Gravity's Rainbow in depth on Studio 360

[Paul Mackin]

On 3/9/2012 3:17 PM, David Morris wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM, Paul Mackin<mackin.paul at verizon.net>  wrote:
>> On 3/9/2012 12:12 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>>
>>> My thoughts are not facetious in the sense of any personal derision, I am trying to be intellectually feisty and to point out what I disagree with and why without intending any personal affront. I also hope for thoughtful rebuttal, because I want to look at the questions from different angles.  What I am trying to express with different formal approaches is a sincere problem with the logic of this line of thought that seems to me to be saying that Pynchon is using GR to challenge any  attempt  to understand comprehensive patterns in history, showing that all such attempts amount to paranoid delusions. Is that the gist of what you or Paul are saying or am I off?
>>>
>>
>> Speaking for me, I don't think Pynchon is challenging more conventional interpretations of history at all--he's not some kind of nut.
>>
>> He's just being very imaginative in putting a huge amount of emphasis on certain aspects of reality--delusion, pornography, mercenary war profiteering.  It's his method. Don't know if the Greeks had a word for it--maybe it's part synecdoch, part hyperbole. I just say pynchonize.
>>
>> P
>
> OK, to respond to this question (instead of your earlier rebuttal),
> despite the myriad of accurate and often obscure historical facts in
> GR, I think calling it an historical novel is to miss its real
> intentions.  GR's main goal (amidst all of the beautiful everything
> else) is to dissect from as many angles as possible the nature of
> human consciousness.  In GR's world paranoia is not a pathology, or if
> it is, it is one inherent with the advent of human consciousness.
> Paranoia has its religious aspect: Is the "order" we see in the cosmos
> the product of an hidden power (and if so, why is it hidden?)?
> Paranoia also means the act of making connections between data points,
> things seen into things perceived.  At the root of paranoia is the
> question, "Is what I'm seeing really there, or is it the product of my
> mind?"  This is a question common to a person tripping on acid, which
> Pynchon clearly did plenty of in the 70's, reportedly while writing
> GR.
>
> Another one of the foundational problems Pynchon points out with human
> consciousness (HC) is the knowledge of our impending, inevitable
> death, and all that is done in reaction to that knowledge (see the
> Busby Berkeley scene of the rats leaving their cages early on at the
> White Visitation: If only men could forget that they're going to die).
>
> And yet another foundational HC problem is the Freudian concept of
> "the Return of the Repressed," epitomized by shit being transformed
> into money, power, technology, etc.  Pynchon clearly read N.O.Brown's
> "Life Against Death" and incorporated much of it into GR.  The biggest
> question grappled with in that book is whether man is irredeemably
> repressed/pathological, or redeemable/healable.
>
> Anyway, that enough for now.
>
> David Morris
>

Yes, Pynchon has given paranoia/delusion dimensions well beyond an 
ordinary sickness.

The one I was riffing on yesterday extended across society's entire 
system of control and counter-control. (all delusion as Prentice would 
have it--but officially sanctioned)

One you emphasize here is our detection of a hidden meaning to our 
existence--why we are here and such--leading inevitably to supernatural 
explanations. For Freud these are ordinary delusions. But for most of 
the world--though within the framework of a Pynchon-style 
delusion--these are as real as anything. And closely related, there is 
Death as an odious conspiracy. Who or what is responsible for this 
reprehensible state of affairs?

Conspiracy theories come natural to p-listers.

P