Gravity's Rainbow Reading Group: #03

[Anonymous No.10506280]

Welcome back.
We've come a long way.

In the previous thread: >>10486919
>this book is hard (continued)
>complaints about starting too early
>banter of various degrees
>sex. . . lots of sex
>arguing for 50 posts
>dickensposting
>laughs shared
>anime
>new recruits

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.html

[Anonymous No.10506289]

>>10506280
I’m not native english, would I lose too much by reading a translation? anyone knows if there’s a good spanish translation?

[Anonymous No.10506290]

Link to a PDF of the book we're going off of:
>http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=7D4A0845A31FFBD230D4910CECDEA255

We are using this schedule as well.

[Anonymous No.10506325]

>>10506289
I'd say probably not. .You may lose some of the beauty of it but the bulk is okay through translation.

[Anonymous No.10506390]

> Where are the five-digit groups coming from... no one up in London quite knows how to decrypt? (149).
The number groups appear to be an encrypted message that uses a one-time pad. One-time pad encryption uses identical sets of randomly generated numbers shared between sender and receiver to securely encrypt one way messages over an insecure medium like telegraph or radio. They are commonly used in espionage because a properly used one-time pad message is mathematically impossible to crack, even with today's supercomputers, hence London's inability to crack the messages.
Ciphers encrypted with one-time pads often use five digit groups, though letters or four-digit groups are used as well. They are normally used for covert, one way communication with field agents, as the pad is easily concealed and requires little training and no special equipment to use.

>More than any mere "Kreis" [ . . . ] full mandalas (154)
Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following gloss on Weisenberger's note, which makes sense in the context of the passage:

"Kreis is not 'cross' but 'circle', here also in the sense of a social circle. We should, therefore, understand the passage in the sense that the social structure of the visitors was so complex that they formed not only a circle but also whole mandalas while sitting around the table during the séances."

> Walter Asch
The last name derives from "asche": cinders, ashes. He is the first character whose zodical sign is mentioned: Taurus.


interesting day

[Anonymous No.10506398]

>>10506289
>translations

[Anonymous No.10506455]

>>10506398
>I don’t read books

[Anonymous No.10506464]

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?

[Anonymous No.10506473]

>>10506464
Can you reference the book some more?


I'm not sure what you're directly referring to

[Anonymous No.10506496]

>>10506473
well, the preterites are passed over, and mba kyere was what the schwarzkommando described as being passed over, and i wondered if it had anything to do with the soundless space on the earth that moves like the shadow of an eclipse, or more to do with the parabola of the book's structure, in the sense that they are passed over in significance, or just passed over by the bomb, like a blessing, "congratulations for not being exploded today"

[Anonymous No.10506504]

>>10506289
I'm not a native either but I read it in english. I had to google a lot of words, but it was worth it because Pynchon is an extreamly talented prose stylist, I don't care about what contrarians think.
It would have been great to read GR my first time with a reading group. I'm not re-reading because I want to read other stuff now but I still lurk this threads because they are cool.

[Anonymous No.10506509]

/x/-tier stuff that actually exists and you should read and keep in mind:

>CIA remote viewing project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project
>MK Ultra, of course
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
>Gateway experiment
https://soundcloud.com/mohammad-engashteh/the-gateway-experience-wave-i
>Operation Mockingbird, media control, brainwashing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

you can read all the CIA documents on their site. Some spooky shit. Mars pyramids and whatnot. Also look into Nazi Occultism.

[Anonymous No.10506515]

>>10506509
Thanks for this. I knew most of it but some of it caught me off guard

I love the links you guys post: it's very helpful to everyone and it makes the reading a bit more interesting

[Anonymous No.10506555]

>>10506509
Brings the novel's epigraph about life continuing on from Werhner Von Braun a bit dreadful. He of course was integrated into a high position at NASA after the war, as a part of Operation Paperclip. Braun said he had no idea of the conditions in Mittelbau-Dora, and how prisoners were used as slave workers to construct the V2s at Nordhausen.... but ,as history proves, he knew full well what was going on.

Seems the USA has taken a lot of these Nazi ideas and integrated it into themselves.

[Anonymous No.10506577]

>>10506555
>tfw the entire space age, all this tech, the computer I'm using to talk to you all, the satellites a part of the world network, all stems from the War Machine and Nazi tech
>tfw Pynchon observes Shell's strange dealings
>General Electric's strange dealings (selling Iron ?? to Germany during the war, an American corporation!)
>tfw maybe it's all a facade, a deal to pummel research and production with War Funds

THE MADMAN HAS DONE IT AGAIN

[Anonymous No.10506600]

I hope you guys read this til the end. The ending was once of the most striking I've ever some across. The writing, the emotion, and tension in it.

I've spent my whole life dreading death, thinking about my last moments, hopefully on a bed, and the anxiety I'd experience, and this book's ending knocked the wind out of me. It was as close, as I can sense, to the experience of dying from any piece of literature I've read.

[Anonymous No.10506629]

>>10506600
Yeah the last pages were intense, I didn't think about it back then because I losing my mind feeling how the book glued itself, it was complete madness. The last pages werealmost claustrophobic. I used to think "the ending is (not gonna spoil it) so it must be funny :)" but it actually felt really dark.

[Anonymous No.10507024]

What exactly is Pointsmane doing right now?

[Anonymous No.10507088]

Would someone help me by explaining what happened in the episode involving Katje, Osbie, the dodos, and the black men in the film? I finished up to this point today, and while I was reading my wife and daughter interrupted me and broke my concentration.

I'll try to keep pace with you guys. I fell a bit behind this weekend.

[Anonymous No.10507701]

Some German out of the way:

>the Judenschnautze
As Weisenburger notes, Pynchon probably means "Judenschnauze" here, but the term is more likely to mean "Jewish snout" (or nose) than "Jewish jaw." The term reflects Leni’s antisemitic stereotyping. See note at 159.38. Schnauze is a word for a canine face, so it might mean "Jewish mug" as well. It also denotes a manner of speech, as in "Er hat eine berliner Schnauze" ("He speaks the Berlin dialect").

> It may have been a quota film.
With the great influx of films from the United States to Europe between the wars, several film-producing countries, including Germany, enacted decrees that a certain number of films shown had to be of national origin. These "quota" films were often quick and shoddy productions made only to satisfy government demands so that the more profitable American films could still be shown.

>kleinbürger
German: the lower middle class, translated from the French term petit bourgeoise, literally 'little citizen', noted for their small-minded conservative values.

>Biedermeier
Refers to the historical period between the years 1815 and 1848, particularly in Germany and Central Europe. It is often used to denote the artistic styles that flourished then and that marked a contrast with the Romantic era which preceded it; mainly in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design. However, it can also be used, as it is here, to imply a petit-bourgeois conformity.

[Anonymous No.10507827]

>>10507024
Seconding this

[Anonymous No.10507902]

>[Gen.]Stubblebine offended then-U.S. Army Chief of Staff General John Adams Wickham, Jr. by offering to perform a spoon-bending feat at a formal gala; Wickham associated such phenomena with Satanism.[9]

Man the truth is wilder than this novel

[Anonymous No.10507915]

>>10507902
yeah, i mean, stubblebine is a crazier name than pirate prentice.

[Anonymous No.10508073]

>tfw Maud gf

[Anonymous No.10508124]

>>10507088
Seconding this. I remember Katje and Osbie pretty well, that was pretty obvious, but the significance of the dodo-genocide went completely over my head. I enjoyed reading it and thinking about it, I thought it felt like some weird feverdream or a fantasy you would have if you were high. Especially the part where he lies waiting with his gun pointed to the egg, ready to extinguish life at the very first second it peaks at the sun. But man, did that passage leave me confused.

