/lit/ - Literature

We are still using this schedule.

RESOURCES:
>Annotations and detailed notes on each page
https://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
>Section Summaries
https://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/rainbow.htm

>muh discord

42.07 whose name will be Vladimir (or Ilya, Sergei, Nikolai...)
These recall the Russian names assigned to laboratory dogs in Pavlov's experiments. This wild or abandoned dog, "never having been near a laboratory in his life," will be given such a name: the first assertion of the control that Pointsman craves above all.

More on Pavlov:
>Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Russian: Ивáн Пeтpóвич Пáвлoв, IPA: [Jˈvan pʲJˈtrovʲJtɕ ˈpavləf] (About this sound listen); 26 September [O.S. 14 September] 1849 – 27 February 1936) was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning.

From his childhood days Pavlov demonstrated intellectual curiosity along with an unusual energy which he referred to as "the instinct for research".[3] Inspired by the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860s, and I. M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and devoted his life to science. In 1870 he enrolled in the physics and mathematics department at the University of Saint Petersburg in order to study natural science.[1]

Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904,[3][4] becoming the first Russian Nobel laureate. A survey in the Review of General Psychology, published in 2002, ranked Pavlov as the 24th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.[5] Pavlov's principles of classical conditioning have been found to operate across a variety of experimental and clinical settings, including educational classrooms.[6]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqumfpxuzI

>43.28 instead I'm with this gillie or something
Ghillie or gillie is a Scots term that refers to a man or a boy who acts as an attendant on a fishing, fly fishing, hunting, or deer stalking expedition, primarily in the Highlands or on a river such as the River Spey. Jessica is mocking Roger's role tonight as Pointsman's assistant. A ghillie may also serve as a gamekeeper employed by a landowner to prevent poaching on his lands, control unwelcome natural predators such as fox or otter, and monitor the health of the wildlife. [1]

Jessica seems very offensive, jesus

>Don't frighten him Mexico, this isn't Kenya or something
Nice.

Also, why the bottle of ether?

It may be too early to say this, but I think I've finally gotten used to the book's 'rhythm,' so to speak. Everything has a peculiar logic, the changes in perspective and scene are becoming easier to follow and understand. It's never quite cruise control, but I think I can settle into maximum comfy mode now, lads.

Is anybody reading anything else alongside this? I'm not, at least not for now.

>>10487638
I'm still reading other things. But most of my focus is on this. I'm also reading some supplemental articles for each reference thanks to Don Larson's notes

>>10487638
I'm on break from school with two more weeks left, so I have plenty of time. Because of that I'm reading a couple things alongside this - A biography of Wittgenstein, the Brown and Blue Books, Kant's Prolegomena, Demian, and I just finished Man and His Symbols. If I get really into GR though, I'll probably put the others on hold. At the current pace it's manageable, though.

>>10487665
I'm really enjoying the book so far. I haven't really dug around for references or guides except for the occasional dictionary reference. I prefer to let the pieces assemble themselves as the book goes on. A lot of what's been posted so far has been neat, though, I'm not against it at all. I just don't want it to feel like someone is reading the book for me I guess.

Anyway, I'm glad people are actually doing this. The schedule and these threads hold me accountable and keep me motivated to do my reading each day.

>>10487638
I'm a brainlet, so this is all I can handle for now.

>>10487638
I parallel-read shorter and lighter things to keep me charged up

>>10487691
How did you like Man and His Symbols?

my copy of GR just got delivered today. The new Penguin publishing one. Super excited, cant wait to finish my current read (IJ, page 660 or so..loving it) to start this one.

For those of you who've started GR, in your opinion is this something best read with a guide open on a laptop/tablet/phone next to you? Or is it fine to just read GR any old place and not worry too much about 'getting' all of the references and what not.

>>10487831
I'm 400p in and I still don't really know. Mostly I read through chapters whole and then look in the guide for that chapter.

>>10487831
I feel like it wouldn't be as great as an experience if I haven't been using some kind of aid.

There are so many times in this book that you could just misinterpret something.

But you do you

>>10487847
>>10487848
Thanks. I like the freedom of reading wherever I want, plus whenever I use the wallacewiki to accompany my IJ reading my lack of discipline leads to me watching random YouTube videos instead of reading.

I think in the beginning I'll use an aid and decide if I'll continue to do so after I get used to the novel.

I hope to make up for the previous days and continue reading GR with this thread. It's been a while since I've finished V and I really miss reading quality literature, especially since I had to drop most of my art-realted stuff lately due to studying IT - hence the "hope". Still I'm afraid if this eagerness won't burn out due to the winter exams... Also I'm a non-native speaker, and getting confused about the more convoluted sentences doesn't help at all with understanding the surreal plot.

I'm really suprised to meet such a constructive idea on this board, even though it's very appropriate. Last time I checked it was all memes and shitposting as the rest of 4chan.

>>10487805
I was much more impressed by it than I thought I was going to be. I like the general theory of archetypes a lot, but the way Jung uses them to interpret dreams seems dubious. I think their best use would be in evolution and anthropology from a psychology perspective, and I think they could actually lend a great deal to contemporary metaphysics if they're brought in the right way.
The stuff on individuation and the basic framework about archetypes are great and I plan to read more of Jung's writings about them, but the chapters on ancient myths and art get really strange and aren't very scientifically or philosophically rigorous.

>>10487919
We're here anytime.

Also since you're the IT wizard: Why does my wifi sometimes just not connect at all? I'll unplug and replug and things will be fine.

Why does this happen

---
Kevin Spectro is definitely a parody of a Nazi scientist, yes?

>>10487831
>For those of you who've started GR, in your opinion is this something best read with a guide open on a laptop/tablet/phone next to you? Or is it fine to just read GR any old place and not worry too much about 'getting' all of the references and what not.

No one gets it on the first read. It's necessary to read it twice, not just because it's difficult but because of the circular structure. Do whatever it takes to finish it on your first read. On the second read it would be best to do some research.

>>10487942
Have you tried updating your wlan card drivers? If this won't help I'd blame the hardware as it doesn't sound like there's a problem with too much noise/ weak signal (replugging wouldn't work)

>>10486938
Please add page numbers. Even if they don't line up across all editions, it would still be a marked improvement to have a quicker reference point than adding page chunks ontop of eachother.

>>10486938
>>10487992
Updated with page numbers. The edition I'm reading is the Penguin Edition, published in 2000.

>>10488124
Schedule man saves the day once more.
Thank you

This reading was pretty dark. Felt a bit heavy

>You have waited in these places into the early mornings, synced in to the on-whitening of the interior, you know the Arrivals schedule by heart, by hollow heart.

I like this style, any other books like this?

Brace yourselves for the Slothrop sodium amytal dream sequence in tomorrow's reading, it's a strange one

>>10488292
>This reading was pretty dark. Felt a bit heavy
Buckle up, the roller coaster man just put the harness over you and gave the signal, you see that vertical tower ahead the ride slowly creeps up, quickly

Where's our Pirate Prentice friend?

These Jessica and Roger narrative is cool and all but I want some more banana action

>>10489031
from what I have heard instead of like 6 characters making bulk time appearance (like many novels) this has hundreds of characters that may or may not appear much or again

>>10487942
Tell your PC (probably windows 10 or 7 I'm guessing) to forget your wireless access point. Then unplug your WiFi Box from power, then after 45 seconds plug it back in. Then after 1 more minute, re-add your WiFi network on your PC.

I have to do this like 3 tikes a year on my work laptop.

>>10486919
Can someone sauce me up on where this pic is from? I want cozy reading books with sis feels

>>10486919
I'm just joining in so I'll have to catchup. I feel like brainlet though from my recent reading attempts.

This looks fun but I am too brainlet to read this.
Let's do this for Moby dick too, please?

>>10489500
That is what this thread is for, anon. Ask any questions you want to, plus there a few big brained posters who have been doing some very insightful annotations. As for Moby Dick, I would love to do that next.

>Lord of the Night's children
Whomst, in your opinion?

>>10488824
On whitening means?

>Behind you, long, night-long queues of men in uniform move away slowly, kicking AWOL bags along, mostly silent, towards exit doors painted beige, but with edges smudged browner in bell-curves of farewell by the generation of hands.

Might be the most beautiful sentence of the novel, so far.

>>10489095
While that's through, there are still a few characters who take up significantly more space then the others. Slothtrop, Mexico, Pointsman and Prentice being a few of them (for now).
>>10489554
Been a while seen i've read so i haven't got a clue, sorry.

Man, I want to read along with you guys but I'm reading Lord of the Rings at the moment.

Should I put it on hold and read with you guys?

>>10489703
If you've got a bit of spare time, just read both. Otherwise, just drop LotR and read this. Both the book and this thread are super comfy

>>10489703
Yes.

Lord of the Rings is something you can get everything out of by yourself. Take advantage of the opportunity and finish reading Gravitys Rainbow

Why can't you do both? Our readings aren't more than 25 pages each day

>>10489750
>>10489752
Thanks guys. I'll try to get started and catch up.

I'm a little behind because I didn't pick it up on the 1st, but I just got done with reading about Slothrop's heritage, and I'm stuck on thinking about the structure of the book. Narratively not much has happened at all at this point, given that it's probably not even 5% of the book yet that might seem obvious, but really.

So far what I've gathered is that one of the rockets has come down with a letter(s) for Prentice. He has left to grab them, and we see him do so as Slothrop has arrived on the job. Granted I haven't read a whole lot of fiction on this level, but I'm imagining in a more 'straightforward' novel's prose, this could have been gotten across in 10% of the words, even keeping a lot of the ambiance like in the office. Not to say I'm not enjoying what I've been reading, the meandering tangents and intensive descriptions have been pretty fun, but is this why the book (and Pynchon at large) is so famed? I've gone in almost entirely blind on the author, memes notwithstanding, so sorry if this is obviously the reason it's popular.

>Pirate's "strange talent . . . for getting inside the fantasies of others
What this mean?

What do the pages after above lines describe? His fantasies?

>>10489963
"of others"

I think he is able to "see"/feel/inhabit and possibly influence the fantasies of other people. I read that bit a while ago though and am waiting for the group to catch up to where I am so I can jump back in. Can't remember what comes directly after that, The Adenoid stuff? If so there was some discussion in the last thread.

Also thanks >>10487101 >>10487208 for the annotations. Finding them really interesting.

>>10489960
he has ESP, retard

and maybe tyrone's dick has ESP too!

>>10486919
No one replied to my meme in the last thread 0.0

>>10490096
could use a bit of work but shows a lot of promise

>>10490096
I like it.

>>10490096
Needs work, like clearly mark them as DFW soyboy, Chad Pinecone fan. Also the references make it seem like you're not too familiar with Pynchon (but maybe you are)... Also it's current year... old meme...

>>10490096
Kek, didn't even see it

>>10489560
I presume as opposed to the colour off-white

>>10489554
I didnt read that part yet but it may not be a particular person but just like: the god of wine, the spirit of the mountains, the lord of the nights children....or it could be a particular person

>>10489938
>Granted I haven't read a whole lot of fiction on this level, but I'm imagining in a more 'straightforward' novel's prose, this could have been gotten across in 10% of the words, even keeping a lot of the ambiance like in the office
Congrats, you have recognized the difference between High Poetic Philosophical Art and YA
>>10489960
maybe its a hint at the possibility and interest in 'possible paranormal phenomenon', supernatural human ability: maybe the slightest bit related to the concept of 'therapists/psychologists' (how their job is to get inside a patients head, and help one another understand the visions and fantasies: I thought of that possibility due to the mentions and focus on psychologists)

>>10489960
He quite literally has other people's paranoid fantasies/delusions for them, which allows them to be level-headed and continue doing their jobs while staying out of trouble (like in the very beginning when he starts freaking out in place of some Rumanian guy with a sudden shift in the prose to a funny Slavic accent)

So did slothrop get raped?

