GR translation: across a clear skirmish-line from the Force
Monte Davis
montedavis at verizon.net
Thu Jul 12 11:55:48 CDT 2012
Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
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.
Very, very nice. Never forget (at least for Jews and Christians): the
rainbow is Jehovah's promise not to drown the world again. If gravity made
us a promise, what would it be? "I'll never let you go".?
"You'll be back".?
That eloquent curve is also the parabola of ballistic flight: one of the
Greek geometers' conic sections. an early preoccupation for Galileo, Newton,
&co in astronomy, then calculus. raw material for the math in many early
computer projects of the 1930s and 1940s, cranking out artillery firing
tables. and, of course, the path after brennschluss of the V2 in 1945, or
the Atlas Semyorka NowEveryone Mark XXI in 1972.
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