On another note: I just want to say that I like these threads so far. Been a pretty good balance of shitposting, whining, being a little pretentious and actual decent posting so far. Hell, some of you even posted pretty good insights. Some of the best insights imo even came from Dickensposter (because let's be honest, allthough I didn't neccesarily agree on everything he said, those were some of the most well written and considerate responses here). So yeah, thanks everyone for the responses here, it's nice. Keep up the good work, I hope y'all get to finish the book.
Now get back to reading faggots

[Anonymous No.10508443]

>>10506289
>would I lose too much by reading a translation
Probably. The books contains great slabs of wonderful prose. Much depends on the translator.

[Anonymous No.10508781]

I just finished the first part.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.10509041]

Just ordered a used copy of GR together with some other books, thought it's a swedish translation.

[Anonymous No.10509178]

>>10509041
I love how Swedish sounds like my Dutch dialect. Even if I hadn't known the last word was rainbow in advance, I would have guessed because of the way it sounds. I've had this for alot of different swedish words, even when hearing Sweden while I was there.

I'm afraid my post was slightly off topic though.

[Anonymous No.10509370]

>>10509178
I'm Dutch, which dialect do you mean?

[Anonymous No.10509440]

>>10506280
Btw, for the anons that asked during the last thread, i'm at home now so here's the other quote from CoL49 that i particularly liked:
>What voices overheard, flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained foliage, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the insatiable stuffing of a mattress that could keep vestiges of every nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, viciously, tearfully consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the lost?

[Anonymous No.10509453]

>>10509370
Plat West-Vlaams lijkt vreemd genoeg redelijk hard op Zweeds. Tijdens een college over Oud-Nederlands zag ik wel dat kust-dialecten van Zeeland, Engeland en West-Vlaanderen terug gaan op Ingveoons of Noord-Zee Germaans, maar dat verklaard de link naar Zweeds nog niet echt. Ik denk dat West-Vlaams vaak dezelfde soort klanken maakt, waardoor bepaalde woorden 'herkenbaar' zijn.

[Anonymous No.10509455]

>>10508124
>I thought it felt like some weird feverdream or a fantasy you would have if you were high.

Yeah she's actually tripping balls. She gets blasted by a massive dose of Amanita Muscaria when Osbie Feel opens the oven where he's drying tray after tray of stuff.

On p 108 in the blueprint version the bit after her brief interaction with Prentice, we get the line "Her old, intractable vice--she wants to cross the seas, to connect countries between whom there is no possible rate of exchange. Her ancestors sang, in middle dutch

ic heb u liever dan en everswîn
al waert van finen goude ghewacht "

Reminded of her ancestry she recalls her nation's history, and then the Dodo Sequence happens

[Anonymous No.10509490]

>>10509455
Yeah, i got it's significance towards Katje, that it's part of her ancenstry and that she was on a trip. I'm the West-Flemish guy (also the quote above guy actually) so i understood the Dutch and i have pretty good grasp of Dutch history. The part i didn't understand however was why the guy suddenly got so determined to exterminate the dodo's and i lost my shit when he 'suddenly realized the religious meaning of their extermination', which i didnt get like.. at all.

[Anonymous No.10509523]

>>10509453
Oh grappig ik was afgelopen zomer ook in Zweden en ik had een soortgelijke ervaring. Van de taal als geheel kon ik geen pasta maken maar hier en daar had je vaak wel woorden die heel bekend klonken. Ik vond het fonetisch ook een mooie taal om te horen dat Zweeds.

Wat vind je trouwens de beste Nederlandstalige schrijver?

>>10509490
What felt significant to me about the dodo's is that it is yet another genocide in the book. But why he went crazy, I don't know either. Wasn't it something to do with his religious fanaticism?

[Anonymous No.10509623]

>>10509523
>>10506555
>>10506577
Wanna hear something fun and GR related?
I started reading GR about the same time as i started studying History in Uni. During a class about the Early Modern Era a professor just drops "Many modern day fortunes can be traced back to the days shortly after the 80 years war and the rise of the VOC, including for example the roots of a company like Shell, allthough they have seen a lot of different places over the years."
I felt like a fucking Pynchon character. I knew that some of what Pynchon was implying about Shell was probably rooted in reality, but someone just 'dropping' that information during a lecture felt weird.

A few weeks later in a lecture about Historical Critique a prof is telling us about the fact that the Allies knew about the existence of concentration camps and would have been able to hinder the Holocaust by '43, but that instead of acting on it, they did nothing, as they just refused to believe (which is something that might as well have been in GR). He showed us air photo's taken by British Intelligence that were revealed a couple of years ago when an archive was opened to the public. On the picture you could cleary see a large prison camp, people walking in long lines and smoke from ovens (allthough they might not have realized what was producing that smoke). Now get this: in the text underneath the picture the words IG Farben jumped just jumped out for me.

I was amazed at how many of the elements of GR i thought were fiction are based in reality and it was particularly nice to find out about them in this fashion, bit by bit almost accidentally exposed. Ofcourse once i find out about these kind of little facts i can just google them or go to the library and i don't have to go on a mad chase through the Zone, but still, a nice experience for me.
>>10509523
Yeah, allthough they have some phonetics we (In West-Vlaanderen) don't have, i feel like the language is closely phonetically related, which might even be part coïncidence. Concercing Dutch writers: it's a tie between Louis Paul Boon or Harry Mulish. Dimitri Verhulst is certainly the most fun one by a long shot. Favorite poet would probably be Toon Tellegen, i love "Er ligt een appel op een schaal" and i have very fond childhood memories of "Misschien wisten zij alles'' and the other stories with the Squirrel and the Ant. How about you?
And yeah, it was another genocide and had something with religious fanaticism, which you guys were pretty good at in those days ;) But i still feel like i'm missing it.

[Anonymous No.10509871]

>>10509623
I like LPB a lot too but I have yet too read one of his big works. I'm curious about Claus but I've only read one of his later works and the Metsiers (which I thought was shit).
I don't like Mulisch that much, he's good, but only up to a point. No disrespect. De Ontdekking van de Hemel was a ton of fun but it didn't SAY anything important. It doesn't feel like a timeless classic. But I'm also biased against him I fear en smaken verschillen. Twee vrouwen is objectively shit though.
The best dutch author for me would be Hermans. If you haven't yet, read Nooit Meer Slapen. His prose is crafted and honed and he made fun of verzetsstrijders back when everyone treated them as saints. He's the cynical uncle you never had.

Also a shoutout to Wolkers. People don't take him seriously because he's 'le hippy sex guy'. But he's very funny and colourful. His best work is Terug Naar Oestgeest.

[Anonymous No.10509899]

/day off/ sub thread:
Seeing as our day off has already begun here in the Southern Hemisphere, I though I would ask what everybody is going to be reading on our days break from Gravity's Rainbow? I am currently reading The Templars: History and Myth by Michael Haag and am planning on going through Kings 1 and 2 from The Bible and The Time Machine by HG Wells.

[Anonymous No.10509947]

>>10509871
M8, nice. I totally understand what you're saying about Mullish, maybe it's just nostalgia goggles, but Ontdekking van de Hemel just felt so fresh when i first read it, so unlike anything i had read in Dutch before. I'm talking a few years back here though. I haven't read much by Claus besides Het verdriet van België (fun fact: one of my favorite bars is named after this book) and een zachte vernieling, both of which i liked. I read a thesis about Claus and the guy was doing subtle shit in his work..