>>10489960
He can view other people's dreams on a whim.

>>10491129
>>10490960
>>10490777
>>10490597
>>10490087
Thanks! Will never be able to complete this without your all

>>10489431
It's heavily imagistic and densely associative, inundating you with detail and leaving you with very little room to breathe.

Personally, I have to give myself like 15 minutes of meditation before starting to muster up the juice necessary to follow along

Should I read Pynchon's earlier works before this? I got the crying of lot 49 and gravity's rainbow for christmas, and I planned to read 49 first, but I don't know how much free time I have and don't want to miss out on reading group camaraderie

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/rainbow.htm

>>10491117
Well, mind-raped yeah, definitely. It comes up later in the book but exchange for putting his son into and through Harvard, his father essentially sold him to Them for [...] purposes, landing an infant Slothrop into the hands of Laszlo Jamph and co. and then there's the whole issue of their efforts to de-condition him from (whatever they did) pushing him beyond his baseline into the weird negative space, or beyond the zero, where his (extra?)sensory disposition seems to have originated from.

>>10491400
I don’t think it’s necessary. The Crying of Lot 49 is still dense despite its ostensible brevity and really it’d probably just be easier to jump right into GR along with the rest of us. Reading along with the group will help you get through it and there’s plenty of fun to be had.

>>10490777
>Congrats, you have recognized the difference between High Poetic Philosophical Art and YA

I sincerely doubt either of you have recognized that difference (if there even is such a difference). In any case, you certainly haven't grasped it. Good luck with the rest of the book. It's really only good the second time through.

>>10488972
So that's what that was. I thought at first that the change in narrative style was Pinecone's way of having Slothrop talk to the people at PISCES. I guess I wasn't too far off. The whole section felt like one of those jokes that takes forever to tell and has a cheap punchline at the end. I loved it, though. Very clever.
Y O U N E V E R D I D T H E K E N O S H A K I D

"They are approaching now a lengthy brick improvisation, a Victorian paraphrase of what once, long ago, resulted in Gothic cathedrals—but which, in its own time, arose not from any need to climb through the fashioning of suitable confusions toward any apical God, but more in a derangement of aim, a doubt as to the God’s actual locus (or, in some, as to its very existence), out of a cruel network of sensuous moments that could not be transcended and so bent the intentions of the builders not on any zenith, but back to fright, to simple escape, in whatever direction, from what the industrial smoke, street excrement, windowless warrens, shrugging leather forests of drive belts, flowing and patient shadow states of the rats and flies, were saying about the chances for mercy that year.”

>>10491804
It was definitely a very surreal episode, pretty hard to make heads or tails of. The bit with Crouchfield the Westwardman and the whole "only one of each" thing had me sort of confused over what Pynchon is trying to say here.

Anyone have any ideas of the significance of purple landscapes?

>>10492336
>purple landscapes?
can you write some context lines, type them up? Lots of various words and images and ideas in this text, not exactly coming to mind, did he just say "and the purple landscape".. multiple times?

>>10491400
jump in, CoL 49 won't don't do anything

group read will be best

It's nice to have something to motivate me to read every day. I've really been enjoying these threads for the most part.

How is everyone liking the book so far?

>>10493163
I'm on page 5.

>>10493163
I'm just afraid I would miss some reference
It's also hard for me to catch up with the group, I just started yesterday

>>10493186
https://archive.org/details/GravitysRainbow001ADehissed

Any news on the guy who said he was going to upload Slade's Pynchon?

night

Can someone help me with DDDD 4?
Tyrone sleeps with women and rocket falls? What does this mean?

>>10494023
That's what they're trying to figure out at the White Visitation, that's why Pointsman wants to experiment on him. Slothrop's boners seem to have ESP, but everyone has different theories as to how it works

>>10494106

What a weird story
ESP? Seriously?
Is reading this story really the best use of one's time? Am I missing something here?

>Pudding finds himself wondering, at times aloud and in the presence of subordinates, what enemy disliked him enough to assign him to Political Warfare. One is supposed to be operating in concert——yet too often in amazing dissonance——with other named areas of the War, colonies of that Mother City mapped wherever the enterprise is systematic death: P.W.E. laps over onto the Ministry of Information, the BBC European Service, the Special Operations Executive, the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and the F.O. Political Intelligence Department at Fitzmaurice House. Among others. When the Americans came in, their OSS, OWI, and Army Psychological Warfare Department had also to be coordinated with. Presently there arose the joint, SHAEF Psychological Warfare Division (PWD), reporting direct to Eisenhower, and to hold it all together a London Propaganda Coordinating Council, which has no real power at all.
> Who Can find his way about this lush maze of initials, arrows solid and dotted, boxes big and small, names printed and memorized? Not Ernest Pudding——that's for the New Chaps with their little green antennas out for the usable emanations of power, versed in American politics (knowing the difference between the New Dealers of OWI and the eastern and moneyed Republicans behind OSS), keeping brain-dossiers on latencies, weaknesses, tea-taking habits, erogenous zones of all who might someday be useful.

I never really appreciated the interplay of various organizations all on the same side yet all somehow in a frenzied bureaucratic chaos at cross purposes with eachother. Like Hanlon's razor might suggest, maybe the malevolence of THEM, the all pervasive ominous Them, may just be a mere consequence of coincidence, or an accretion of accidents all cascading upon our poor dear Lt.


>>10488124
My '95 V2 blueprint edition seems to be running a couple pages fast. For me, "a few bitter flakes of snow begin to fall" falls on page 83.

>>10494000
heh, and with two more zeros we'd have our Unaccounted For rocket here right before our eyes

>>10494023
It's been referred to a couple times already at this point as the Slothrop scheme or the Sloproth Affair, but it get mentioned orthogonality countless times before it's ever directly explained later in the book. The basic gestalt is this: Slothrop is relentlessly experimented on by (monstrous individuals, psychopathic psychologists like Jamf and Spectro) Intelligence agencies in what seems to be the beginnings of an early MK ULTRA, the results with which leave him a-little-bit-broken, but seeing, rather, feeling perhaps 'a sensory cue we just aren't paying attention to.'
>"It's Slothrop. You know what he is. Even Mexico thinks . . . oh, the usual. Precognition. Psychokinesis. They have their own problems, that lot . . . But suppose *you* had the chance to study a truly classical case of. . . . some pathology, a perfect mechanism . . . . "
Go back and read that part, it's on page 48 in my edition.

>>10494137
>Is reading this story really the best use of one's time? Am I missing something here?
stop reading it, if you havent gained anything yet, or enjoyed the aweinspiring overpowering supreme continuous onslaught of genius of the writing, just dont read it.

>>10494137
DO WE NEED A FUCKING RETARD EVERY 7 POINTS TO QUESTION IF THEY SHOULD KEEP READING OR CAN READ..... FUCKING STOP IT, STOPPPPPP SHUT UPPPP NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE STOPPPPPPPP SHUTT UPPPPPP SHUT THE FUCK UPP NOWWWWWW AND FOREVER... STOPPP!!!!!!!! SHUT THE FUCK UPPPPP

no more whining baby faggot posts about not being able to read it, uncertain if you should, not thinking its good enough for you, just shut the fuck up... stop reading it... go away... stop... stop... stop

>>10492048
I've read this sentence to several friends on several, different occasisions where everyone was high.

I think it's amazing and i'm honestly deeply impressed with Pynchon's ability to fabricate this kind of sentences and weave them into his work. As much as i love this one though, i think the two sentences in The Crying of Lot 49 about the cardealership and the homeless guy's matress are even better.

For a large part this is what i enjoy in Delillo's work as well.

What's your reading speed?
I'm 7 pages per hour :(

>>10494672
POST 'EM

>>10487638
I've I had this but with this book it took longer than ever, infinite jest is a walk in the park near this. Also I've started reading before the threads I'm Already in the zone.

>>10494672
>the cardealership and the homeless guy's matress are even better.
can you find these sentences or type them up? would be mucho appreshed

>>10494695
I think its one of the ugliest book covers of all time. One of the greatest books, one of the ugliest, cheesiest, tackiest, (too) cartoonish looking covers

I love the scene where slothrop is trying all these terrible English sweets, couldn't stop laughing. This pynchon guy is something.

>>10494763
see if it helps to read along
>>10493642

>>10494763
My is even worse, cuz my first language is polish and I have to read 3 books at once: GR, dictionary and a translation of GR. Still, reading Pynchon in original is priceless and I'm trying to catch up since day 4 (currently reading day 2...). Luckily todays mathematical analysis exam was relatively easy and the only thing left for tomorrow is to write a review of Ulysses, so I may have some time left afterwards.
By the way I was wondering if the time from the fourth chapter: 6:43:16, has any hidden meaning? The recurring motifes of things falling from the sky, death, the Word etc. were making me feel so sentimental about V. :') Think I am a bit overly sensitive to such things, but when Leopold Bloom looked at his navel sticking out of the water, looking like a lotus flower, I wept like a baby.

>>10495002
>>10494961
>Yet at least he had believed in the cars, maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro, Mexican, cracker, a parade seven days a week, bring with them the most godawful of trade-ins: motorized, metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at, frame cockeyed, rusty underneath, fender repainted in a shade just off enough to depress the value, if not Mucho himself, inside smelling hopeless of children, of supermarket booze, or two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust--and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused (when so little he supposed came by that out of fear most of it had to be taken and kept) and what had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 or 10¢, trading stamps, pink flyers advertising specials at the market, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads, Yellow Pages torn from the phone book, rags of old underwear or dresses that already were period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman or car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a grey dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes--it nauseated him to look, but he had to look.

Just look at how he builds it up. The sentence an sich is a mini story with a clear set-up, center and conclusion, painting a lively picture, of these people, these cars. The string of images evoking certain feelings for the reader, which Pynchon identifies as 'a salad of despair' which might not even be what you, as a reader, where thinking at first. All to finally conclude by telling the reader how this makes Mucho Maas feel.

I'm not at my place rightnow, so i don't have acces to my copy to find the other one, will post in a few days, if you can't wait: Yale courses has a free video on Youtube about the Crying of Lot 49, they mention it there as well. (And ofcourse, the entire video is worth watching).

>>10495091
>his navel sticking out of the water
I assume you meant the ending of Lotuseaters?
>the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower
Now anon, i don't want to go all Freudian on you, but you do realize he's not talking about his navel here, right?

>>10494137
>ESP? Seriously?

yes, 'seriously'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlYkpskehmE

>>10486919

>please read this book with me!? would you...

Is she psycho or something? She can't even finish her sentences.

>>10495515
Yeah, it came out odd, I meant he as a whole looked like a Lotus flower, the navel part is a bit earlier and reminds beautifully of the thought Dedalus had in Prometeus, about the umblical cords of all people etc.

>>10495537
You're supposed to read it from the other side, starting with "Would you." Come on, anon, you're on 4chan, surely you've seen Jap comics before.

Caught up and I'm in now. Shit is fun lads.

>>10495563
yeah i get it.
I kekked out loud at the omphalos part.
Felt good everytime i got one of the cheeky jokes in Proteus.

>>10495653
I was thinking the same.

Fun threads. Post your favorite excerpts so far:

>At "The White Visitation" the walls read ice. Graffiti of ice the sunless day, glazing the darkening blood brick and terra cotta as if the house is to be preserved weatherless in some skin of museum plastic, an architectural document, an old fashioned apparatus whose use is forgotten.

>>10494344
very autismo of you, but I approve of every word

>>10492048
What does this mean? Just reached this part

>>10495010
Better than the Vintage. What about this one?

>>10495010
I don't think it's tacky, and with Pynchon having it be a bit cartoonish makes sense

>>10486919
>tfw was too late to join War and Peace reading last year
>tfw am too late to join Gravity Rainbow reading this year
I wish I could receive notifications of these reading groups ahead of time.

