Re: Thomas Pynchon Predicted the Pandemic in 'Gravity's Rainbow.’ Now Aren't You Sorry You Didn't Read It?

[Gary Webb]

Thanks for the article Mark. Does the piece remind anyone else of the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)? His thesis reminds me of the leader of that apocalyptic mutant doomer cult... I don’t know how much I buy the rocket/COVID analogy... barring evidence, I don’t think that COVID is a bio weapon, so how does a zoonotic corona virus compare to the V weapons of GR?

Yes we are all punished for our original sin of violence...the rockets and viruses are divine retribution... Only no salvation... just death... 

The writer comes off, to me, as something of a Presbyterian school marm reincarnated as a Brooklyn hipster, w/o the redemption of the New Testament... at that point who the hell cares what you tell the kids, especially the so-called nuances of “Pynchon’s History” ? Just tell them to immanentize the eschaton, right? 

I’m not trying to be obtuse or rude, nor do I want to upset the Bonhomie of the discussion, and I don’t doubt the writer’s scholarship, but Pynchon is a humanist, and though GR is dark, it goes into the inferno, but Pynchon never gives up the ghost, his work is joyful, humorous, and humane... a celebration of life, in all of its weirdness...

He wasn’t the patron saint of Theodore J. Kaczynski or Greta Thunberg... and I’m not attacking the “deep ecology” crowd... I’m just not going to bite over corona... the pain is too near, and if we’re all to endure, we are going to have to figure out how our “civilization” (whatever the hell that means) can sustain itself on this planet... I think Pynchon would sympathize, despite his & all of our deep reservations...


Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 6, 2020, at 5:17 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Debate point given. I withdraw the word Western, my narrow attempt to
> narrowly not be wrong.
> 
> 
>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 9:23 PM Richard Romeo <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> Curious about the western man reference. Japan’s imperialist agenda during
>> WW2 was very much cut from the same cloth as other Western colonial
>> endeavors: nasty, brutal etc. That famed co-prosperity sphere. Is that
>> western man, too, a way of thinking, a virus if you will, transplanted
>> outside of the western dream. Is China the current mantle holder with its
>> road and belt type initiatives?
>> Has the virus jumped from West to East? Who isn’t tainted now by it?
>> rich
>>>>> On Jul 5, 2020, at 8:40 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> It’s Brownian as you know. His pushing Freud thru the end of logic and
>> the Greeks. I buy it. Always have. We’re talking about Western human beings
>> here.
>>> That other wonderful sentient creatures mourn the death of their loved
>> ones might mean we explore their consciousness of death as we can.
>>> “If a lion could speak, we would not be able to understand
>> it”—WITTGENSTEIN might be relevant.
>>> And I also fully agree with your fine words on the sin of Defying Death,
>> a special arrogance, nicely phrased and surely one of the major plots of
>> GR.
>>> Both can be true. I buy them both, it’s rich as life that way.
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>> On Jul 5, 2020, at 8:26 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Of course our ability to be madly willful is also rooted in our
>> physiology.  But some SciFi buffs would disagree.
>>>>>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 7:13 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>> I think the concept of humans being the virus on this planet really
>> means to indict "conscious" and subsequent willfulness.  In GR that kind of
>> consciousness is rooted in the knowing we will each die.  The Bugsby
>> Berkeley mouse extravaganza in the mad scientist's White  Visitation lab
>> explicitly laments humankind's knowledge of death.  It's very Freudian. I
>> don't buy it.
>>>>> Many species very explicitly mourn the death of their loved ones. So
>> consciousness of death isn't the "sin."  I think GR identifies humanity's
>> real sin as Defying Death, a very special arrogance.  Willfulness, not
>> knowledge.
>>>>> David Morris
>>>>>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 5:45 PM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>>> You never did the Corona Kid.
>>>>>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 12:47 PM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>>>> this is a good essay. I was kind of irked LeClair went to get a pull
>> quote
>>>>>>> from, of all things, "The Matrix," to pin down this "humans are the
>> virus"
>>>>>>> idea; TRP's version of it was plenty (and much less hacky than the
>> Matrix
>>>>>>> bit, or even the current & ridiculous "maybe we are the virus" meme.
>>>>>>> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 12:22 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> This imaginatively stretches the reading wonderfully, but it is so
>> good. I
>>>>>>>> love all the smart readings which take it away from the literal
>> Blitz and
>>>>>>>> rocket, which fetish pervades too many, I pick a fight with by
>> declaring.
>>>>>>>> (I'm done, you win).
>>>>>>>> So alive and in touch with reality now and the reality of *Gravity's
>>>>>>>> Rainbow*.(isn't the section quoted, which seldom is, GREAT?) All
>> those
>>>>>>>> tentacles and tendrils involved.
>>>>>>>> LcClair has lived with this book from the beginning and makes the
>> overall
>>>>>>>> case again why great books "touch bottom" so well that they are
>> always
>>>>>>>> true. There it stands intertwined with Moby Dick,
>>>>>>>> the two greatest American novels of their centuries, I say.
>>>>>>>> My vote for the best critical essay of our times since.....Pynchon
>> wrote
>>>>>>>> the intro to the reissue of* 1984*? (written for effect and as if I
>> know
>>>>>>>> more than a few)
>> https://www.thedailybeast.com/thomas-pynchon-predicted-the-pandemic-in-gravitys-rainbow-now-arent-you-sorry-you-didnt-read-it
>>>>>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l