Sinterklaas brought me De donkere kamer van Damocles! I was talking with a Dutch guy about literature and he said that it looked like I like cynical lit, so he recommended Hermans. However, Sinterklaas and de Kerstman have also brought Blood Meridian, Hunger by Hamsun, War and War by krazsnahorkai, Dream of fair to middling women by Beckett and the Castle by Kafka. I finished two already, finishing up War and War now and will be reading Hermans next. I've finished GR in october, so i'll be posting here but i won't be reading along.
By the way: the non-fiction work of HerTmans is amazing as well. The silence of Tragedy/Het zwijgen van de Tragedie, was one of the best works about the significance of Greek Tragedy i've ever read.
I'll check out Wolkers, thanks for the rec. I forgot mentioning Peter Verhelst, he's Flemish and i don't think he's well known, but he wrote a really short work called Medea and Moby Dick which is probably my all time favorite work in Dutch, even allthough it's only 50 pages.

Nice meeting you Dutch-anon, now we should probably give the GR thread back to GR.

[Anonymous No.10510024]

>>10509455
>Reminded of her ancestry she recalls her nation's history, and then the Dodo Sequence happens
>to connect countries between whom there is no possible rate of exchange.
maybe a relation between the two perspectives of wanting to connect everything (like religious missionaries traveling to other countries), and a darwinian survival of the fittest, and maybe the guy religious guy thought do do bird was a mistake of Gods, because it is a pretty purposeless pointless entity, wanting to act on behalf of God to make Creation better and more appropriate, two contradictory interpretations of religiosity?

Maybe even relating, her vision of her ancestor, part of her motive of connecting is because of her ancestors traveling to foreign lands and killing the exotic wildlife/people?

[Anonymous No.10510062]

>>10509455
>ic heb u liever dan en everswîn
>al waert van finen goude ghewacht
whats this translate to?

[Anonymous No.10510089]

>>10510024
You might be on to something. I feel like i don't completely get the phrase "rate of exchange'', sure the countries were entirely different, but is that what he means? Or does this have anything to do with the East India Companies?

About the religious thing: anyone here with more than basic insights into Calvinism got anything to add?

[Anonymous No.10510145]

>>10510062
If i'm not mistaking it's Dutch for
'I like you more than a boar, even if you were made of finest gold'.
But then it would have to be ghemacht, i remember reading it like this and kekking at the old Dutch. Does it actually say 'ghewacht' in the book?

This phrase is in Middle-Dutch, which is pretty hard to read now but also wouldn't be what the guy going to the islands to kill dodo's would have been speaking. Middle-Dutch gave way to Modern Dutch in the 1500's, the Dutch didn't go to East India on large scale till at least in the 1600's. But those are details.

[Anonymous No.10510201]

As someone who's 500p in; what's with the recurrence of Shirley Temple?

>>10510145
Wouldn't it be
>Even if it were made of gold
?

[Anonymous No.10510216]

>>10510201
Yeah, it would, sorry, my bad.
Waert comes from ware het = if it were.
So
Even if it were made of gold.

[Anonymous No.10510223]

Since you guys are discussing the chapter with the dodo genocide, there was a part that confused me a bit right after that too when it returns to Pirate and Osbie on the roof.

>"He's haunting you," Osbie puffing on an Amanita cigarette.
>"Yes," Pirate ranging the edges of the roof-garden, irritable in the sunset, "but it's the last thing I want to believe. The other's been bad enough...."

At first I thought Pirate was perhaps just having Katje's fantasy about the dodoes and Frans van der Groov for her but I really wasn't sure. It's probably not important, I suppose, but still.

[Anonymous No.10510243]

>>10510145
I read it as
Al ware het van fijn goud gemaakt
Ghewacht really doesnt make any sense if it means waiting or being on guard.

[Anonymous No.10510246]

>>10510089
indigenous people and african tribes, who maybe didnt have much use for trading their seashell necklaces for gold

[Anonymous No.10510250]

>>10510243
Yeah, that's what i thought as well.
>>10510246
Well, there indian ocean trading network was in place before the Dutch (and before the Portugese) they just took it over.

[Anonymous No.10510252]

Let's be honest, you guys are ITT just because you don't want to read the book, right?

[Anonymous No.10510262]

>>10510223
I think it's Slothrop and he doesn't want to believe what it up with him.
That or really just one of the fantasies he's living in his head that hurts him.

On a limp i might say it might be refering to Blicero or 'the face in the clouds' but it's really to long ago.

>tfw no amanita cigarette's to be found here..

[Anonymous No.10510272]

>>10510243
apparently it is:
“ic heb u liever dan ên everswîn, al waert van finen goude ghewracht”
Ghewarcht means something like worked into like gewrochten?

[Anonymous No.10510286]

>>10510272
Gewrochten still means something like gemaakt.
Zoals ik wrocht voor u deze schone post. I think the word shows up in the dutch translation of Lotr.

[Anonymous No.10510294]

>>10510286
I know.
Just pointing out that ghewracht instead of ghewacht clears things up.

[Anonymous No.10510303]

>>10510262
Yeah that makes sense. I guess I wasn't sure if Pirate was aware of Slothrop at this point, since I remember he didn't really know of the contents of the film he was delivering to Roger, but I suppose there's no real reason to think he's in the dark about Slothrop's "ability" considering who he's working with.

[Anonymous No.10510402]

>>10510089
I'm vaguely familiar with Calvinism mostly due to this book so I may be able to help. Do you have any specific questions or are you asking just about the whole dodo bird thing?

[Anonymous No.10510422]

>>10510402
The whole dodo thing. All of it.
But this book alone isn't gonna cut it. I'm a little more than vaguely familiar with Calvinism, but i didn't get it.

[Anonymous No.10510479]

>>10510422
As I said my kneejerk interpretation is, the paradox of loving God and Gods creation, but then taking it upon yourself to attempt to eliminate an aspect of creation you believe shouldn't exist; in effect acting on behalf of God and suggesting God made a mistake.

[Anonymous No.10510755]

>>10510479
The dodo's eradication is in the Lord's plan no less than their creation.

The dodos are a red herring, part of the 93 millionmile roar, the only options we have to recognize the whispers is at the discretion of the soundless eclipse. This is evidenced by the Brocken spectres, how occluded our eyes are by the sun, how willing we are to be overwhelmed.

I suggest you recall the dogs, being trained beyond zero. what does that mean for you, reading the book?

[Anonymous No.10510794]

>>10510201
Echoes Lolita
Hints at some unusual practices of Hollywood, even so far back as then...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrjvifKXQy4

[Anonymous No.10510806]

Also to anyone wondering about the math in GR
Here's PDF download for a paper on it, giving a good grasp of the jist
https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/articles/abstract/10.16995/pn.94/

[Anonymous No.10510931]

>The part i didn't understand however was why the guy suddenly got so determined to exterminate the dodo's and i lost my shit when he 'suddenly realized the religious meaning of their extermination', which i didnt get like.. at all
>But why he went crazy, I don't know either. Wasn't it something to do with his religious fanaticism?

>>10510755
I was just hypothesizing answers to that posters wonderings.

An interesting relation, maybe, is that 'dodo' is a term used to call someone a dumby (though all maybe know what I meant, didnt want to write, dummy, so as to not be confused...but then again).