>>10496386
>I wish I could receive notifications of these reading groups ahead of time.

yes, the geniuses who made this reading group did it with 1 day's notice

>>10496401
>>10496386
just ready 5 more pages a day, then and you'll catch up

>>10496386
>>10496401
They are five days in with 25 pages ahead, half of all the posts are still here.
Stop your fucking whining bitchboys.

>>10496447
People are reading other books too. For the THIRD Gravity's Rainbow reading group we do, let's give people a bit of a head's up.

>>10496386
>>10496401
Suck it up, we can't wait for everyone

Catch up, negroes

>>10496005
They are approaching a building. The architecture of said building is a 'Victorian style "paraphrase of the same impulses that made men build Gothic Cathedrals in the middle ages (which climb, from the ground up, through stylistic 'confusions' up to a peak, which symbolizes/points at god, pay attention to this, as Pynchon comes back to this in another notable fragment about lingerie almost 300 pages further if i'm not mistaken, but i digress). The building is not built towards a zentih (as a cathedral is) but is built to escape the outside world, turning inward instead of upward, away from what the conditions of 19th century of England (Victorian, remember) were saying about the chances ''of mercy'', which is to say the chances of respite, safety, rest imo. And those chances weren't very good, Pynchon mentions industrial and housing problems, if you read into the 19th century living conditions of the working class in Manchester, London, Liverpool a little you can really see where he's coming from. And not only because 'muh poverty', but because there were oppresive, unjust, 'larger than life' systems in place to keep it that way, much alike the system of oppresion Pynchon will be touching on in GR.

For the record: i did not spellcheck this and i'm not an Anglo. Apologies.

>>10496520
I should have spellchecked this, god it's fucking awfull.

>>10496520
Thanks for raping the English language

>>10496541
You're welcome.

>>10496554
In all seriousness I went back to that panty-passage and re-read it. Nice connection you made senpai.

>>10496565
Thanks senpai, i can't point to another passage, but i think things pointing up, towards the skies, god, etc is a recuring element throughout the book. I vaguely remember Pynchon mentioning the point of the Aggregat, Slothrop's erections, the panty-passage, the cathedral in the mentioned passage...

>>10496598
But, w-what does it mean?

>>10496699
I'm afraid i don't know.
An obsession with what's above mankind? (The supernatural is also a recurring theme)
Paranoid obsession with "those at the the top"? Being opressed from above, either by God or by systems above us, depending on our place in history?
A fixation on the point where mankind stop and what's above us, literally and figuratively?
Your guess is as good as mine, any ideas?

>>10496761
I feel like he presents the point as something people strive for, have reverence for but also a locus of destruction. Underneath the point is something built by human craft, a church, a rocket. Upwards of it is nothing: death or destruction? So maybe something about human progress leading to (self)destruction? The most direct example of this being the rocket. Also striving for (or being compelled by) self-destruction is definitely something that comes back a few times.

Maybe the point is the part of the Cosmic Snake where mouth meets tail?

(just spitballing because I have no clue)

>>10496801
That actually makes alot of sense. I like it better than my own explanation. I don't know about the Cosmic snake, but i think you're absolutely right about the rocket, which was the spearhead of western technology at the time.

>>10496841
The cosmic snake was a goof

>>10496520
pretty funny that the "omg we love pynchon for his prose" group not only can't write but also think pynchon is a genius for writing about the same 'larger than life systems' in 19th century england that they hate dickens for writing about.

seriously /lit/, this thread is an absolute fucking embarrassment. learn something about literature before you try reading pynchon.

>>10496896
>nowhere did i say i dislike dickens
>Dickens and Pynchon writing about the same systems, or saying similar things about them.
>i explained why my English sucked.
If you think we're all illiterate, how about enlightening us with you insight? Or just staying in the trollthreads, you vinegar-pisser.

>>10496931
Your*
FUCK. That's on me.

>>10496852
ouroboro ouroboro ouroboro, ouroboros! ouroboros!

>>10496896
Then get the fuck out of the group you faglord.

>>10496896
Why are all Dickensposters like this

As funky as his character names are they are so pleasing, you can never tire of them phonetically, Teddy Bloat for instance. Pointsman. Spectro. Blicero. Prentice. all have nice rings to them, nothing clunky about them, always pleasant to hear

>>10496124
thats ugly too, looks like a marble notebook, almost too formal...I almost hate to say the orange one is starting to grow on me... its just, you can look at it multiple ways... I think as much as it is a serious book, yes there are cartoonish qualities, the blue font clashes with the red orange, and just the graphics style is cheesyish.. but at the same time would it not feel right to have like that classic all blue ullysses cover (I know a lot of old literature has just plain color covers and backs, the old hard cover books, with maybe decorative lines, saying 'this is a serious fancy book'). I like the orange red, because those colors are rare for a book cover, and it just really jumps and pops out, as if the whole book itself is light emanating, so that when you are absolutely attention seeking on the subway reading this people will certainly be like, oh sheet, that is catching my eye: the blue just is so clashing, even though in its own I like that color, I dont know, im kind of freaking out because there are things I like about it and things I dont like about it and its changing and I like and dont like the things I dont like and like, separate and together, and I dont know.... I really dont know...

>>10494695
>>10496378
yes thats true, but I feel like the text is more serious than cartoonish ultimately...maybe its ying yang 50/50... idk... the blue and that type style remind me of comic book

This is a fun book.
Keep in mind the Ouroboros symbolism he sprinkles throughout; constant mandalas, circular structures in architecture, the V2's trajectory, parabolic narrative structures. This gets real interesting when he gets into Kabbalism in later chapters. Twelve is an important number as well.

"A screaming comes across the sky."
How does one hear a scream when it's coming at supersonic speed? Who's watching at the beginning? You'll notice in the text strange, angel-like figures watching from far distances; from aloft to the edges of mountains, the narrator implies some force is watching over humanity and their folly. This brings to mind the phenomenon of the "foo fighters" of WW2, strange orbs of light that would follow war planes, which were usually thought to be interplanetary travelers. Or are we merely watching our own demise, separated by screens--this mass culture of Consumption--and complicit in the demise of humanity all together?

There's tons of gnostic and hermetic allusions too. I gotta re-read it sometime.

>>10497250
Just as long as we both agree this is awful

>>10497297
he doesn't just imply it. he says it explicitly. there's a face in the clouds that appears, (i think) in that three-page-long paragraph about christmas at the end of the first part. it's been a few years since i read it, so i might be misremembering, but the face appears and is likened to some more tarrot bullshit.

>>10497207
because dickens is the greatest writer in the english language and you fucking idiots dismiss him entirely since he doesn't help make you look smarter than the plebian rabble you imagine yourself surrounded with. "gr reading group" "anti-oedipus reading group" all the other drivel you idiots think you need the help of other idiots to read.

>>10496896
This is your average Dickens fan

move along, now...

>>10497207
Dickens is a huge influence on Mason & Dixon

>>10495486
thanks a lot champ, I owe you one

>>10496801
>>10496761
well the building that passage is descrbing after the passage says its some hospital, where maybe some top secret gov people are working. From gothic cathedral times, men attempting to reach for God, and commune with each other, the public knowing that the center of the town and meeting and knowing one another; toward modern times, of a more tumultuous world, lacking or no need for cathedral flair, but just a brick improvisation, enough to hide and be safe from the dangerous world, escape it, : (rats and flies saying about mercy, gothic, plague?)

>>10495680
>Post your favorite excerpts so far:
“You knew I’d show up, you little rascal,” shit that Whappo is such a caution. Always baiting his master in hopes of getting a leather-keen stripe or two across those dusky Afro-Scandinavian buttocks, which combine the callipygian rondure observed among the races of the Dark Continent with the taut and noble musculature of sturdy Olaf, our blond Northern cousin. But this time Crutchfield only turns back to watching the distant mountains. Whappo sulks. His top hat reflects the coming holocaust. What the white man does not have to utter, however casually, is anything like “Toro Rojo’s gonna be riding in tonight.” Both pardners know about that. The wind, bringing them down that raw Injun smell, ought to be enough for anybody. Oh God it’s gonna be a shootout and bloody as hell. The wind will be blowing so hard blood will glaze on the north sides of the trees. The redskin’ll have a dog with him, the only Indian dog in these whole ashen plains—the cur will mix it up with little Whappo and end hung on the meathook of an open meat stall in the dirt plaza back in Los Madres, eyes wide open, mangy coat still intact, black fleas hopping against the sunlit mortar and stone of the church wall across the square, blood darkened and crusting at the lesion in his neck where Whappo’s teeth severed his jugular (and maybe some tendons, for the head dangles to one side). The hook enters in the back, between two vertebrae. Mexican ladies poke at the dead dog, and it sways reluctantly in the forenoon market-smell of platanos for frying, sweet baby carrots from the Red River Valley, trampled raw greens of many kinds, cilantro smelling like animal musk, strong white onions, pineapples fermenting in the sun, about to blow up, great mottled shelves of mountain mushroom. Slothrop moves among the bins and hung cloths, invisible, among horses and dogs, pigs, brown-uniformed militia, Indian women with babies slung in shawls, servants from the pastel houses farther up the hillside—the plaza is seething with life, and Slothrop is puzzled. Isn’t there supposed to be only one of each?

>>10495680
A. Yes.

Q. Then one Indian girl . . .

A. One pure Indian. One mestiza. One criolla. Then: one Yaqui. One Navaho. One Apache—

Q. Wait a minute, there was only one Indian to begin with. The one that Crutchfield killed.

A. Yes.

Look on it as an optimization problem. The country can best support only one of each.

Q. Then what about all the others? Boston. London. The ones who live in cities. Are those people real, or what?

A. Some are real, and some aren’t.

Q. Well are the real ones necessary? or unnecessary?

A. It depends what you have in mind.

Q. Shit, I don’t have anything in mind.

A. We do.

For a moment, ten thousand stiffs humped under the snow in the Ardennes take on the sunny Disneyfied look of numbered babies under white wool blankets, waiting to be sent to blessed parents in places like Newton Upper Falls. It only lasts a moment. Then for another moment it seems that all the Christmas bells in the creation are about to join in chorus—that all their random pealing will be, this one time, coordinated, in harmony, present with tidings of explicit comfort, feasible joy.

But segway into the Roxbury hillside. Snow packs into the arches, the crosshatchings of his black rubber soles. His Ar’tics clink when he moves his feet. The snow in this slum darkness has the appearance of soot in a negative . . . it flows in and out of the night. . . . The brick surfaces by daylight (he only sees them in very early dawn, aching inside his overshoes, looking for cabs up and down the Hill) are flaming corrosion, dense, deep, fallen upon by frosts again and again: historied in a way he hasn’t noticed in Beacon Street. . . .

In the shadows, black and white holding in a panda-pattern across his face, each of the regions a growth or mass of scar tissue, waits the connection he’s traveled all this way to see. The face is as weak as a house-dog’s, and its owner shrugs a lot.

Slothrop: Where is he? Why didn’t he show? Who are you?

Voice: The Kid got busted. And you know me, Slothrop. Remember? I’m Never.

Slothrop (peering): You, Never? (A pause.) Did the Kenosha Kid?

At this point in the book, a cyclical structure is already being hinted at. A couple of episodes begin and end with similar if not identical phrases:

"Bet you never did the "Kenosha," kid!" (62)
...
"Slothrop (peering): You, Never? (A pause.) Did the Kenosha Kid?" (72)

"the camera follows as she moves deliberately nowhere longlegged about the rooms, an adolescent wideness and hunching to the shoulders, her hair not bluntly Dutch at all, but secured in a modish upsweep with an old, tarnished silver crown" (94)
...
"The camera follows as she moves deliberately nowhere longlegged about the rooms, an adolescent wideness and hunching to the shoulders, her hair not bluntly Dutch at all, but secured in a modish upsweep with an old, tarnished silver crown..." (116)

Also, I've noticed lots of things are described in binary terms.

