Gravity's Rainbow in depth on Studio 360

[Paul Mackin]

On 3/8/2012 12:56 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>
>>
>> " . . . . From Auschwitz we can get to Hiroshima, but how do we get to the roots of either? We can’t bear this blankness, and so we invent roots, social, psychological, racial, anthropological, archaeological.
>>
>> "All these inventions are paranoias, Pynchon is telling us, they create connections where there are none, and he sets out, in Gravity’s Rainbow as in V., to make elaborate, sympathetic, but devastating mockery of all such enterprises . . . ."
>>
> don't mean to be pissy but...
> to make a mockery is to impose order, which is a lot like telling us. There ain't no non-meaning so you gotta make yer ownlyiest won there is directly between you and the rest of the universe. to abdicate to a planet killing plunderful order  is to father oneself smaller than too small for me. fear is part of seeing the real. paranoia is just a word.  peter peter paranoia was gone when the cops came jollying up his sweetie pie elsewhere inthegrassisgreener. some order forms get you what you want . others are more or less free formless. some very paranoid people thought Hitler was going to bring  misery and death rather than the glorious rebirth of the master race, but homeland security made sure they didn't start any silly conspiracy theories. because of their hard work and no-nonsenses   beautiful clusters of bombs are falling planless on the paranoiacs who persisted in not being from the right place quietly and without any wikileaks. make sure nobody bad ever comes to you
 r pure 
and perfect nation and whatever you do don't take no wikileaks, it's a pee that fails to please the non paranoid with the uniforms and the ABombs that don't scare nobody who's already dead. Thomas Pynchon wrote a bible for little Joe everyman. it's just like the other ONE in an inscrutable kind of way. I completely agree with him and you and me too.
>
> i'm afraid yer wrong about them connections. the connections are proliferous, continuous, seamless and pretty as a pitcher of revolutions, bags of moolah, redredwine, water water heaven's daughter, revelations,  and unregulated hocky pucks with only the lies missing. You don't need em anyway.
>
>
>


You sayin' sometimes they really ARE out to get you.

Or, all the time they are.

Oneirene paranoid is "nothing less than the onset, the leading edge, of 
the discovery that everything is connected, everything in the Creation . 
. . . "

But later in the book, Roger needs enlightenment:

"You're a novice paranoid, Roger," first time Prentice has ever used his 
Christian name and it touches Roger enough to check his tirade. "Of 
course a well-developed They-system is necessary but it's only half the 
story. For every They there ought to be a We. In our case there is. 
Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a 
They-system-"
"Wait, wait, first where's the Haig and Haig, be a gracious host, second 
what is a 'They-system,' I don't pull Chebychev's Theorem on you, do I?"
"I mean what They and Their hired psychiatrists call 'delusional 
systems.' Needless to say, 'delusions' are always officially defined. We 
don't have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk 
out of expediency. It's the system that matters. How the data arrange 
themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart. Your idea 
that Pointsman sent Gloaming takes a wrong fork. Without any contrary 
set of delusions delusions about ourselves, which I'm calling a 
We-system the Gloaming idea might have been all right-"
"Delusions about ourselves?"
"Not real ones."
"But officially defined."
"Out of expediency, yes."
"Well, you're playing Their game, then."
"Don't let it bother you. You'll find you can operate quite well. Seeing 
as we haven't won yet, it isn't really much of a problem."
Roger is totally confused . . .."

Kind of figured Michael Wood would get a rise out of some p-listers.

P