BtZ42 From Tracy's summary of Chap 5 thread.

[Gary Webb]

I also think that he in some sense sees the war, the rocket, the aromatic polymers, the cartels, the Them... as Death, rationalized forms of Death... Hence he has, later in the novel, IG Farben guys communing with Rathenau later in the novel... The alliances are total crystallized, but they are there... and then he has Life, which to some extent represents Slothrop and his cadres, he in some sense if the rallying cry of the Counterforce... 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 16, 2016, at 11:14 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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