Earlier, there was a passage describing neurons as being 'either on or off,' or something to that effect. I can't find the exact passage.

Infant Tyrone's Penis: "But a hardon, that's either there, or it isn't. Binary, elegant." (86)

This page is also where Part One's title, Beyond the Zero, makes its first appearance:
"Not only must we speak of partial or of complete extinction of a conditioned reflex, but we must also realize that extinction can proceed *beyond* the point of reducing a reflex to zero. We cannot therefore judge the degree of extinction *only* by the magnitude of the reflex or its absence, since there can still be *a silent extinction beyond the zero.*" (86)

>would you rather be a colonol with an eagle on your shoulder or a private with a chicken on your knee

>>10496520
Thank-you!

you guys dont bully, right? I'm going to start reading this, amount of pages to catch up seems manageable

>>10498501
This thread is very chill. Catch up, and enjoy some high quality posting.

>>10492336
>>10492774

>>10498826
I can't remember the passage, but right now i'd say he describes hunting grouse in Scotland. You know, the bird from the whisky bottles? The heath (or heather? moorland? Idk in English) can turn purple when the vegetation that covers the ground is blooming.

There's another location later in the book that also features purple heath, allthough i don't know if they are connected. Are there several mentions of these landscapes so far or is it just the one? I hadn't noticed it.

He struggles to work himself farther into the toilet hole as dimly, up through the smelly water, comes the sound of a whole dark gang of awful Negroes come yelling happily into the white men's room, converging on poor wriggling Slothrop, jiving around the way they do singing 'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!' And the voice that replies is who but that Red, the shoeshine boy who's slicked up Slothrop's black patents a dozen times down on his knees jes poppin' dat rag to beat the band..."

>tfw brainlet

Embarrassingly I seem to enjoy all the sexual scenes the most, as they're the easiest to understand usually.

>tfw you will never give Katje and Gottfried the ole Rome-Berlin Axis with your boy Captain Blicero

>>10499798
I skipped that chapter after I read that para, was hard to understand
Can someone summarize that chapter so that I can re read it better?
Thanks!

>>10499815

From the https://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/rainbow.htm

>Slothrop, without being told why, has been transferred from ACHTUNG to St. Veronica's, for observation. He fantasizes on various permutations and combinations of the sentence, "You never did the Kenosha Kid." Stimulated by an injection of Sodium Amytal, and asked by a PISCES interrogator about "the Negroes, in Roxbury," he fantasizes about throwing up in the men's room of the Roseland Ballroom (sounds of "Cherokee" coming up from downstairs, watched by a shoeshine boy called "Red" [Malcom Little, later Malcolm X]). The harmonica (later, a kind of Slothrop signature) falls from his shirt pocket into the toilet; he follows it--"getting into some, oh really weird shit." Segue to the adventures of the singular hero, Crouchfield (or Crutchfield), and his decreasingly singular accessories (including an Afro-Scandinavian "Pard"--cf., later, Blicero and Enzian?). Back to the Kenosha Kid.

It's all a fantasy if memory serves me. He's in the Roseland ballroom and drops his "mouth harp", his harmonica, down the toilet. He goes in searching for it, swimming through the shit from days and weeks and months, remembering the meals associated with the shit.

The second part of the fantasy segues into this world where there is only 'one of each thing'. So one white man, one Indian, one pakistani etc. And he's going along talking to a woman in her village.

Just a couple of weird stories that probably don't have anything to do with anything, to be honest. But this chapter was my favorite so far.

hope that helps a little.

>>10499928
Thanks you, that helped a lot!

>>10496446
>>10496447
>>10496468
Being a dickhead isn't helpful. I'm a slow reader as it is. By the time I catch up this group be nearly done with the book. I feel a little better now though, you're dickheads and I don't even want to read with you anymore.

>>10500799
>can't take some old banter
Maybe we're not your crowd
The group is still open, though. Someone posted audiobooks, maybe that can help you catch up

>>10500819
How don't people get that it's banter. Like they never had a male friendgroup before.

>>10500883
Are you a girl?

>>10500799
hey i posted that first post you linked and i don't appreciaqte being lumped in with the others especially since i didn't use any namecalling. how was i supposed to know you're a slow reader and you'd get offended by me suggesting you read a little more than then scheduled pages?

>>10500910
I didn't mean you're a dickhead, sorry.

>>10500799
>can't take a bit of banter
>on 4chan of all places
>now i don't even want to read it with you guys anymore cuz you're mean.
Seriously? Who cares if you lag a few days behind, in these threads you can still hear what other anons think about what you've just read or are about to read and the way it's going now you can even discuss it! And ask question! With actual answers! And relatively low trolling! What a time to be alive!
But i'm not going to apologize for calling you a whining bitchboy. Because you clearly are.

Wait for me to catch up fellas. postpone this until February

>>10501096
You can't stop the autism train.

Catch up. At the very least skim up to us and look through the summaries and the previous thread

Oh shit I missed this, can we do this again soon? Schedule looks easy to follow

>>10501125
Next book club is Moby Dick, anon.

>>10500799
Don't feel bad. I've already read it twice and would have loved to read along now but I'm not going to because I have other books I need to finish and fuck anyone who makes a reading group with one day notice.

I might try to organize a Mason & Dixon reading group or something else by Pynchon (or maybe Gaddis) later this year. If I do I won't be a dick and give people notice in advance. A reading group shouldn't be about demanding others to read the book you got for Christmas ASAP.

>>10501185
We started this group in one day advance because we had enough people that could sustain the group and smaller groups tend to work better

Keep whining about it in these threads won't do anything to change it. If you don't like it then leave mate

>>10501216
So from the outset you want to exclude possible readers.

Why not take this to discord? You won't have to deal with "too many readers."

>>10498826
only an ignorant guess would be, that its simply just hills covered in purple flowers: maybe poppy flowers: maybe dark shaded (pallid means pale, pale sky, cloudy grey sky?): grouse are a type of bird:

saying purple hills adds more color and beauty imagery then the standard green hills (and nice near alliteration with pallid):

the sentences context are describing certain peoples ideal, so I dont know, just a romantic feeling dream like vision, purple hills, striving for an otherworldlyness (though hills can be literally purple in some way, but still it brings to mind a richness, exuberance, sensual, prettyness, idyllicness)

total guesses

Mostly lurking because I’m behind, but chiming in to say this book is batshit insane and I’m loving it. Holy fuck.

>>10501272
ya, even 20 pages a day might be tough, feels like I am being ran over by a train made of bananas with a smiling pynchon as conductor continuously tooting his horn and just dragging me down the tracks towards heaven and hell

>>10498501
No bully, just banter. Welcome aboard!

>>10499798
>>10499928
I think it's a jaw harp (or Jew's harp, mouth harp), not a harmonica. Somehow it seems more fitting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew%27s_harp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irATiFt6AUM

"The mouth harp in his pocket reverts to brass inertia. A weight. A jive accessory. But he packs it everywhere he goes." (64)

What do you think about this >>10497957 ? I want to know if other people have noticed the same thing, or if I'm just nuts.

>>10497957
Interestingly, the "Beyond the Zero" is a phrase from one of Pavlov's papers:

>Hitherto, when referring to the degree of extinction, we have only spoken of the extinction as being partial or as being complete, but we shall now have to extend our conception. Not only must we speak of partial or of complete extinction of a conditioned reflex, but we must also realize that extinction can proceed beyond the point of reducing a reflex to zero. We cannot therefore judge the degree of extinction only by the magnitude of the reflex or its absence, since there can still be a silent extinction beyond the zero. This statement rests upon the fact that a continued repetition of an extinguished stimulus' beyond the zero of the positive reflex deepens the extinction still further. Such an extension of our conception serves fully to elucidate the experiment just described, and it explains why the seemingly inactive thermal component when subjected to experimental extinction led to such a profound secondary extinction of the stronger tactile component. The importance of considering the degree of extinction in all experiments thus becomes evident. The methods of determining the degree of extinction when it goes beyond zero will be explained in connection with the question which will next be discussed.

You can read the paper here:
>http://psychcentral.com/classics/Pavlov/lecture4.htm

>Section 8
A category of discharge from the United States military for reason of being mentally unfit for service.

Isn't this also a term for poor housing? Poor backs and such?

>greensickness
Chlorosis (also known as "green sickness") is a form of anemia named for the greenish tinge of the skin of a patient. Its symptoms include lack of energy, shortness of breath, dyspepsia, headaches, a capricious or scanty appetite and amenorrhoea. Today this disease is diagnosed as hypochromic anemia.

>imposthumes
A accumulation of pus; an abcess

>kibes
An inflamed area on the skin, especially the heel; a chillblain

This Mrs. Quoad is the personification of you mates. . .

>Primo Scala's Accordion Band
An English group, well-known by the mid-1930s, that consisted of four accordions, two pianos, bass, drums and guitar, under the direction of Harry Bidgood.

Here's a bit of them:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XexJLmUJgjM

>Sèvres vase
Sèvres is a French porcelain manufacturer dating to 1740. It was originally a royal, then an imperial, factory, and is now run by the Ministry of Culture.

>Gilbert & Sullivan
Composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) and librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) collaboratively developed a distinctive English form of the operetta.
The candy excerpt is great.

> ...exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit playing his ocarina...
Both Hop and Tank are aviation heroes from DC comics. Hop is a pilot; Tank is his mechanic. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hop_Harrigan --Jpicco 09:20, 27 May 2009 (PDT)
Does anyone remember them?

Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff.
Not an uncommon practice, apparently. "Edgar Rice Burroughs, being fond of smoking cubeb cigarettes, humorously stated that if he had not smoked so many cubebs, there might never have been Tarzan." More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubeb#Cigarettes_and_spirits

Pic related. I see them smoked in pubs by a few dainty fellows every now and then.

>Tannoy
Tannoy Ltd is an English manufacturer of loudspeakers and public-address (PA) systems. It became a household name as a result of supplying PA systems to the armed forces during World War II, and to Butlins and Pontins holiday camps after the war.

> join the waits
Leicester's ancient tradition of Town Waits — official musicians who supported the Lord Mayor at civic events, entertained townspeople and feted visitors. The waits were originally guards or watchmen who walked round the town at night looking out for fires or other trouble. They rang bells to tell people the time, or called out '2 o'clock and all's well'. They also played music for the Lord Mayor's guests on big occasions, and entertained the general public. This became their main job. By 1900 the waits' instruments were a cornet, a euphonium, a tenor horn and a trombone. From then, the waits mostly played popular requests for a small fee, which was given to charity. By the 1940s, a request would cost about half a crown (12p). The Leicester Waits were disbanded around 1947.

>tfw already read GR so I can't be part of this as a total noob to Pynchon
>tfw the anti-oedipus reading group sucks
I didn't deserve this pain.

Original text English translation
In dulci jubilo, In sweet rejoicing
Nun singet und seid froh! now sing and be glad!
Alle unsre Wonne All our joy
Liegt in praesepio; lies in the manger;
Sie leuchtet wie die Sonne It shines like the sun
Matris in gremio. in the mother's lap.
Alpha es et O! You are the alpha and omega!

>>10502052
Please do join us. It'll still be fun and perhaps you'll pick up some things you've missed or forgotten.

>>10502062
In what part of the book are you guys on
I have the OP edition
I would like to in both groups but seems imposible for a brainlet like me

I'm going to start drafting out the schedule for the next part.

Do you guys want to take a day off between Parts One and Two to talk about it or just keep reading?

>>10502100
See >>10488124 About 30 more pages to go in Part One.

