A Juggling Act

Hello! I haven't written in a while because school has me pretty busy, but I woke up at a weird time in the middle of the night, and after reading for a while I decided it was a good time to write an update for you guys. I've been reading Gravity's Rainbow, which I honestly am adoring. So much so that it often gets me sad. People think reading is such a solitary activity, which it is (note, solitary, not lonely), but when the writing is this beautiful, this poetic and bone-grindingly close, it makes me sad not being able to read this to everybody, to anybody. It's been fun and difficult to read GR, not because GR is fun and difficult, but because I read the novel accompanied with my Zac Smith book of illustrations, which is a MUST HAVE! Though he sometimes draws something I wouldn't have expected (I.e. a literal, simple object on the page versus a very descriptive, color-ridden passage on the same page), that is part of the charm. I'm not looking at the drawings for clarification, but to get into another person's way of imagining and interpreting the novel. It just adds one more view, of the thousand possible. His illustrations are sketches, very intense and often without color, a mix of abstract and concrete. They're all very different, and can depict one small word made in passing or, in a flowchart-style, all the images described in a page. I also use my iPad as a help, keeping open a few tabs on my safari: the GR wiki, google search, and the Google e-book A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and contexts for Pynchon's Novels by Steven C. Weisenburger. So reading, lately, is a juggling act. 

I could never do this book justice; a couple of pages would have more material than necessary for a solid paper, and I would need much more time and many more readings to give you guys a worthy analysis of this book. Not to say my mind isn't constantly working to grasp the connections and structures, that would make such an analysis possible. In a novel where it is difficult even being sure about surface level meanings, it can be quite daunting to try to work out the deeper, symbolic, human meanings underneath. About 130+ pages in, I have finally gotten a good understanding of what is basically happening, though, and the constant repetition of (many) important ideas and images has opened up greater room for understanding. The novel so far is set in Europe, specifically England, during WW2. It centers around...well, that assumes there is a center, and I'm not ready to do that yet. It follows a wide cast of characters, most working in one way or the other for the war, and most being men. There is Poinstman, a Pavlovian who, ostensibly to further science but really in an act of pride, wants to move his experiments from the realms of canine to humans. His, hopefully, subject? Tyrone Slothrop, an American who happens to have an odd and frightening ability of either causing a bomb hit or predicting the location of a future bombing with his erections. The scientists don't know which it is (is the bomb response or stimuli?), they only know that days before a bomb hits, Slothrop was there, and having some sort of erection. Then there is Roger Mexico, one of my favorite characters. A statistician, Mexcio deep down and semi-unconsciously wants to believe in the divine, the spiritual, but finds it difficult to let go of his scientific mindset. He mirrors Slothrop in that he, too, predicts bombing locations, but through much less threatening means: the Poisson equation. There are a plethora of characters, Pirate Prentice being the first one introduced and the one I mistakingly took to be the protagonist. Prentice works for the war and is described as doing a few things: having other people's fantasies (not even sexual, just getting into their imaginings), delivering to Mexico statistics taken by a Teddy Bloat, and being ready at a moment's notice to follow any commands the higher-ups may give...and he is Europe's leading banana grower/chef! 

Many topics are frequently discussed in the novel, both because the literal plot depends on them and because they hold symbolic importance. A good example of the first is the three stages of the transmarginal state, discussed a lot because of Ned Pointsman, the Pavlovian. The stages detail the different ways stimulus and response can correlate, in order of occurrence: first the stimulus is equal to the response, then the response is greater when stimulus low (and vice versa), and finally, no stimulus produces a response, whereas the original stimulus produces nothing. This last state is where Poinstmen wants to get his dogs to, in order understand the way the mind then eradicates "opposites." (Opposites are, in and of themselves, an issue often discussed in the novel. For example, Ned and Roger Mexico are considered to be opposites, and a character named Gottfried is also shown to have an opposite.) It is also the point he wants to get Slothrop to...the ultraparadoxical stage. It is believed that as a baby Slothrop was conditioned in a certain way that, due to the scientist not completely removing the conditioned response, perpetuates his erection-bomb issue. 

