GR translation: a genuine, point-for-point microcosm

[Monte Davis]

Tough question. I take this passage (and a lot more in the last 100 pages
about what happened to Slothrop, to "They" and to the Counterforce after
1945) as meta-narrative: Pynchon anticipating and playing with the
interpretations of GR that his readers are forming.

One of those interpretations is that Slothrop is "Everyman": that his
attempts to make sense of his experience are a microcosm of all our efforts
to understand the world, and (for US and European readers especially) to
make sense of post-WWII history. In the Cold War  we *all* (as nations)
quested for rockets. As the arms race got crazier, we *all* harbored 3 AM
fears that there must be something obscurely seductive, even something
*sexy*, about the idea of instant destruction from the sky -- or else why
were we spending so much to prepare it?

The human body and spirit as microcosm -- reflection in miniature of the
cosmos or "macrocosm" around it -- is among the oldest and most widespread
metaphysical concepts, from myths around the world through classical and
medieval times to Mason & Dixon's "As above, so below." So I think here
Pynchon is saying to us: "I know some of you are going to fit this story
into that fine old mold. Maybe it does fit, but with 'off to an early
start' and 'standard histories' I'm going to keep my ironic distance from
what you do with my book."

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 5:12 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V738.26-37, P753.12-23   “We were never that concerned with Slothrop qua
> Slothrop,” a spokesman for the Counterforce admitted recently in an
> interview with the Wall Street Journal.
>        INTERVIEWER: You mean, then, that he was more a rallying-point.
>        SPOKESMAN: No, not even that. Opinion even at the start was
> divided. It was one of our fatal weaknesses. [I’m sure you want to hear
> about fatal weaknesses.] Some called him a “pretext.” Others felt that he
> was a genuine, point-for-point microcosm. The Microcosmists, as you must
> know from the standard histories, leaped off to an early start. We—it was a
> very odd form of heretic-chasing, really. Across the Low Countries, in the
> summer. It went on in fields of windmills, marshlands where it was almost
> too dark to get a decent sight.
>
> What does "microcosm" mean here exactly?
>
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