>>10502109
OP here:

I was thinking we would. It would settle some questions and confusion that would otherwise be pushed under other posts.

What do you guys think?

Also: If you have any suggestions, links, or memes to share, feel free. Next thread-poster is looking to be >>10490096

i started reading this book and then put it down a while ago

coincidentally, you guys are currently within about 10 pages of where i left off

im taking this as a sign

>>10490096
We need someone to remake this and make the IJ side the Anti-Oedipus reading group for 10/10 banter.

>>10502131
My vote is for pic related. I'd like to take a day off, too.

How does this make you feel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2IwfWGs-Y

Check this out
https://youtu.be/TKkkQoIyAEE

>>10502138
yeah

>>10502138
Me too.
Also, is that not a woman?

>>10499928
>Voice: The Kid got busted. And you know me, Slothrop. Remember? I’m Never.

You dont think hes talking about a specific The Kid? And this person is saying there name (or title, or they are called) is Never?


>Slothrop (peering): You, Never?
(youre name is never?)

>(A pause.) Did the Kenosha Kid?
I could be wrong but I thought the first 'did' ('did' the) was italicized,

so the first happenstance may in play, did (italic, upslurred voice, question) the kenosha kid get busted?

You, Never, are telling me The Kid, The Kenosha Kid, got busted?

And then yea, playing with all the grammatical ambiguities of the terms.

>>10502364
Interesting, but this was all done under his sedation (Amytal) and it was probably just to show his absurd permutations

But still a thought. Perhaps a veteran reader can answer if there is any reference to them if they are even used again.

>>10490096
this is stupid. gr's plot is straight forward. also fucking moronic that you pride yourself in ignoring a central aspect of fiction - why do you think they bother with plots? The pynchon wiki is sorely lacking. pynchon's critique is interesting, but hardly scathing and absolutely not human or real. That's kind of the point - characters aren't "real." Pynchon can do anything but make us feel.

I have no love for infinite jest, but if you want to dick-ride, at least know whats good about your faggy boyfriend.

>>10502430
>being this serious about a meme
Golly day. Are you >>10500799 ?

Relax and have a laugh

>>10502430
>Pynchon can do anything but make us feel.

I kind of agree with the rest of your post but as for this point, well, speak for yourself, I guess.

>>10501856
What is meant by this: for analogy example: the leg/knee evolved to be able to bend certain ways: so lets say the knee as vertically locked as possible is 0: the knee can theoretically be bent past 0 (though its not designed to...and this is called injury and damage)?

Or also like, trying for better example: If someone has some problem, and some method is used to treat the problem (pills, or mantras, or something) and the problem disappears but the solution causes new problems? The problem disappearing was the problem reaching 0, but the new problems exist beyond the 0 (which was defined as 'solution to the previous problems...previous problems are solved...the aim was 0 previous problems: but on that path and course to 0, and 0 was reached...beyond 0 is the maybe unforseen results and conditions of the method of solving/reaching 0?

>>10502666
It's just talking about continuing deconditioning past the point where the conditioned response stops happening (the zero). Because if you don't do this there's a chance the reflex may come back. Jamf either forgot to do this or purposely chose not to. Or at least that's how I understood it.

>>10502203
Gravitys rainbow is one of the best novels ever written, the world would not blink if Dan Schnieder never had learned to read

>>10502380
yeah, it could be just his mind wandering: subconscious remembering actual past experiences, merely showing how this character has been involved in some weird things (and theres not much more tangible lines connected to the content of the speaking there).

And at this point Slothrop is letting them do the Amytal, because they are trying to fix his condition?

>>10502430
>gr's plot is straight forward
Fuck off.

>>10502719
They're just trying to learn about racial tensions in America (by asking him about "the negros," this has to do with the film they made showing the Schwarzkommando or whatever for psyops on the Germans) and generally examining him for psychological abnormalities. Sodium amytal is "truth serum."

>>10502203
Makes me think he is a hack.

>>10502203
Literally who?

>>10502683
I concur

>>10502203
>15 minute video
>Spends like a minute total actually critiquing Gravity's rainbow
>Spends like 4 minutes praising Slaughterhouse Five
>Spends one minute lampooning DFW and Infinite Jest
>Spends the remaining nine minutes explaining how to game the best-seller's list
Even if I disliked Gravity's Rainbow I'd think this video was crap.

This is my second time reading this, yet I still cannot understand the purpose of the whole thing. I refuse to believe it is all just satirical, hedonistic absurdity. I wish that I wasn't such a fucking brainlet.

>>10502973
The cyclic structure implies nature's regeneration through death. Pynchon sees the bureaucracy that envelopes humanity as death; people turned into machines, assets of war, victimized into victimizing others, maintaining distance as a way to stem human feeling. This illusion of distant safety now shattered by the advent of the rocket, able to traverse large distances to its target.
The war, the eternal struggle in occult terms, threatens to use this weapon for ultimate destruction. The Schwarzkommando, this primal, almost primordial force acting in community for a purpose, like a colony, aim to "de-bureaucrasize" the rocket.
Slothrop denigrates, his trip on The Anubis (Egyptian god of death, and embalming) was when he was really himself.

It's more of a plea from a man who read these schematics and wrote field manuals for these weapons of mass destruction.

>>10503024
>denigrates
whoops
disintegrates*
which is a satire of the Christ figure in literature. He becomes corrupt.

>>10503024
What an insightful explanation. Thank you for an excellent post.

Congratulations to everyone who has kept up and made it this far, that's a real accomplishment.

That being said: If you are a unilingual and skimmed through any of the French, German, Dutch parts without reading every word, then you really won't have read all of Gravity's Rainbow when you're done.

Time to start over, and maybe this time show some commitment.

>>10503133
Feeling quite guilty now. I am trying my hardest not to skim, but this book is hard.

>>10502754
It's completely linear, mostly chronological. I guess you all are afraid of spoilers (despite not caring about the plot?) but seriously, it's about as complicated as Babbitt plus a little window dressing at the beginning and end.

>>10500799
get an audio book or read it in advance. Then you can act like a smartass who is ahead of everyone

>>10503024
Dope post

>>10503560
Yes if you think facile summaries of broad themes are dope. Anon is obviously right (though the structure isn't really cyclical so much as parabolic - Slothrop's own trajectory mirroring the rockets), but his "analysis" amounts to little more than saying "the scarlet letter is a symbol." Of course Pynchon thinks bureacracy is bad, but if you want to read the whole book as systems-allegory, you have to ask more pointed questions about the nature and origins of "bureaucracy" - especially the colonial/Herero sections.

But strange that a board that universally cries "the prose! the prose! >tfw reads for plot >tfw thinks literature should have a social function" cares at all about the allegorical meanings of Gravity's Rainbow.

>>10503605
I dislike all this complaining about 'board only likes this', 'board only ever talks about that'
Just talk about what you wanna talk about. The board isn't some pynchonite They.

>>10503621
kind of missing the point about "theys" come about, eh? paranoia isn't psychosis it's a necessary world-view.

>>10502825
>>10502683
while I agree with that completely: I also believe it implies 'new things popping up': because:

Before the conditioning it is equal to 0. Then the conditioning occurs, +1, +3, +5, +6, +100 (whatever, qualities)...

Then to decondition, need to remove all those qualities toward 0.

The fear being, if one just reaches 0, to the default neutral pre-state: then one cant be so sure they absolutely reached that 0? And thus some +1s or +5s or more may show back up over time.

So... going beyond 0. -1, -3, -6.... or on another axis... new types of (added qualities) +4. +7.... whatever

Regardless I believe it implies a difference to the original neutral default 0 prior to conditioning.

Like if you have a child that after a life of not being so obsessed with cookies (0) becomes obsessed with cookies (greater than 0 data/qualties related to something), and you hide the cookie jar, and they keep finding it and happily eating much, but then you start beating them and yelling at them, so that eventually they actually are afraid to seek cookies and no longer eat cookies, but now it turns out they have some complex and are easily frightened, and whenever they see a cookie they have nervous breakdowns, and whenever someone yells they cower on the floor and cry...both of which they did not do at their original '0' state. Attempting to eliminate a desired to be eliminated quality towards equaling 0, resulted in not equaling 0, but going past 0, into new territory, (maybe metaphorically coincidentally, negative territory)

>>10503133
to prove that you are not unilingual and know all the french and german and dutch, type all those parts out in english on these threads with the page number they appear next to them or else we are forced to assume you are a psued, and you wouldnt want that would you

>>10503605
>Of course Pynchon thinks bureacracy is bad, but if you want to read the whole book as systems-allegory, you have to ask more pointed questions about the nature and origins of "bureaucracy" - especially the colonial/Herero sections.
>spends 4/5ths of the post ad homineming. >spends almost 1/5th hinting at knowing more and being intelligent, touching upon some interesting aspect of the book, while ad homineming an anon who did not give a full and deep enough elucidation of the text
>gives absolutely no elucidation proving they actually know anything deeper than the anon they criticized
I personally believe you may be very very smart, and understand some deep aspects of the text everyone is missing, including one you hint at: can you offer the tiniest bit of elucidation?

>>10502226
just got 3 mins in, but the slothrop 'rockets follow his sexual conquests', could be at least partly metaphor for the motives of war being sexual, or that offensively attacking is like fucking, so slothrop being a symbol for military/war, and that soliders are trained, conditioned (as slothrop literally) to be almost sexually attracted and sexually aroused by violence and war (consider general mans general obsession with violent video games and movies)

>>10502131
This is a book that begs time for digestion, as it is full of so many tough red, yellow, brown, black, green, blue pills to swallow

>>10502131
This is a book that begs time for digestion, as it is full of so many tough red, yellow, brown, black, green, violet, blue pills to swallow

>>10502226
There's some interesting parallels but I find it difficult to believe he could have inserted all that in the span of a year. He'd been writing GR since leaving Cornell (while also writing V. and maybe even the start of Mason & Dixon). Anti-Oedipus was published in 72, not translated in English till 77. So I have to believe that Pynchon reads french at an advanced level (possible) and rewrote GR within the span of a year, probably less if you consider the time of finished manuscript -> publication and sold in stores.

>>10503977
A-And I think Episode 4 of GR kind of goes against all the revolutionary optimism of AO but I could be wrong because Episode 4 is pretty chaotic and I could be misreading.

A-And there's the reference in Vineland to the "Deleuze & Guattari Italian Wedding Fakebook" which one of the characters (can't remember if it was Zoyd or the Jap) uses to blend into some band while avoiding the cops. I'm not sure if this is means to say that the possibilities that D&G are tacky and memey or if that was a legit rhizomatic line of flight, however goofy, that offers real potential for resistance. Gonna have to reread Vineland now...

>>10503846
Cop to all of it. Not very interested in talking about Gravity's Rainbow. Trying harder to get /lit/ to reconsider its fanatical devotion to Pynchon. I sincerely wish there were reading groups for Thackeray or Austin or Twain or any of the other great works that /lit/ doesn't give a shit about because they lack cultural cache.

But here's some food for thought: Slothrop correctly infers that he's being watched, but misidentifies who is doing it and why. One level up, Pointsman is also chasing a MacGuffin (I didn't know there were English girls named Darlene?). The "real" sinister organization that Slothrop apparently doesn't quite see might not even exist. The whole Hitchcockian premise of the book just is basically just a re-raised Vertigo - what if, instead of exploiting a known fear of heights, the "final cause" of the war was to instill that fear fear of heights precisely so that it might later be exploited? Meanwhile, /lit/ fixates on this stupid Kenosha Kid joke and ignores what Pynchon is saying about race and it's relation to the whole technological project. Not for nothing is the black man in Slothrop's drug fantasy Malcolm X. How much more to say while the group is still in part one?

