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

[Richard Fiero]

I'm not at all sure that the Christopher Lasch 
view was shared by P but may be just another feature or layer.
I would certainly agree about the rise of Control 
but is it from without or from within? Should we include VL in this matter?

Kai Frederik Lorentzen 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 --
>