The war is obviously a heavy presence in the novel, with the death, confusion, fear, helplessness and hopefulness it entails permeating just about every page. Each character is somehow grappling with the War, with what it makes them experience and feel and lose. The best example of this, and one of the most extreme and obvious, is the relationship shared by the characters Katje, Gottfried, and Captain Blicero. They enact a sadistic role-playing fantasy based on Hansel and Gretel, which to most readers, the (slightly mild) violence of would be disturbing enough to no longer like the characters (who do admit to liking it for its own pleasure), or to be "turned off," if you will. The importance of this relationship, though, lies not solely in its vulgarity, and Pynchon makes this uncharacteristically clear for us when Katje ruminates on the necessity of their "game." The violent War, unstructured and external, is controlled, mirrored, understood and acknowledged for them when "playing the game." The war is personified, given the name of Mother for Roger Mexico, and it is often talked about in terms of a ruling empire, of the ruler of an empire. The war is given a different layer of importance when paired with religious images. In one important scene (though, let's face it, every scene is deathly important) Roger and his girlfriend go to Church, to celebrate the evensong, but war is what they see. First, the church is filled with War by virtue of the visitors, "men in greatcoats, in oilskins, in dark berets they slipped off at the entrance, American fliers in leather lined with sheep's wool, a few women in clinking boots and wide-shoulder stagger coats, but no children, not a child in sight, just grownups, trudging in from their bomber fields, balloon-bivouacs, pillboxes over the beach..." (130) This scene even claims the evensong be "the War's" (132). To cement to connection is the fact that this religious setting results in a few pages of reflection on war. 

Sex in Gravity's Rainbow has a lot of import, as is obvious when looking at the Hansel/Gretel/Witch triumvirate, who did their stuff in a deserted house right by the bomb control sites in Germany, or when comparing the maps of Roger Mexico and Slothrop. For every bomb hit predicted by Mexico's equations, there is an identical mark of one of Slothrop's sexual encounters, which clearly connects death and war with sex, and, more specifically, with an orgasm. One scene really highlights this. It starts when Slothrop, having just slept with a girl, wakes up to a bomb hitting right nearby, to which he responds by again having sex. This is the first time the reader is "there," if you will, when Slothrop's condition/response shows itself, underscoring the connection between sex/war; previously, readers were told about it second hand. This only sets the reader up for the following scene, which opens with Mexico and his girlfriend, Jessica Swanlake, who both orgasm though are not having sex. A strange line catches a close reader's attention: "and this is important to both of them, though neither has figured out why, exactly." (123) I have to interrupt myself. As I was writing this, I realized, since I didn't exactly know why it was important to them, either, I should search up Roger Mexico, and I ended up finding an article on Gravity's Rainbow that really caught my attention. One line is extremely pertinent here, though in context it refers to the first line of the novel: "It is a scream of sado-masochistic orgasm, a coming together in death."

One last thing before I go. I've really enjoyed my classes, for which I am trying to read Heart of Darkness, and really like the way I can apply what I've already learned to GR. For one thing, I love that Gravity's Rainbow often uses Dumbo as an important reference. My Rhetoric of Disney class hasn't been able to meet yet (thanks, hurricane Isaac!), but I hope to talk to my professor about it. Secondly, there is a lot of material in the text that relates to what I've been learning about in my Psychological Class. In one of the most recent examples, Pointsman has a dream where he "takes a left," versus going to the right, which he does in most dreams. Already I was put on alert, seeing the hint of Pointsman entering his subconscious, something that was made clear in the e-book, which attributed the reference specifically to Jung. The novel makes references to mandalas, and the constant juxtaposing of characters makes me wonder about any one character encountering his/her shadow or his/her anima/animus. 

I'm off, readers! Till next time...enjoy you're labor day weekend!