Pynchon isn't just critiquing systems, he's worried about what happens when people think about systems poorly. Maybe there's a good answer to all that I'm saying in Deleuze railing against canons - certainly Gravity's Rainbow approaches rhizomatic fiction - but clear thinking requires a deep and varied toolbox, one that I'm smart enough to know that I don't really possess.

One final note: Franzen is absolutely right on the type of social criticism Pynchon makes:
>there never has been and never will be a reader who is unpersuaded of this "news" on page 10 but persuaded on page 726

>>10504020
Sorry for the mess... not on a computer.

Gravity's Rainbow is a fun book and I hope you all enjoy it. I also hope you not only finish, but re-read it, because it's much better the second time through. But please stop thinking it's fantastic literature just because you find it "hard." Pynchon is smarter than I am, but that doesn't mean he makes great art.

>>10504020
Not the poster you're replying to but,

>Not very interested in talking about Gravity's Rainbow. Trying harder to get /lit/ to reconsider its fanatical devotion to Pynchon. I sincerely wish there were reading groups for Thackeray or Austin or Twain or any of the other great works that /lit/ doesn't give a shit about because they lack cultural cache.

isn't very helpful in a reading group for Gravity's Rainbow. You then go on to actually make a really interesting post, the sort of post that makes /lit/ and this group actually interesting and worth reading. Why not chip in with this sort of stuff without the snarky critique? And if you want a reading group for other authors you are free to start them.

>I also hope you not only finish, but re-read it, because it's much better the second time through. But please stop thinking it's fantastic literature just because you find it "hard."

This is a nice sentiment and appreciated. I'm not really sure who you're talking about when you say people are equating difficulty with quality, maybe a couple of posts? Most people seem to be really enjoying reading it, posting in and reading this thread, surely that's enough. It's certainly more interesting than another shitposting meme thread.

>Pynchon is smarter than I am, but that doesn't mean he makes great art.

Don't want to get into a silly debate about what qualifies as "great art" but I would suggest that's it's rather subjective.

Anyway, I hope this post doesn't just derail further discussion on the book. There's been some interesting discussion already and I'm enjoying it. Keep at it boys!

>>10504138
That's also a mess of a post actually. Too much "interesting" and "discussion. I blame the hangover. Hopefully you get the gist.

>>10504020
Interesting point about Vertigo. A shame you think anyone should give a shit about Thackeray or the Austen you can't spell properly.

Anyway, what does Franzen mean by this?
> there never has been and never will be a reader who is unpersuaded of this "news" on page 10 but persuaded on page 726

That Pynchon is only preaching to the converted and you have to already agree with his (paranoid) world-view to like it? I'm tempted to agree. That said, you have to be an old lady to like Vanity Fair. Novels are for Russians, Americans and the French. The British need to stay out.

>>10504020
>Twain
>not a slobbering retard
kek

>>10504325
I am an old woman. My name is Flannery O’Connor and yes, I don’t know how to spell.

>>10504020
the whole purpose of the book is twofold. one,
to show the positive light in paranoia as a solipsism-buster. if i am paranoid, it is of the "other". it is paranoia that brings us together.
and two, to display the scene in which Pirate and Katje smooch in spy purgatory. the love found amongst the chaos as foretold earlier in the book between the music critics.

>>10504390
i should make that threefold, the third being to display a cartoonish tom and jerry-esque/future beverly hillbillies comedic jaunt through the most serious aspects of war and the secret society that it built to hold itself up, and how that society still lives, even beyond wars.

>>10504390
Say some more about the first point
Isn't there a step missing between
>if i am paranoid, it is of the "other".
And
>it is paranoia that brings us together.

>>10504423
I think that the comedic aspect of it is directly linked to Slothrop losing his mind. there's a section toward the en,d with Frau Gnab(?), where Slothrop is fantasizing about a huge singing chorus and other such stuff, when he casually asks where they are headed and they reply Peenemunde - a spot of huge significance to the war. He reacts in a really inappropriate manner, and they all look at him strangely. If I had the section in front of me I could do a better reading of it, sorry this is shitty.

Fuck it, I'm tuning in. Gonna play catch up and do some free association until all these notes and all these words get me lost in the battle.

---

Preterition, preterite - (p. 15)
A passing over. Preterition is the Fluke Cosmic, the doctrine that the God in John Calvin's breast (cf. the lamprey-piranha in Alien) decreed that You and You are heavebound no questions asked but We're going to have to think about the rest of you don't get your hopes up.

If I could ask Pynchon 2 questions they would be: Is there anything, if you could go back in time knowing what you now know, you would add or subtract (change) of Gravity's Rainbow (Answer: yeah, I would remove the shit scenes so I could win that pulitzer)? This is a very ugly and distasteful question, and if I created anything great it would give me anxiety to propel back into that challenged state of good and hard times of creation and weighing and judging each sentence and word.

And secondly: I cant say here

So, secondly: Have you read Infinite Jest and/or Pale King and what did you think of them? (imagine DFW killed himself because he found out Pynchon didn't read his work)

>>10504760
Pynchon probably thinks dfw is juvenile and prefers more grownup writing like some 500 page book about the history of certain rare parts of a particular battleships engine

>>10504625
you cannot be paranoid if you're alone. pretty simple, but most universal revelations are.

>>10504957
and i mean conceptually. say you're a solipsist. your philosophy is contingent on you being alone, and everything not of yourself being a fabrication of your mind. essentially, paranoia requires you to believe you are not alone, that there is something that is not yourself working against you. it is contradictory to solipsism in such a way as to bust the philosophy altogether in a practical sense. obviously one could argue that paranoia is a byproduct of blah blah blah, but if you are a true solipsist, paranoia should not have any effect on you. it brings us together in the sense that it breaks apart the idea that we are alone in this world. the "other". it is the only positive view of paranoia that i have ever witnessed.

>>10504631
i don't recall what section that is, but i find it hard to consider slothrop even a real entity, more of a cartoonish mask for the reader to interact with the narrative. less so a character of specific aspects to be judged. he eventually atomizes as a personality and whatever suppositions about him you have are blurred to such an extent that you realize that there wasn't anything guiding you to see those aspects to begin with. he's a no-face.

How far into the book are u guys in?

>>10504325
Yes, that's Franzen's point. Gravity's Rainbow might do a good job criticizing technology, but it can't and won't convince those not already tuned into that criticism. Notice again how no one pays much attention to race, though he's very explicit that the technological project that brought us the Rocket always has Africa in mind - and that it's on precisely such issues that Slothrop and the other Americans, esp. Marvy, correspond to the Germans. They're all afraid of shit.

>>10504390
Except it's paranoia that drives Mexico and Jessica apart, paranoia that starts Slothrop on his rambling through the zone and that ultimately causes his consciousness to explode, paranoia that makes Slothrop's relations with Katje impossible, and paranoia that tears Pokler from Leni and - more horrifyingly - his daughter. Other examples abound. Of these, most important is paranoia setting Slothrop off. If the novel's parabolic structure reflects a rocket's trajectory (starting with Pirate/Mexico in order, ending with Pirate/Mexico in disorder - kaboom), the Slothrop is the rocket and the zone is the rocket "leading a life of it's own" and it's a paranoid project that launches him. In that reading, paranoia is the same double-figure that the rocket is - good and bad paranoia are inseparable.

Pynchon is definitely not advocating for Alex Jones style conspiracy theories. Like I said - the danger of thinking poorly about big systems.

>>10504975
You're thinking of the scene where Slothrop temporarily achieves "anti-paranoia" which he finds hard to sustain. I don't think the book is really making prescriptive statements about one world view or another, but saying that paranoia is the defining feature of modern epistemology. Globalization, technology, etc. order things into connections which are palpable, but difficult to grasp and easy to misunderstand.

God what a stupid book. Seriously, can't we all read Bleak House instead?

>>10504020
>I sincerely wish there were reading groups for Thackeray or Austin or Twain or any of the other great works that /lit/ doesn't give a shit about because they lack cultural cache.
Consider that Pynchon does need some instruction to get through, it's a heavy tome that is ripe for annotation (which a reading group provides, especially on behalf of those already acquainted with the story). Personally, I read silently and rarely intrude, as I don't have anything to contribute to the discussion. My brainlet mind is scarcely digesting the bare-bones story, let alone all these surreptitious allusions sprinkled across. But reading through Thackeray, or Austin, or Twain would be almost superfluous, as they don't mandate collective understanding, an individual would suffice.

That said, it would be nice if we read through authors that are buried under the post-modern mire (Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest), though this book I find to be entertaining once a steady groove has been achieve. The world-building is incredible, and the prose really illustrates the essence of bedlam and turmoil.

>>10505095
You might be better able to follow the basics of the plot, but there's plenty to discuss in Dickens, Austen, Lewis, whoever, and if you aren't struggling just to keep up with the story, you might be in a better position to observe the techniques and tricks that these authors are employing. It's on those authors that you cut your literary teeth. Example: /lit/ posters are especially prone to missing the irony in Joyce - confusing Stephen for Joyce and mistaking the treatise he spits out at the end of Portrait for Joyce's actual thinking on art - and that's precisely because they aren't atune to literary history. They read these big "status novels" (to borrow from Franzen again) only to confirm what they already think - that Pynchon is a genius and plebs don't get him. inb4 /lit/ isn't a monolith: obviously, but communities draw certain kinds of people. Why go to /lit/ if you don't want smugger-than-thou snark and disdain for "plebs" ?

I'll leave it alone here since I know this sort of meta-discussion isn't the point of the thread. But I encourage everyone to get off their high-horse and try some Dickens or Thurber or Twain or something. Not because of some chart that makes you think you will "understand Mason & Dixon," but because famous books are pretty much all famous for a reason, and it will make books like Gravity's Rainbow or Ulysses more pleasant and less self-important.

>>10504999
it's not about relationships, it is about philosophy. two people breaking apart because of paranoia has nothing to do with a solipsistic contradiction that allows one to break through the existential loneliness of solipsism itself. and i'm not implying that conspiracy theories are the suggested ideal, but rather that they are exaggerated to make sure the point gets across. it's easy to assume that his purpose was to warn people about misunderstanding systems, but i would venture to say you are no less susceptible in your hubristic analysis.
>>10505027
you don't think that moment is the culmination of the book alongside pirate and katje? no wonder you want to read dickens. and yes it is absolutely prescriptive, in the end pynchon is an innocent, a child that hopes his book will save the world. far more innocent than his predecessors, who refuse to be as optimistic.

>>10505158
also, do you ever wonder if people might just LIKE pynchon? not wear him as a badge, but just enjoy the work and entertainment he provides? perhaps i don't want to go back and read a tale of two cities and laugh at the funeral procession farce that no one else giggles at? maybe i don't want to listen to austen yammer on about marriage? maybe i want to read something charged, goofy, morbid, foolish, and over my head? how bout fuck you, man.

>>10505218
I think you're reading his post on a pretty superficial level. He's not saying "everyone who likes Pynchon is an idiot, ignorant of literary history and really literature as a whole"; rather he's putting forth the notion that people (especially /lit/izens) only shoot for a perfunctory sort of knowledge and so read these giant famously difficult novels completely out of their contemporaneous context.

I think he has a point: if one truly understands and is familiar with the conventions that such High Modernists fuck around with, one would probably get more out of these massive esoteric tomes.

Gravity's Rainbow was an alright read the first time I read it as a college freshman. I returned some years later after reading many many literary and poetic and nonfiction-philosophical works in the interstice between and got so much more out of my second reading. Obviously I enjoyed it my first time round, but it actively became a blast my second-time.

>>10504999
>Pynchon is definitely not advocating for Alex Jones style conspiracy theories. Like I said - the danger of thinking poorly about big systems.

So the immortal light bulb thing is just a meme, eh? Bad thinking about big systems, eh?

Stick to Franzen and Thackeray.

