pynchon-l-digest V2 #12854

[Mark Kohut]

 P said in Slow Learner that the writer has to come to terms with death in
his writing or remain a juvenile. And, (most?) critics argue and the
judgment of history (maybe?) sez, all GREAT books do--and as we all must
ourselves or we can't even read them aright. BUT that the overarching theme
of GR IS 'This One"-- death, death by rocket, does not mean all optimistic,
positive Pynchonian values in GR have no existence. The Banana breakfast
begins immediately. They are everywhere. The book is not a one note
sledgehammer, we know; The book is not Nihilistic, as we've agreed, I
think.

I think the sentence shows Slothrop, a privileged, white,  military WASP ,
is having the nation's fantasy about JFK under truth serum---as his
 observations about blacks contain the nation's prejudices and stereotypes.

Jack as Camelot-like President might have handled that buried "Excalibur"
better,--pulled it out and thrown it in the lake (see the story
variations)-- P implies and the story would have been different, esp
regarding Nixon the Schlubb maybe. Seems Pynchon thought JFK started
"kicking third-world people around" from the beginning.

But if the Rocket was launched in WW 2, then THAT end will always be the
rocket above the head. P sets up up that way; it is in symbolic form
[Burke] not in actuality. Not yet in actuality.  (The doomsday clock of the
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists did move back after GR was written.)



On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 12:34 PM, Doug Millison <dougmillison at gmail.com>
wrote:

> "Might Jack have kept it [the harp] from falling?"
>
> I would answer No, based on what the novel tells us in its third sentence,
> "It is too late" and in its fourth sentence:  "[...] it's all theater"  and
> other evidence in the novel. The System killed JFK and is killing/will kill
> the rest of us, too - all we can do is wait for the final rockets to fall.
>   See Gravity's Rainbow, Domination and Freedom by Luc Herman and Steven
> Weisenburger for an excellent discussion of this and other possibly
> optimistic readings of GR
> http://www.amazon.com/Gravitys-Rainbow-Domination-Freedom-Herman/dp/0820345954
>
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