>I suggest you recall the dogs, being trained beyond zero. what does that mean for you,
I don't know, what does it mean to you?

[Anonymous No.10511123]

How far into the book are you anons?
Does someone have the meme yellow/orange edition?

[Anonymous No.10511162]

>>10510931
no, it was a rhetorical question. for me it will inevitably mean something different. I interpret it as yet another aspect of paranoia. Probably at its greatest strength. I I recall correctly, the idea was that when one trains out pavlovian response to a certain extent, it eventually passes into a pre-reaction to that specific stimulus. so, the dog drools just before the bell rings, rather than after, or at random intervals, or not at all. For me, this is a clue later on amplified by the dark spot and the shadows, that perhaps we all could have been trained beyond the zero in the 93 millionmile roar that envelops us, has enveloped us for generations, to predict the silence with fear, with paranoia. to associate that silence, perhaps, wih death. that dark spot lurking round every corner, a dooming laser, becomes a general and overwhelming sense of fear that holds us all.

[Anonymous No.10511307]

i see that i ruined the thread again.

[Anonymous No.10511378]

>>10511307
these are slow threads, everyone is working, living, eating, sleeping, reading, avoiding reading

[Anonymous No.10511434]

>>10511378
bah! Bah! BAH!

[Anonymous No.10511514]

>>10511162
I think you're referring to when the dogs go transmarginal, which isn't from deconditioning (I don't think) but rather subjection to extreme conditions and basically being driven insane (at which point you become confused about opposites).

Pointsman basically wants to send Slothrop into the paradoxical phase and see what he does, right? Wouldn't that just mean a hardon except for when he's in a place where a rocket will strike? Am I just dumb and asking too many questions?

[Anonymous No.10511556]

>>10511514
Asking questions isn't wrong. I think that we disagree on the dogs, though it has been long enough for my memory of the details to have diminished. Also, I may have misunderstood from the beginning. But I am inclined to believe otherwise as I think slothrop was already in that state, and the meddling with katje ruined his condition. Slothrop initially caused the war to continue, I feel, and the timeline of his condition matched with the war's end.

i do think that Slothrop definitely had been already pushed beyond the zero. I am also currently intoxicated, so my explanations are probably getting less and less comprehensible. How far are you into the book?

[Anonymous No.10511587]

basically what i meant was the timing of the response to the stimuli is what changes after being pushed beyond the zero, instead of occurring after the stimulus, it occurs before, which was the interesting aspect of slothrop's sexual escapades. that they seemed to predict the bomb's locations. pointsman wants to force a scenario in which the bomb falls, but in doing so, he ruins the delicacy of slothrop's condition. hopefully that makes more sense.

[Anonymous No.10511616]

>>10511556
I'm only barely to the end of part 1, and it's my first reading. I've basically just had this passage in mind, but I'm still just trying to figure things out because the more I think about it the more I realize I probably don't get it:

>We’re working right now with a dog . . . he’s been through the ‘equivalent’ phase, where any stimulus, strong or weak, calls up exactly the same number of saliva drops . . . and on through the ‘paradoxical’ phase—strong stimuli getting weak responses and vice versa. Yesterday we got him to go ultraparadoxical. Beyond. When we turn on the metronome that used to stand for food—that once made Dog Vanya drool like a fountain—now he turns away. When we shut off the metronome, oh then he’ll turn to it, sniff, try to lick it, bite it—seek, in the silence, for the stimulus that is not there. Pavlov thought that all the diseases of the mind could be explained, eventually, by the ultraparadoxical phase, the pathologically inert points on the cortex, the confusion of ideas of the opposite. He died at the very threshold of putting these things on an experimental basis. But I live. I have the funding, and the time, and the will. Slothrop is a strong imperturbable. It won’t be easy to send him into any of the three phases. We may finally have to starve, terrorize, I don’t know . . . it needn’t come to that. But I will find his spots of inertia, I will find what they are if I have to open up his damned skull, and how they are isolated, and perhaps solve the mystery of why the rockets are falling as they do—though I admit that was more of a sop to get your support.

[Anonymous No.10511622]

>>10510755
>The dodo's eradication is in the Lord's plan no less than their creation.
where is there evidence Katjes ancestor was told by the lord the seek to it the dodos became extinct?

[Anonymous No.10511631]

>>10511622
That's just what he believed, as he felt them an affront to nature.

[Anonymous No.10511640]

>>10511616
that's them furthering the ultraparadoxical state, but the more interesting concept that's not stated is the one slothrop experiences, the creation of the stimulus via his response. it turns cause and effect on its head. the reason pointsman doesn't understand this is because he's such a rigid scientist that the idea of cause and effect being fluid is nonsense. hell, it doesn't even cross his mind. i hadn't realized that pointsman didn't even notice, I had assumed that was the reason for the experimentation. i think he was just on the wrong track. anyhow, i have only read the work once myself, and fairly recently. i could be completely wrong, but i don't think so. i couldn't point you to specific excerpts because i'm not a diligent reader whomtakes his notes like a good boy, or i would definitely provide you with some of them. i just go by gut when i read. don't use my thoughts as a lodestone.

[Anonymous No.10511646]

>>10511622
no, you misunderstand. god provides the path of every man. we all follow his guiding light, all of our sins and follies are those he has foretold and known for eternity. if the dodos get extinguished, then god willed it. his will does not stop extending beyond creation, it is his engine, and its parts and their motions are likewise his design. to believe otherwise would be to defy his omniscience.

[Anonymous No.10511659]

>>10511514
>>10511556
I think you're both more or less right about Slothrop, though the Pavlov is a bit off - I think the first poster is correct in that stimulus before response is transmarginal.

I like to wonder at what point Pointsman began to condition Slothrop, and I think about that scene of him in the bar with, I think, Tantivy(?) - one of his friends anyway - when he lights a cigarette and begins to smoke it, then begins to light another, and another, to the protest of his friend, all while talking about rockets. Is it too much of a stretch to consider this(the lighting of the cigarettes) some kind of a response to some unknown stimuli? That scene has always stood out to me.

[Anonymous No.10511664]

>>10511659
that and the nose scene.

but i must say, the best scene in the entire book, and the only one to make me laugh, was slothrop attacking his fat tire, "take that, a-and that!"

[Anonymous No.10511672]

>>10511659
and you're right, i was mixing the dog's condition with slothrop's, theynare similar, but not nearly the same. i feel that slothrop's related condition was definitely a purposeful project that achieved its aim, but the clumsiness of pointsman boggled it.

[Anonymous No.10511693]

for those who have already read the book,

did you understand the significance of the guy wih the out of body exoeriences? it really felt out of place, like he jimmied in a short story as another red herring, to the point that my memory makes it seem like it wasn't even from the same book. what conclusions did you draw from that bit and how did you connect them to the rest of the work?

[Anonymous No.10511694]

>>10511640
Oh okay, I kind of see where you're coming from now. I'm just thinking about Pointsman's motivations and what he thinks is happening with Slothrop, and he's clearly taking Pavlovian ideas to a farcical extreme. But yes, I think you're right that Pointsman is limited by his rigid insistence on cause and effect (he argued with Mexico about this at one point, I recall, with Mexico suggesting that people need to reconsider what they think about causality). Now I'm interested to see what Pointsman does with the octopus Grigori in upcoming chapters and what exactly is up with this film that's been made for him. Thanks for putting up with (what is probably just) my overthinking things. I suppose if I want to be able to draw conclusions I should probably just keep reading.