>>10505248
eh, i just dislike how haughty the guy is. sure, having a greater breadth of literary history and knowledge will increase the contextual and overarching appreciation for a giant blob like gravity's rainbow, but being mezmerized by it before one can accurately pick it apart is an experience that some wish to have despite the later desire for thorough analysis. it's not as though reading this work and not understanding it will harm anyone, nor can they never return to squeeze the sponge again. reading a book out of my depth is often the only way i can break boredom, being surprised once in a damn while, being astounded, even by what amounts to typical dull parlour tricks to the trained eye. i don't want to be atop the mountain looking down and rehashing everything all over again. i want to capture the light of literature and fan its flames.

>>10505201
Slothrop becomes a solipsist because he's paranoid, not the other way around. Pokler is also guilty of the most disturbing sort of solipsism because he is paranoid. Prentice is probably the least paranoid of any of the characters -he doesn't imagine the rocket targeted at him (though turns out it is), just that it might, by accident, hit him. His connection with others via dreams also doesn't seem like it brings him out of himself. Pynchon's characters are two-dimensional cut-outs for a reason - that's a central conceit of the book. Also, as pointed out by another poster earlier, the paranoia of the post-rocket age is specifically set against the sort of religious paranoia of Enlightenment Europe - belief that everything is connected under God particularly as expressed in Calvinism - the same paranoid Calvanism that cause Katje's ancestors to exterminate the Dodos, and the same paranoid Calvanism that in its secularized form undergirds the whole pursuit of the rocket to begin with. Again, they're all afraid of their shit. The idea that Pynchon is advocating for paranoia as a new stance against oppressive systems is preposterous.

If I remember right, the brief digression about anti-paranoia occurs right as Slothrop begins his literary descent into the explosion of delusions in the last part of the book. It might be a sort of structural apex of the book, but the idea that it's the culmination of a grand philosophical statement doesn't make much sense, particularly given how brief it is.

>>10505218
Ever considered that maybe I like Pynchon too? That you cite Tale of Two Cities is pretty telling. How about, cast a wider net, man.

>>10505283
I never got the immortal lightbulb part
Can I have a quick rundown, some gestalt?

>>10505302
it being brief does not qualify it being a culmination. slothrop doesn't become a solipsist, he vanishes, for chrissakes, he stops even being recognizable as a character as the book progresses!
paranoia is the key to busting solipsism. you can choose to disagree all you like. Pynchon 's ability to turn paranoia on its head after showing all its atrocities, and breathe through it in a positive perspective really puts a punctuation mark on the entire work, the rest is just an explosion, just crapping the rest out for safety sake.
that i cite a tale of two cities and you use it to attack my perspective is telling in how much of a haughty prick you are. wyntcha go fuck off to some other thread and let people enjoy some pynchon instead of whining that they're not reading dickens like you want them to?

>>10505337
*disqualify it from being

>>10505331
Everything described Byron the Bulb section is based on fact, just look it up. Planned obsolescence is real, and there's no way Pynchon is writing this to say it's a delusion or poor thinking about big systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light

Harold Bloom said this section in GR (it's in EP 3 iirc) is the best thing he ever wrote (albeit he said this before M&D) and a crystallization of his entire world-view. Bloom also puts a big emphasis on Pynchon referencing Byron and Don Juan and argues it couldn't have been any other way.

>>10505337
You're probably right that he sees paranoia as a gateway to transcendence, but it's a transcendence from itself. Mexico is the only character who lives in the statistical in-between that deflates paranoid insistence on connection under laws. It's also just when Mexico (with Prentice/Katje) take up the anti-Pointsman "we" that he fails precisely because he adopts a paranoiac worldview - one defined subject related through knowable laws to another. Slothrop becomes a solipsist while he's paranoid - but only escapes the firm by allowing his consciousness to disintegrate. It's relates again to the parabolic structure of the book. Slothrop launches up from paranoia, goes beyond, and comes back down into anti-paranoia. I don't think it's much about escaping solipsism - that seems like some DFW type shit and you haven't really provided many examples - but saying it's a "punctuation mark on the entire work" is a good way to put it.

I've tried the entire time to continue the discussion about GR. Just trying to encourage people to try other things as well.

>>10505356
Yeah, he definitely believes in that hippy shit. He even exhorts the reader to sabotage logging operations. That the book *has* a warning about bad thinking about big systems doesn't mean the whole book is *just* a warning.

>>10505380
well, the culmination besides is the anti-paranoia state, and that without paranoia, you atomize, you become diffuse. really, you could measure the states of each character in their varying levels of paranoia and quantify it as an experiment on its effects on a person, how they would react in the chaos soup. i find the spy purgatory also really adds to all of this, though. them finding themselves locked in a world where they are no longer trusted by their own employers, and are thus stuck in a limbo, insulated from paranoia in such a way as to leave enough time for love. though without the paranoia to place them into such limbo, no love could have been found as that bubble wouldn't have existed.
i don't think of paranoia as a salve, but i do think it is forced into a positive mold by necessity, to show the grubs beneath the rocks, so to speak. i just think of it as a culmination as it puts paranoia into relief, it's such a short tiny little fraction of the work, but carries such weight that there would be such an imbalance in the book otherwise.

>>10505405
honestly, thinking on it, i may have to place katje and prentice's moment as the culmination. it's probably more correct that i am shifting too much weight onto the punctuation and not the climax. anyway, i notice something in a few older films, fifties films specifically, in which the entire film has just one scene, one frame that every other piece builds towards and away from, and katje with prentice is that exact scene. it echoed through me when i read it, and i was compelled to search out the conversation about the two different composers, the specifics elude me, but the gist was that one preferred one composer as in his work, amidst chaos, love finds its way. then it all clanged together, all too clear.

to be frank, i still have to read the book a few more times to solidify my feelings on it, i'm fresh off the book a few months ago, and i could very well be just looking too specifically at details, but there was a vast amount of significance to me personally in certain moments, particularly the tarot reading, which was strange as i had just before purchased a deck and had begun readings for myself and loved ones, not a week before beginning the book. the tarot scene was a lodestone for synchronicity between pynch and i, it was just too explicit and perfect, really, fascinating. I can tell you enjoyed pynchon's work as well, and agree that people should widen their nets as you said yourself, but i think people need to find those paths themselves. it just comes off as very prickish in some way. perhaps i'm just moody that the Chiefs lost last night and need to blow off some steam. this has been a nice discussion though.

>>10505427
Yeah, Rossini v. Beethoven that happens when Slothrop is sort of in chill pothead mode. That's a good insight - Rossini as positive and Beethoven as negative aspects to the same paranoid phenomena and maybe even related to the relative weights that you talked about (many atrocities vs. one successful love affair >"after showing all its atrocities, and breathe through it in a positive perspective ") - i.e. Beethoven is the more famous, visible, loud composer, but from the same movement we also got the lesser-known Rossini. I think we're mostly in agreement. If Pynchon thinks there's a way to resist the big paranoid systems that oppress us, it's through small acts of micro-resistance like Katje and Prentice. But I think that's sort of a different world-view than that taken by the paranoid.

In any case, my main beef with Pynchon (and with Franzen) is that I think that's a silly conclusion. I don't really know what to do about big evil systems, but Pynchon's hippy micro-resistance and Franzen's neo-liberal live-and-let-live both seem silly. I'm also not sure literature is a good place to have those sorts of discussions (>there never has been and never will be a reader who is unpersuaded of this "news" on page 10 but persuaded on page 726). But aesthetically, you're spot on that it balances the whole work out. Sort of like Part Eight in Anna Karenina - feels a little tacked-on, but to end after Anna's death would be too much.

>>10505457
Oh yeah, definitely prickish. But prickishness is the language of the board.

>>10505500
aye, but in that same vein i will say that crime and punishment should have ended RIGHT on the "true" confession near the end. the whole penal chapter, talk about tacked on, jesus. No i think we have found a way to communicate with each other to be sure. Speaking of, I need to listen to Rossini i think. Perhaps the solipsistic aspect of my interpretation more reflects my own attempts to resist solipsism than Pynchon's, but I do feel that at the very least exposing the vast number of shades that compose paranoia was a main project of the book. i don't know if i necessarily agree with it as a solution without fault, but it makes more sense than what the typical child is greeted with by parents as their philosophy develops. it's a foundation, paranoia plays a central part, perhaps in as you say, transcendence.

>>10505510
touche. ah i feel better. i was looking for this conversation right after i finished the book, but i couldn't find it here then.

>>10504020
>I sincerely wish there were reading groups for Thackeray or Austin or Twain or any of the other great works
Whos stopping you from making them?

>>10505583
Yeah man, probably the best discussion I've had on /lit/. Maybe I do need to reconsider Pynchon. I obviously had a lot of fun with GR, so maybe who gives a shit about his politics...?

>>10505621
Lack of interest. The threads I've started on Dickens have gotten few responses limited mostly to
>dickens writes children's books
>tfw this pleb doesn't want to read ulysses

I've had a few good discussions about Infinite Jest, but /lit/ really seems pretty disinterested in anything else. All of a sudden it's all Gaddis, so I'll have to read him.

>>10505746
I don't think Dickens is a bad author, though I did get my fill of him in David Copperfield. It was like a gauntlet of my patience. it grew dull waiting for umble ol' Uriah Fuckin Heep to get his comeuppance. I have a copy of Bleak House and Little Dorrit on the wall, but I have little desire to delve into them for the sake of reading the more interesting and dare i say it, pizzazzy works i've discovered.
I respect him, but find it hard to trudge through after one of his books begins to spread like far too little butter across far too much toast.
In regards to Gaddis, I think you will find him far more palatable than Pynchon. I don't get the urban filthy flavor from him like I do with Pynch. He's pretty much what I would consider a perfect modernisation of what made older literature classic. It's refined nearly to a fualt, powerful, referential, secretive, complex, and simultaneously warm and welcoming. His style is perfect, and the climax of The Recognitions is the greatest I've seen since the end of the first act of Faust. I highly recommend him as someone who has had his misgivings with Pynchon. Mainly I had a dislike for Pynch upon reading V. but pushed myself to read GR, and found it to alleviate all of my concerns with his earlier work, the gem seemed to be hewn with a careful hand. I am rocking in my seat for Mason & Dixon, so I'm reading a strange Mexican pomo book to give me a breather before I dive in again.
I have been wanting to read a hawthorne for a while, so I picked up the seven gables, which was interesting, considering the name pyncheon is in it. I agree that there is a wealth in the classics, and dearly love most I have read. Sometimes you just need a touch of zazz though.

>>10503605
I'm literally drawing from Steven Weisenburger's essay in my Cambridge Companion to Pynchon.

This book is like Gaddis' works; they're hard to pinpoint a specific meaning.

I'd like to know how you interpret the Kabbalistic motifs throughout.

I don't really know what you're trying to prove. Seems you're inserting some completely different readings into this one.
You're just saying the most obvious characteristics of Pomo literature, the red-herrings, the false starts, how things affect you when you never even see them (Barn in White Noise)...

Pynchon was more into Emerson than Deleuze.

How are you getting a reading of Deleuze?

>>10503605
>facile summaries of broad themes are dope

Seems you've become afflicted with narcissism, friendo!
Pynchon, throughout all his books, seems to show he aligns himself with Gnostic teachings, which of course, considering how into Rilke he is; these culminate in a big way in Against The Day.

The whole purpose of the book is to guide the reader into states of mind they wouldn't consider otherwise, to fan the possibilities of the imagination, i.e to manipulate your own experience.

The road is always "facile summaries of broad themes."

You barely went into any depth at all.
All you did was name drop.

Why are you so mad?

>>10504020
>ignores what Pynchon is saying about race and it's relation to the whole technological project
What is Pynchon saying about race and its relation to the whole technological project? The one of each thing? (the other races are only good in a noahs ark type way?)

