by Pamela Colman
> Smith, --- the one Pynchon primarily refers to in "Gravity's Rainbow". A
> twenty-third trump would also bring (not only theoretical) problems for
> Golden Dawn inspired mystics --- and Waite was, just like Crowley (and also
> Yeats!), a member ---, because there are only 22 paths on the Tree of Life
> to dance upon. So what is this about? "Der Grob Säugling" (actually it
> would have to be "grobe") is the gross (or rude or coarse) suckling and
> we're already in part 4 named The Counterforce. The Gross Suckling is
> actually an emblem for the shortcomings of the Counterforce. And as
> offturning this may sound: With this diagnosis Pynchon is swimming inside
> the mainstream of his time. During the 1970s it was a common thesis in
> social psychology that the failing of the, well, revolt of the 1960s can be
> blamed on a major shift in the minds and characters of Western people after
> WW II, --- from more authoritarian towards more narcisstic patterns. (A
> German example is the debate around Thomas Ziehe's study "Pubertät und
> Narzißmus" from 1975.) This, or so the thesis says, makes it difficult to
> organize any effective political resistance. The Great Suckling is not
> interested in starting a Revolution. The Great Suckling wants to *consume*... Now, when you look around (or - for that matter - into the mirror),
> that diagnosis is certainly not without first sight evidence. Yet it
> nevertheless puts too much weight on the individual, forgetting about the
> deadly Vectors of Late-late-late-Modernity. From a point of view focusing
> rather on structures than individuals, that thesis about a major shift from
> the authoritarian towards the narcisstic nature of the Western mind and
> character is very questionable. Shall say: In case the generation born
> around 1893 had met a similar level of capitalist production in the absence
> of World-Wars, Genocides and overall socio-economic disaster, their
> characters and minds would probably not have been too different from ours.
> And about 20 till 25% of the population in every Western country --- the
> numbers are my guess --- do constantly hold authoritarian views, which
> perhaps would make them better fighters for a revolution, but also implies
> things like racism, homophobia etc. This will likely never change. Anyway,
> I guess lots of people agreed with Pynchon in 1973.
> The passage - Steven Weisenburger hints at this  - must be read
> analogously to that on page 302 where we hear of "a constellation waiting
> to have a 13th sign of the Zodiac named for it ...". In both cases Pynchon
> does overstretch a (more or less) traditional symbolic world to indicate
> the rise of Control (and air-terror) to levels of global functionality --
>
>
>
>
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