[Anonymous No.10511695]

>>10511646
so your *opinion* is absolute pure determinism, which absolves man of responsibility for his actions, aye? "No, your honor...I did not rape and murder that woman...God did it... God made me do it...it was his will, and it was perfect"

[Anonymous No.10511722]

>>10511672
>i feel that slothrop's related condition was definitely a purposeful project that achieved its aim
what do you think the purposeful project and aim was?

[Anonymous No.10511739]

>>10511695
you think that because we are predestined to sin we are not to be held responsible for them? i disagree. in your argument, you are dealing in human absolutes, in our world, our crimes are held to the same standards as any other, and should be punished accordingly despite god's plans being enacted. i liken it to different tiers of justice. there is god's justice, and there is man's justice. god's justice is unknowable, and his judgements of our paths though seemingly unfair due to our being destined to do so, is once more part of his plan. man's justice will punish accordingly. he will do what he thinks is right. there is no way for you or i to propose what god's sense of morality is.

>>10511694
oh no! it's not a bother, i feel bad for jumping in and invading your experience of the book, i probably should have waited to talk with everyone about it during the later stages of your readthrough. besides, my conclusions are often flawed due to the fact that i'm a lazy reader who tends to have flawed memories of what exactly happened. those possibly mismatched conclusions typically color the way i see a book until i read it once more with them in mind. anyway, don't stop overthinking things, there's no way that's bad with a book like this.

[Anonymous No.10511763]

>>10511722
to make a weapon? i dunno. i'm sure it was an achieved goal since it seems the members of the project didn't seem like the types to just give up before it reaches fruition, and i presume the aim is discovery, for war's sake or just curiosity's sake.
now that i think of it, i wonder if slothrop really is the only one who has undergone these experiments, and whether or not the reversal of cause and effect really haven't been played with further after the results determined by slothrop. i will admit that i probably shouldn't be so confident that there was an aim and a purposeful project, so i'll chalk it up to paranoia and filling in the blanks myself.

[Anonymous No.10511766]

>>10511739
>you think that because we are predestined to sin we are not to be held responsible for them? i disagree
if God made a rape-bot would he have any right in getting mad at it, punishing it for carrying at the exact unavoidable path God paved for it to follow second by second? I dont think God did, because I think man has free will, which is the basis of our disagreement, which is not worth continuing, and wasting posts in this thread over, you simply made some outrageous, bold, unsubstantiated claims, I am certain I rightly disagree with.

[Anonymous No.10511790]

>>10506280
What page chapter are you guys on? I wanted to start with you but I completely forgot.

[Anonymous No.10511793]

>>10511766
think what you will, but i find that my experience with god has taught me not to make the assumption that he will punish me or anyone else in the same way that a man might. i have no idea if god would be mad at this rape-bot. i do think, however, if god is omniscient, then we do not have free will. which leads me to believe that his understanding of these situations is not my own. i understand what you're saying completely, though. it seems very unfair. but who says it must be? who says it isn't fair except you or i, who really just don't know?

[Anonymous No.10511837]

>>10511793
free will discussion is the most boring and banal and solved and you are on the wrong side. Last thing I will say to you is: you think before God made the universe he planned which shoe you would put on first and what you would have for lunch this upcoming wednesday, you are le fool. I wish we could delete this wasteful convo. Stop saying things without thinking them through.

[Anonymous No.10511854]

>>10511837
you're taking this very personally. although, how can you not, i suppose, it must be annoying to have someone tell you that you have no free will. i get it. i just disagree with you. no reason to be such a whiny bitch about all of it, though.

[Anonymous No.10511870]

>>10511790
See the schedule >>10506290 Finished Part One today. Taking a day off before digging into the next part.

[Anonymous No.10511909]

>>10511854
more than anything I despise being confronted with wrongness/incorrectness/falseness/ignorance, its not worth wasting the space in this thread to explain to you why your comprehension and voracity and vigor and rigor of thought is lacking.

[Anonymous No.10511917]

>>10506280
I don't think Pynchon would be very glad knowing this was his legacy.

[Anonymous No.10511928]

>>10511854
I am aware of all the angles and slants and topics and arguments on the subject from every side, all the ones you are aware of, and all the ones you are unaware of: quote this if you want to respond so I can delete this post

[Anonymous No.10511932]

>>10511917
delete your post, its worthless, pointless, and does nothing for anyone. I will delete this one after you see it

[Anonymous No.10511941]

>more than anything I despise being confronted with wrongness/incorrectness/falseness/ignorance, its not worth wasting the space in this thread to explain to you why your comprehension and voracity and vigor and rigor of thought is lacking.
>I am aware of all the angles and slants and topics and arguments on the subject from every side, all the ones you are aware of, and all the ones you are unaware of: quote this if you want to respond so I can delete this post


okay. now you're just being melodramatic. you're quite a silly person.

[Anonymous No.10512235]

>>10511932
It's not wrong though?

[Anonymous No.10512267]

>>10511932
Paradox with quasi-ironic psychosis posting is you oust yourself as having no access to your own brain. It doesn't make sense to try and split atoms to create molecules.

[Anonymous No.10512461]

>>10512235
what did that poster presume 'his legacy' was? hundreds of thousands of people (or more) into a book he published 40 years ago; and 10s or 20s of them for a few weeks or months reading and discussing it online? Is that the extremely profound and poignant thought that poster manifest destinly had to bless us with?

[Anonymous No.10512464]

>>10512235
what did that poster presume 'his legacy' was? hundreds of thousands of people (or more) into a book he published 40 years ago; and 10s or 20s of them for a few weeks or months reading and discussing it online? Is that the extremely profound and poignant thought that poster manifest destinly had to bless us with?
>>10512267
yay, youre contributing, yay, you did something.

[Anonymous No.10512538]

>>10511695
Welcome to Calvinism.
Also
>>10511739
What this Anon said, Calvinists believe that even if you're predestined to sin, you're still acountable for it.

[Anonymous No.10512543]

>>10512538
so i'm a calvinist? i had no idea. thanks. i'll have to do some research. is that related in any way to Gaddis' The Recognitions? I began to believe after reading it, so I think I based my religion in some way on the themes of that work.

[Anonymous No.10512546]

What page are you guys on? Ive had a fever this whole year and haven't started yet. I hope I can catch up once Im better

[Anonymous No.10512568]

fuck ive been wanting to read this. maybe ill join in if you guys keep it up over the semester. ive already started too many other books

[Anonymous No.10512595]

>>10512546
Today is a break day, but we are just about to start part 2 tomorrow (10/1)

[Anonymous No.10512606]

>>10512595
what are the parts? is it the guide parts(3-7, 7-16) in the OP?

[Anonymous No.10512612]

>>10512606
Third post of the thread, a kind anon has done a reading guide which we have been following.

[Anonymous No.10512696]

>>10512464
He's talking about the banana picture. That Pynchon wouldn't want someone to walk away from a complex, encyclopedic novel and only take with them the idea that Pynchon really likes bananas. I for one think ol' Tommy would find the banana meme amusing.

What do you guys make of the pervasive concept about the reversal of cause and effect?

[Anonymous No.10512710]

>>10512696
i recall its echoes as pirate was walking back with his bananas, thinking about the fact that he probably wouldn't feel the mammoth pressure of the rocket if it hit him. the concept of the sound coming after the blast really strikes a tone of cause and effect being reversed.
you never hear the bullet that kills you. it adds to the crushing atmosphere of paranoia as well.

