BtZ42 From Tracy's summary of Chap 5 thread.

[Mark Kohut]

Tracy:
"We think of WW2 as a particularly modern and technological war and that
gets much attention in GR, but from the start Pynchon is diving into a less
respectable aspect of the pursuit of information. Psychic or paranormal
phenomena . Why is it so prominent? We know it played a role in the war,
but is it standing in for something larger in the Novel? In some ways it
allows P to introduce nonstandard economic and political information into
the War history. Is there more?-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l


If this is not another redundant redundancy from me, smile, I think perhaps
the major reason this book is so "profound" is that in some layered, rough
edges way, the predetermined rocket strikes, linked to a preconditioned
Slothrop and therefore behaviorism ,an important world phenomenon , esp
in the US of A maybe, and religious determinism via Calvinism and the
Protestant Ethic as explanatory conceptions and the way bombs like the
rocket are scientifically knowable, predictable  and that History if it
might not repeat itself does at least echo (in GR) and that even the
non-scientific (the Tarot, the séance scene?) all is implied ....is
GR's way to greatness. Along with language so tantalizingly, lyrically,
expressive.......
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