Here's the schedule for Parts One and Two, with one day in between to rest and maybe have a discussion.

The episodes were a lot tricker to work with for Part Two. This is the only grouping I could get that keeps everything closer to 20 pages/day, even though the last day is only 9 pages. This, along with the day off on the 9th, lightens the reading load and gives people a chance to catch up.

The other option was to read 2 episodes per day, but that means a couple days of reading 30+ pages, which I don't really care for. Any changes/suggestions are welcome, as always.

>>10504020
>One final note: Franzen is absolutely right on the type of social criticism Pynchon makes:
>>there never has been and never will be a reader who is unpersuaded of this "news" on page 10 but persuaded on page 726
what did he mean by this?

>>10505907
He's not saying anything other than what Melville already said. "The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth."

-- literally, again, taken from Weisenburger

The guy is inserting some shallow Nick Land readings, and /pol/-alignments into his reading of Pynchon. It's really bad.

>>10505910
Looks good.

>>10504038
>but that doesn't mean he makes great art.
What makes great art, and why is his work not it?
Where is your evidence that people think its fantastic literature Because they find it hard? You are assuming that multiple or many people reading along are not getting the themes and deeper messages and stuff, but not feeling the need to write about it here (while also struggling to make the quota read each day) but thinking it fun to talk about the funny memes

>>10505936
Stop replying to this guy.
He's sperging out for no reason. He hasn't added anything noteworthy to the discussion.

Always watch out for young men who think /lit/ is one person, meanwhile just throwing shit and "facile" opinions.

might join in with you lot although i left it at around 400 pages and i will not good to add to the conversation

>>10505027
>God what a stupid book. Seriously, can't we all read Bleak House instead?
is that how you shove your paranoia back in its dark corner?

>>10505910
thank you for doing this

This was a cool thread, until that asshole who was angry over his little sports game came in and starting pulling shit out of his ass, throwing words together hoping they'd stick, literally misinterpreting Pychon's politics in the most pseud way I've ever seen done.

I guess the levee's couldn't hold for long.

>>10505923
i notice a big fish by the smell. you mentioned the kabbalistic influences, and i think the tarot's high arcana is based specifically on the sephiroth if i'm not mistaken (?)
i was just wondering from a member of the peanut gallery, what did you think of Slothrop's complete atomization during the reading? was that just simply pynchon breaking through the fourth wall? it really struck me harder than the rest of the book, and i would be curious to hear what reaction you had to it, especially with the research you've done.

>>10506072
I'm hoping this behavior fades. These threads are great beneath the faulty argumentation had recently. A new thread is soon and hopefully we've learned to ignore such posts.

Focus on discussion, not other people please.

>>10506072
well, i'm sorry for ruining your thread, man.

>>10506076
Not much to do with Kabbalism. Tarot is more rooted in the teachings of Hermes.

In fact, a lot of Talmudic magick is just extensions of Hermes' teachings.
Slothrop's disintegration is a play on Christ's transfiguration, also could be a quantum tunnel. Who knows? Again, he was taken over by primordial forces aboard The Anubis.

We're going to a fall, and old gods will come back in a big way

>>10506076
You're literally just googling things as you go.

Can you stop with the patronizing tone? You're not nearly as smart or well-read as you think you are.

>>10506105
remember sailors pictures on submarine. jail!

>>10506100
You will also notice when he's aboard the Anubis, and he forfeits his soul with the sex he's committing, he sees himself inside his penis, sees himself as it... this again ties to the phallic symbolism throughout the book, he's committed himself to ancient powers, committing transgressions against the Demiurge, which throws his perceived Christ symbol upside down. The rocket is an obelisk essentially in this regard.

>>10505405
Have you ever experienced paranoia? What types? Why?

>>10506100
really? so wait, where does the whole 22 high arcana and 22 paths connection rest? would that be Hermes related? is the sephiroth more related to Hermes or kabbalah?

>Dromond
The word is defined by Webster’s New World English Dictionary as a "large, medieval, swift-sailing water ship."

>the mummy’s curse
An allusion to the supposed fate of the Carter-Carnarvon expedition that opened the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen.

Carnarvon financed Carter's work in the Valley of the Kings to 1914, but excavations and study were interrupted until 1917 by the First World War. Carter enthusiastically resumed his work following the end of the First World War.

After several years of finding little, Lord Carnarvon became dissatisfied with the lack of results, and informed Carter in 1922 that he had one more season of funding to search the Valley of the Kings and find the tomb.[8]

On 4 November 1922, Carter's excavation group found steps that Carter hoped led to Tutankhamun's tomb (subsequently designated KV62), and he wired Lord Carnarvon to come to Egypt. On 26 November 1922, Carter made a "tiny breach in the top left hand corner" of the doorway, with Carnarvon, his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert, and others in attendance—and using a chisel that his grandmother had given him for his 17th birthday. He was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He did not yet know whether it was "a tomb or merely a cache", but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. Carnarvon asked, "Can you see anything?" Carter replied with the famous words: "Yes, wonderful things!"[9]


Carter's house in the Theban Necropolis, in 2009
The next several months were spent cataloguing the contents of the antechamber under the "often stressful" supervision of Pierre Lacau, director general of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt.[10] On 16 February 1923, Carter opened the sealed doorway and found that it did indeed lead to a burial chamber, and he got his first glimpse of the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. All of these discoveries were eagerly covered by the world's press, but most of their representatives were kept in their hotels; only H. V. Morton was allowed on the scene, and his vivid descriptions helped to cement Carter's reputation with the British public.

Carter's own notes and photographic evidence indicate that he, Lord Carnarvon, and Lady Evelyn Herbert entered the burial chamber shortly after the tomb's discovery and before the official opening.[11] The tomb is considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings.

>>10506105
i am not. stop trying to insult me. i'm genuinely curious about these things, and was upon reading GR. I was curious to see what someone who had done more research than i had thought about it. I'm not patronizing shit. i am happy to learn something.

>>10505583
>I need to listen to Rossini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NufaurLuCw
(unfortunately this video gets unsynched very early on into the performance and remains like (minutes off from mouths to sound... but the quality of sound and the visuals are still my favorite I have seen, so I have learned to love to deal with it: around 50 minutes or so or a bit after there is the most divine music and ballet type dance that goes on for like 30 minutes, it truly is a slice of heaven)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeVezYX1m6M

>>10506135
22 is a divine number across many sacred texts.
The Sephiroth is essentially a mapping on man's spiritual journey within, and without. You can overlay sacred geometry over it, it aligns with the 7 chakras. There are 22 paths to illumination, once you do, you read the Ein Sof.

The Ein Sof is another representation of the "primordial nothingness" we came from, the first thought (Thoth) that gave us the divine spark. It can't be named, so it's something eternal we search for... much like the metaphor of Shambhala in Against The Day. Like the metaphor in the book Mount Analogue, you make your own truth, and it'll appear.

>. . .Spectro hurrying away with a syringe for his Fox, when nothing can reakkystop the abreaction of the Lord of the Night unless the Blitz stops, rockets dismantle, the entire film runs backward. . .(142).

What's this of the Lord of the Night? This has been referenced to many times.

>>10506122
well, i've experienced what i would consider paranoia, especially lately, as i have noticed that there have been moments of strange coincidence that happen almost daily to me, concepts i speak of rise directly into commercials, newly released films, media at large, and i mean specific and suspicious things. i have stopped counting, and it frightens me each time. i chalked it up to synchronicity, and probably some sort of narcissism, but it continues to happen, even to the point that my wife makes jokes about it when it happens, since it is so commonplace. my concept of solipsism and paranoia came about from reading GR, and feeling that it was a way for me to escape that potential narcissism, that feeling of being locked in myself, that I am the only one. that paranoia continues to be a sign of the "other", and i think Pynchon expressed it exquisitely.

>>10506159
okay, an overlap makes much more sense then. thank you. it is interesting that the number is recurrent.

>>10505583
>i don't know if i necessarily agree with it as a solution without fault, but it makes more sense than what the typical child is greeted with by parents as their philosophy develops. it's a foundation
The average person doesn't think about or dwell on the epic history of the epic machines of war. The average person going through their daily life does not think about the fact spys exist, and missile silos, and factories producing a million guns a day, and underground labs experimenting on fetuses and super soldiers. And the average person going to the mall, and then the store, picking their kids up from school, does not think about this real war time ways of the world. In the 40s or whenever, yeah, people were huddled under their desks in bomb drills, but the average person on their farm every day, or going to work at the office, may not have been thinking much about, the zone, or....all the stuff pynchon is talking about: which leads me to believe, Pynchon wrote about all the stuff he did, to show the average unaware person how much may be true about the world, in a alarming, strange, interesting, suspicious, mysterious, scary, that they never even thought about. How many are seeking cosmic amounts of indefinable power, while grandma jo is walking to the grocers to pick up a pint of milk.

>>10506152
thank you. really. thank you very much.

>>10506185
it really had the effect of reading a forbidden text at times in my mind, as though there was some alternative history that people experience while i and many others live in a totally insular world. there was some tidbit i got from some forum, probably this one, that there was a competition among media creators to tell the most outrageous seeming truths, that the history books were all false, or fractions of the truth, and that the movies and fictional books told historical truths, but passed off as bullshit, it's like an eternal cockwaving contest, "oh yeah, i told them about E.T."

>>10506122
then there are other styles, weed paranoia, cods following your car while you have lbs of drugs in the trunk paranoia, the constant 'can they hear my thoughts?' paranoia, or the really cool "will my wife know all of the horrible thoughts i have after we get to the afterlife?" paranoia.

>>10506185
you think pynchon
>wrote about all the stuff he did, to show the average unaware person...

seems likely

>>10506166
Here's another reference in this section:

> Reichssieger von Thantatz Alpdrucken
The name of the dog that Pointsman seeks translates loosely as "Realm of Victory over the Nightmare of Death." Dale Jack offers the following explanation and correction:

"Reichssieger could be translated simply as "champion" or "victor"; "Reichs" is the possessive prefix tacked on just about everything during Hitler's rule, and refers specifically the Third Reich. "Thantatz" should be spelled "Thanatz", as it is in GR (taken from the Greek word for death). "Von" in this case means "of" or "from" and implies that he induces, rather than vanquishes fear. "Von" in this context could also be a dig at the aristocracy. Your translation of "alpdrucken" is basically correct; it is actually the impression (drucken) of dread or fear one has during any bad dream, as opposed to an actual nightmare (alptraum). This gives another rough translation: The Reich's Deadly Night-terror Champion. The structure of the name mimics standard pedigree dogs' titles-breeder's kennel, given name, then owner's kennel. For example, Daisy Hill's Fluffy of Shady Lane."


Is the hound one of hell?

>>10505910
You the real mvp

>>10506084
it was infiltrators from the anti-oedipous reading group started by them by the way to attempt to detract attention away from reading this book, yes it is that powerful and dangerous to (them)

>>10506243
"Reichssieger von Thanatz Alpdrucken
. . . champion Weimaraner for 1941 The dog’s name will fragment,
its parts metamorphosing into Alpdrücken (but note that Pynchon
doesn’t use the umlauted “u” in the dog’s name), a (fictional) film
by Gerhardt von Göll (the title of which means “nightmare”) that links
together many of the novel’s characters (see V387.36n), and also into the
character Miklos Thanatz (from the Greek “thanatos,” “death”), who
first appears in the narrative at V461.29. A Reichssieger is a “national
champion.” "

what is the significance of the preterites? and mba kyere? is it in relation to the soundless spot? or is it more in relation to the rocket passing over?

>>10489322
It's from the last arc of TWGOK. What you're looking doesn't happen.

mainly why GR receives the interest it does is because it is entirely non-fiction and written beautifully