[Anonymous No.10512716]

>>10512710
or at least that cause and effect had been separated far enough to be reversed to begin with. an explosion and its sound spread like erotic petals by the ramrod of technology. how romantic.

[Anonymous No.10513188]

>>10512696
>What do you guys make of the pervasive concept about the reversal of cause and effect?
I dont think (I hope not) it is a belief of real possibility being hinted at and explored: but a nice theme that can showcase concern and wondering and worrying of people in the moment afraid and confused and trying to overturn every stone for advantage: but if anything hopefully it is an allusion to the concept that in contest, or competitive game, requiring strategy and tactics, causes and effects have to be thought about, planned for, and acted on before they occur, so 'possible future events' are taken as if they are real, causing action to take place in the present (in the past in relation to them).

[Anonymous No.10513777]

really though, why did the astral projection guy exist? was he a red herring of did he have thematic purpose?

alternatively, were there actually red herrings extant in the work or weren't there?

[Anonymous No.10514355]

[Anonymous No.10514448]

>>10511693
The point of it is in the first part of the book

[Anonymous No.10514533]

I'm just catching up but what was the part about he Adenoid in the start of the book? It made it sound like some sort of entity but looking up Adenoid gives me stuff related to tonsils/throat.

[Anonymous No.10514815]

[Anonymous No.10514832]

>>10514448
enlighten me? it's not a challenge but a question.

[Anonymous No.10514842]

>>10514533
some sort of cocaine metaphor, giant adenoid monster laying waste until it's appeased by drugs, i recall someone mentioning it was an allusion to hitler, but i don't know. had to do with showcasing Pirate's abilities?

[Anonymous No.10515385]

>>10514533
There were some pretty good pointers from a few threads ago. Hope this helps!
>>/lit/thread/10466154#p10476970

[Anonymous No.10516282]

>>10514533
it's a spooky scary organ running around london!

[Anonymous No.10517546]

did people give up ?

[Anonymous No.10517578]

>tfw your octopus is not in good mental health

[Anonymous No.10517581]

>>10517546
some have probably dropped the book

[Anonymous No.10517599]

>>10517546
I haven't given up, I'm just way behind.

[Anonymous No.10517610]

>>10517599
Same. I'm only on page 68.

[Anonymous No.10517649]

>>10517599
>>10517610
I read threads about this group read just before the new year, got excited, but forgot all about it. Sadly haven't even started. Is there any hope for me?

[Anonymous No.10517666]

>>10509453
Interessant, maar zijn de herkenbare woorden ook daadwerkelijk overeenkomstig in betekenis of lijken ze alleen maar qua klank?

[Anonymous No.10517716]

>>10517649
No. We're about 200 pages in, you'd have to skim

[Anonymous No.10517849]

>>10517666
Ook in betekenis, dat zijn de voorvallen die opmerkelijk zijn. Vaak zijn er dezelfde klanken, wat op zich wel grappig is, maar er zijn opvallend vaak gelijkenissen specifiek met het dialect, wat in West-Vlaanderen nogal sterk verschilt van de spreektaal. Volgens taal-historici staat het hedendaags West-Vlaams nog zeer, zeer dicht bij het middeleeuwse Vlaams en is het in essentie een levende, middeleeuwse taal. Dat valt vooral op bij het lezen van middelnederlandse teksten uit Vlaanderen, waar je als West-Vlaming een merkbaar voordeel hebt als je dialect begrijpt.
Testje voor /dutchanons/ hier, het 'phonetisch' geschreven, maar verstaan jullie hier ook maar iets van?
>Toog mie jen erte en ik terte derup
or
>Zeg ne kjir oe loat’est
>‘k è der gin gedag van
>Zôt ol achter ntwolvn zyn
>‘k è gin arloiz’an
>Zyj ze were kwyt musskien
>‘t goat u ginne zak an

I can personally testify that this really, really acurate and the closest you can get to it without actually writing it in phonetic symbols.

[Anonymous No.10517934]

>>10517849
>Toog mie jen erte en ik terte derup
gibberish
>Zeg ne kjir oe loat’est
zeg eens hoe laat het is
>‘k è der gin gedag van
ik heb er geen weet van/ik heb er geen mening over
>Zôt ol achter ntwolvn zyn
zou het al na twaalven zijn
>‘k è gin arloiz’an
ik draag geen horloge
>Zyj ze were kwyt musskien
not sure
>‘t goat u ginne zak an
het gaat u geen zak aan

Can't say I'm really sure in most cases though, it almost sounds too obvious. I speak a fairly obscure Brabant dialect with my family so I know how some words can sound (or be) the same in standard Dutch but have a different meaning all the same.

[Anonymous No.10517974]

>>10517934
Nice job anon!
>Toog mie jen erte en ik terte derup
means
Toon mij je hart en ik trap er op.
>Zyj ze were kwyt musskien
is
Zij+je (Ben je) ze (dat horloge) weer kwijt misschien

[Anonymous No.10518048]

>>10517974
>>Toog mie jen erte en ik terte derup
>means
>Toon mij je hart en ik trap er op.
Never heard of 'toog' and 'terte' used with that meaning. The possessive 'jen erte' should have been pretty obvious now that i think about it.
>>Zyj ze were kwyt musskien
>is
>Zij+je (Ben je) ze (dat horloge) weer kwijt misschien
I understood the latter part of the sentence but I couldn't quite decipher 'zyj'. Also very obvious when you point out it's actually two words.

>arloiz
sounds like Antwerps to me desu

[Anonymous No.10518075]

>>10518048
Some pronounciation might have spread over all over Flanders, so you might be correct with the Antwerps, allthough i can't really imagine how an Antwerpenaar would pronounce horloge.

For you anons thinking that this dialect banter has nothing to do with GR, just wait untill GR moves to Kyrgystan and Pynchon starts talking about how written scripts are used to ''capture'' and ''oppress'' languages. Then think back to Flemish, as we have 6 different phonetic pronounciations for the signifier (e) due to the Latin alphabet being forced upon the language in 4th to 8th century, much like the Russians forcing cyrillic in Kyrgystan in the 20th century.

[Anonymous No.10518161]

I'm also about 20 pages behind but I'll try and catch up today because I'm looking forward to part 2

[Anonymous No.10518612]

>>10517716
gonna have to let this one go for now, then, thanks anon

[Anonymous No.10519518]

181.25 Hispano-Suiza
A luxury automobile made by the Spanish firm of the same name; best known for their cars, engines (including world famous aviation engines) and weapons designs in the pre-World War II period.

Why include such odd foreign brands?

[Anonymous No.10519982]

>>10517546
I haven't. Finished today's reading a few hours ago.

[Anonymous No.10520251]

>>10517546
I'm on schedule. As are many who lurk these threads but don't post.
Personally, it's hard for me to say anything meaningful about my readings as of late because my experiences have become very personal and hard to translate into words without destroying every aspect of their importance. End of section 1 had some incredible moments. I've been loving the more ethereal tones of otherworld essences and personification of forces / vectors of influence. Maybe the mockery of paranoia while at the same time creating enormous structures become sentient. 'Un Perm' au Casino Hermann Goering' continues these trends beginning with comedic absurdity but very quickly settles into a seeping in of sinister entities and into frantic grasping onto a deteriorating understanding of How Things Work, in what felt like a wonderful expose on isolation, or loss.

