GR translation: across a clear skirmish-line from the Force

[Paul Mackin]

On 7/12/2012 6:57 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
> On 11.07.2012 15:20, Monte Davis wrote:
>
>> The "yes"es seem to me a repeated affirmation: she's ready IN SPITE of
>> imminent disaster, IN SPITE OF anyone who may be watching. Also, for readers
>> of Big Encyclopedic Novels in English, surely a nod to Molly Bloom's "yes I
>> will yes" sexual soliloquy at the end of Ulysses.
>>
>> The Force? Opposed to the (much more frequently named) Counterforce of
>> slackers, dopers, and  mindless pleasure-seekers,  the Force is the book's
>> big bad They: everything that rules, controls, dehumanizes. The best clue is
>> the only capitalized reference to it I know, on p. 639 (Penguin pb), where
>> Dodson-Truck is thinking of Nora:
>>
>> "In recent weeks, in true messianic style, it has come clear to her that her
>> real identity is, literally, the Force of Gravity. [italics] I am Gravity, I
>> am That against which the Rocket must struggle, to which the pre-historic
>> wastes submit and are transmuted to the very substance of History . . . ."
>>
>> But wait: isn't the Rocket itself emblematic of inhuman lunar-Nazi dreams of
>> transcendence (not to mention death and destruction here and now)? If the
>> Force is bad, a-and the Rocket struggling against it is also bad...???
>
> Perhaps this intermediated contradiction (as one would call it in the 
> dialectical tradition) can also be found in the novel's title. The 
> evil force contains its own overcoming: /Gravity's Rainbow/. In case 
> we consider gravity to be the "big bad They" there are, I think, 
> connotations of original sin and the fall of man. If so, "Gravity's 
> Rainbow" is a paradoxical religious formula. And maybe it's 
> interesting in this context to realize that --- in the continuity of 
> Pynchon's work --- the last word of AtD ("grace") is followed by the 
> title "Inherent Vice" which is not only an insurance-technical term 
> but also, again, refers to the fall of man, which would make the whole 
> transition between the two novels a mirror of the title GR: /Rainbow's 
> Gravity/.

Good observation, Kai.

TP, the paradoxical man, speaks my language.

P
>
>
>> Good question. "[Oedipa] had heard all about excluded middles; they were bad
>> shit, to be avoided; and how had it happened here, with chances once so good
>> for diversity?"
>>
>> Or:http://writeonill.org/masondixon.htm
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org  [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
>> Of Mike Jing
>> Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 8:48 AM
>> To: Pynchon Mailing List
>> Subject: GR translation: across a clear skirmish-line from the Force
>>
>> P222.2-13   ...her skirt is pulled up in back, the bare bottoms of her
>> thighs, marked red from the train seat, turn toward him . . . yes . .
>> . in the imminence of disaster, yes, whoever's watching yes. . . .
>> "Leni, where are you?" She was at his elbow not ten seconds ago.
>> They'd agreed beforehand to try and keep together. But there are two sorts
>> of movement out here-as often as the chance displacements of strangers,
>> across a clear skirmish-line from the Force, will bring together people
>> who'll remain that way for a time, in love that can even make the oppression
>> seem a failure, so too love, here in the street, can be taken centrifugally
>> apart again: faces seen for the last time here, words spoken idly, over your
>> shoulder, taking for granted she's there, already last words-
>>
>> First, how should I interpret the three "yes" in " yes . . . in the
>> imminence of disaster, yes, whoever's watching yes. . . ."?
>>
>> Second, what is "the Force" in "across a clear skirmish-line from the
>> Force"?
>>
>>
>>
>
>


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