The tragic elements assault my senses in ways that straddle the borders of my understanding. Everything about it is so, so wonderful despite what escapes me. This book is magical

[Anonymous No.10520308]

>>10520251
>It's hard for me to say anything meaningful about my readings as of late because my experiences have become very personal and hard to translate into words without destroying every aspect of their importance.

I don't always have something to say, either. I really hope that people are still reading along, lurking, and that they haven't given up. All I want is to finally read this book and have people to share experiences with, people that understand how great it is.

[Anonymous No.10520722]

>>10517546
Just started yesterday, almost to part 2.
My brother started today, he's never read it before, hoping he sticks with it

[Anonymous No.10520730]

>>10519518
>Why include such odd foreign brands?
huh, you learn something new everyday
just another piece to the puzzle however small

[Anonymous No.10520766]

Guy who ruined the last thread but not Dickens poster here, still lurking, waiting. Still pondering the astral projection theme and its relevance.

[Anonymous No.10520911]

>>10520766
have not noticed those themes already, all throughout?

>"You're the cause-and-effect man," she cried. How did he connect together the fragments he saw while his eyes were open?
> He was the cause-and-effect man: he kept at her astrology without mercy, telling her what she was supposed to believe, then denying it. "Tides, radio interference, damned little else.There is no way for changes out there to produce changes here."
> "Not produce," she tried, "not cause. It all goes along together. Parallel, not series. Metaphor. Signs and symptoms. Mapping on to different coordinate systems, I don't know . . ." She didn't know, all she was trying to do was reach.
(p.159, blue penguin edition)

ghosts spirits essences, occult, gnostic, and premonitions and precognitions, parapsychology, metaphysical interactions between the planes of life and death, the masonic astral traveling is just one example where, a rare instance where, iirc, Lyle Bland is chosen to be part of the (((Order))), who is accepted among those who operate behind the scenes of reality, one of Them, embodying one of the countless systems out There, one of Them, upon whom is influenced the nature of chance itself

that being said i can't wait until we get there because that episode was insane

[Anonymous No.10521130]

Thought you guys might find this amusing, /ourbook/ was mentioned in this video about Corporate obfuscation. There's a formula used to calculate how easy something is to read. It's called the Flesch readability score. Higher score means it's easier to understand, lower score means it's more difficult to understand.

- Newspaper comics (93)
- Sports illustrated (63)
- WSJ (43)
- IRS Tax code "The holy book of confusing corporate jargon" comes in at an impressive (-6)

So I found a calculator, took the first large chunk I could find from the last thread, and plugged it in.

https://readable.io/text/
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.
Gravity's Rainbow has a Flesch Reading Ease score of (-60.5) ahahahahahahahahahah -60.5!
Clearly, this shit is not brainlet friendly.
https://youtu.be/4ab2ZeZ-krY?t=3m30s

[Anonymous No.10521303]

>>10521130
Eh. I plugged in the first page from "A screaming comes across the sky" to "It is a judgement from which there is no appeal" and I got a Flesch Reading Ease score of 67.2.
Someone less lazy than I could copy the entire text of GR to get an "accurate" number of what I can only assume is a rather arbitrary readability measure.

[Anonymous No.10521776]

>>10512568
its basically IJ uncle book. its laborious AF to read.

[Anonymous No.10522093]

I'm getting desillusioned people. I'm few hundred pages in and tired of all things constantly happening. Does the book lead up to something and tie off nicely? Does it all mean something?

[Anonymous No.10522891]

>>10522093
>Does it all mean something?
only everything

[Anonymous No.10523101]

>>10517546
I'm still on track, but mostly lurking.

[Anonymous No.10523503]

>>10522093
If you're looking for a clear plot with resolution and immediately apparent purpose this may not be the book for you.

[Anonymous No.10524018]

>>10523503
I want someone to convince me to finish it

[Anonymous No.10524086]

>>10524018
we all in this together b, maybe it would have been better to have some more break days, or lighter reading days, maybe not...but we in this, we out chere, we can do it, you can do it

[Anonymous No.10524139]

New recruit signing in , starting episode 13

[Anonymous No.10524146]

>>10509453
Ah een mede westvlaming, toen waren we al met 2, van de kust of het binnenland?

[Anonymous No.10524179]

>>10524018
I'm not reading along, but read the book last year.
You should keep reading. Don't expect traditional plot progression or for everything to be tied up perfectly in a regular way.
I was very satisfied by the progression of "plot" and the ending. A lot of people say Pynchon blue balls you with his books, but it was the exact opposite for me with GR.
I wavered a bit in part 1, but by the time part 2 was coming to a close I was all in. If you've made it this far you will be fine.

[Anonymous No.10524854]

sloth rop

[Anonymous No.10525597]

[Anonymous No.10525695]

What are some of your favorite passages so far? This one from today's reading really struck me:
"When They chose numbers, red, black, odd, even, what did They mean by it? What Wheel did They set in motion? ... The Forbidden Wing. Oh, the hand of a terrible croupier is that touch on the sleeves of his dreams: all in his life of what has looked free or random, is discovered to've been under some Control, all the time, the same as a fixed roulette wheel––where only destinations are important, attention is to long-term statistics, not individuals: and where the House always does, of course, keep turning a profit. . . ." (211 - 212)

How many people are still here? I'm glad we've all made it this far.

[Anonymous No.10525793]

Are you guys going to reread the first part after you finish it to connect all the dots?
I would really like to give this book a second read but having to read with a pc on my side all the time again kinda kills my boner.
>tfw ywn have your brain directly wired into all the data in the internet so you can catch every reference and understand all the implications of them into the plot just as you read and also shitpost on /lit/

[Anonymous No.10526028]

[Anonymous No.10526056]

>>10526028
Ha!

epppic

[Anonymous No.10526122]

These are not heresies so much as imperial outcomes, necessary as the black man's presence, from acts of minor surrealism - which, taken in the mass, are an act of suicide, but which in its pathology, in its dreamless version of the real, the Empire commits by the thousands every day, completely unaware of what it's doing....

[Anonymous No.10526207]

>>10525695
Wrote that passage down, too. Pretty good.

What do you guys think about Sir Stephen hinting at Joyce (Dedalus, Nora, has his way with words, getting shitfaced)?

[Anonymous No.10526506]

>>10524146
Uit de ex-wereldstad in het binnenland.
Jij?

[Anonymous No.10527509]

Bump

[Anonymous No.10528152]

[Anonymous No.10528215]

>>10528152
Up voted

[Anonymous No.10528240]

>>10526506 ten westen van Oostende.

[Anonymous No.10528260]

I'm curious to see how many we've lost (or gained?) since day one. Congrats to all who've made it this far.

http://www.strawpoll.me/14820796

[Anonymous No.10528404]

Ahhhhhhhhh! Started screaming out loud during the end of episode four.

[Anonymous No.10528713]

>>10509440
That part of CoL49 with the old tattooed sailor is one of my favorite bits of the book.

[Anonymous No.10529233]

>>10528152
but we are finishing it, anon

[Anonymous No.10529351]

Slacking some, was studying for a few exams but I'm caught up now on annotations
> another episode in some huge pathological dream of Stalin's
Whether intended or not, this brought to mind the Dream of the Red King in Alice in Wonderland. People in Soviet Russia were real, like Alice, only in that they exist in the Red King's (Stalin) dreams. And as Alice learned, crying can only make matters worse: her tears cannot make her any more real and crying risks waking the king -- in which case, of course, no more Alice.

> RHIP
"Rank has its privileges."

>Wormwood Scrubs School Tie
Wormwood Scrubs Prison, in London, was built by convicts in 1874; that Slothrop would wear a prison school tie says a lot about his (and Pynchon's) sense of humor. Hand-painted ties also feature in Inherent Vice.

More on Wormwood, as it is mentioned a lot in this work in particular: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/08/wormwood-scrubs-inspector-dramatic-increase-violence-london-prison

It has a bad reputation.

[Anonymous No.10529392]

>humming "You Can Do a Lot of Things at the Seaside That You Can’t Do in Town"
This pre-World War I British music hall tune was composed by Mark Sheridan. It appears as the "B" side of his recording of the early WWI song "Belgium Put the Kibosh on the Kaiser."
>lyrics:
https://monologues.co.uk/musichall/Songs-Y/You-Can-Do-Things-At-The-Seaside.htm

>Choate
A prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut; now known as Choate Rosemary Hall after a merger in 1971 of two eminent single-sex establishments.

>My little chickadee...gets in bed w-with that goat?
My Little Chickadee (1940) is a Universal comedy/western motion picture starring Mae West and W. C. Fields. Fields (of course) ends up in bed with a goat

My Little Chickadee is a 1940 American comedy-western film starring Mae West and W.C. Fields, and featuring Joseph Calleia, Ruth Donnelly, Margaret Hamilton, Donald Meek, Willard Robertson, Dick Foran, William B. Davidson, and Addison Richards. The film was released by Universal Studios. It was directed by Edward F. Cline. The original music was written by Ben Oakland (song "Willie of the Valley") and Frank Skinner.

West reportedly wrote the original screenplay, with Fields contributing one extended scene set in a bar. Universal decided to give the stars equal screenplay credit, perhaps to avoid the appearance of favoritism, but the move incensed West, who declined to re-team with Fields afterwards. The stars spoofed themselves and the Western genre, with West providing a series of her trademark double entendres.(wikipedia)

>They are playing croquet.
The surreal quality of a treed Slothrop landing in the midst of senior officers and plump ladies playing croquet brings to mind Alice playing croquet with the plump Queen of Hearts, the King of Hearts and their court in Alice in Wonderland.

There seems to be a lot of Alice in Wonderland references in this part. Looking back now I could put together even more references to the work

>Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence did not command regular troops in the Mediterranean Theatre, as described by Weisenburger, but led Arab partisan operations against the Turks during the war. The subaltern’s snide remarks to Slothrop echo the scene in David Lean's 1962 Lawrence of Arabia when Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) first appears at British headquarters in Cairo wearing Arab clothing.

This is referring to T.E. Lawrence in WW1

[Anonymous No.10530300]

Thoughts so far?

[Anonymous No.10530964]

I'm 8 days behind schedule.

[Anonymous No.10531230]

>>10529233
Okay, let's do this. Hopefully schedule friend is still on board. If not, I'll make a schedule for the rest tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.10531266]

>>10531230
How many are behind schedule? Would you mind adding a day or two for us to play catch-up?

[Anonymous No.10531308]

>>10531230
I'm still here, anon! I've got the schedule for Part 3 ready to go whenever.

>>10531266
Not sure how many people too far behind. The last day of Part 2 is light and is followed by a day off so that should give people some time to catch up.

[Anonymous No.10532283]

[Anonymous No.10532357]

almost caught up.

[Anonymous No.10532379]

Here's the schedule for Parts 1-3. Part Three is split into two eight-day chunks with a day off in between. Episode 11 is pretty lengthy (~40 pages) so I figured we could split it across a couple of days. The first half of Ep. 11 ends after the song "Victim in a Vacuum."

I stopped adding line endings so as to not give away too much not that this book is spoilable but if you think they're helpful and want me to add them, let me know.

[Anonymous No.10532440]

>>10532379
Thank you so much

[Anonymous No.10533405]

>>10532283
What is this?

Neat

[Anonymous No.10533583]

>>10533405

[Anonymous No.10534034]

[Anonymous No.10534631]

[Anonymous No.10534765]

>>10531266
I'm 4 days behind schedule now

[Anonymous No.10535147]

[Anonymous No.10535537]

>>10532379
Thank you based Anon.

[Anonymous No.10535995]

>>10534765
>I'm 4 days behind schedule now
im 27 days behind schedule ....went beyond the zero....

[Anonymous No.10536428]

[Anonymous No.10537254]

keepin it alive

[Anonymous No.10537273]

>>10506280
Would you cucks enjoy an app that let you start reading groups like this?

Say you had the ability to upload a pdf of the novel and send it out to all participants, and you could read the passages each day inside the app.

It could notify you when a group discussion was going to begin to discuss todays passage.

Or is the fun of it talking about it on 4chan? I assume thats the case but have been toying about with the idea of making some form of book club app for a few days now.

[Anonymous No.10537538]

>>10537273
I wouldn't like an app like that, no. If I'm going to be part of a reading group, I want to read a physical book and talk about it here. Threads like this are perfect because they're voluntary, anonymous, and they let people read whatever edition or medium they like on their own time (i.e., without annoying push notifications). I know a lot of people were bugged by this, but I loved how this group just sprung up out of nowhere. It adds to the fun of it, I think.

[Anonymous No.10537889]

>>10537254
let it die. no one's reading it anyway, just every once in a while posting "omg so magical wow i love this book but damn its really hard and wow gomfgomfgomf so good."

[Anonymous No.10538611]

>>10537889
<<<r/yourawizardhairy

[Anonymous No.10539073]

[Anonymous No.10539100]

>>10532379
Geez, I only just finished episode 16. Is there hope for me to catch up?

[Anonymous No.10539101]

>>10537889
Please don't let it die. As soon as I'm done with my current book I'm looking forward to reading GR and joining the discussion.

[Anonymous No.10539120]

>>10539100
Even if you're not 'on schedule,' keep reading! I don't know about other people but I'm still interested in talking about earlier parts of the book. Any discussion is good. How are you liking it so far?

[Anonymous No.10539143]

>>10532379
youre the best man, thanks a bundle, you are appreciated

[Anonymous No.10539426]

[Anonymous No.10539720]

>>10506280
How many of us have fallen behind? Conversation seems to have really fallen off after the first part. I haven't even finished it yet myself which puts me almost a week behind.

I'm not saying we should put things on hold but I feel like there's a silent majority of people who are not caught up and the conversation is suffering as a result.

[Anonymous No.10540256]

>>10539720
I'm real far behind. I can't read twenty pages of this shit every day because my brain is three sizes too small.

[Anonymous No.10540287]

Is the "cheap nihilism" Prentice talks about Mexico's detached attitude towards the seemingly arbitrary distribution of rocket attacks? What is he referring to there? And why does Mexico get so butthurt when Jessica brings that conversation with Prentice up to him?

[Anonymous No.10540299]

>>10538611
maybe if you tried Harry Potter you could manage 20 pages a day without experiencing whiplash

[Anonymous No.10540300]

>>10539120
I'm enjoying it. I want to hear more about the German side of things like that episode earlier.

[Anonymous No.10540409]

>>10540299
im ahead of schedge and doing fine

[Anonymous No.10540525]

>>10540409
i can tell

[Anonymous No.10540634]

>>10540525
do tell, pray tell

[Anonymous No.10540943]

[Anonymous No.10541325]

Started late
"The oven" is just referring to the sodomite group that moves the V2 launch site around? Or did I miss something deeper?

[Anonymous No.10541423]

I've been waiting for the group to catch up to the point I'm at. Think you're almost there now so will dive back in feet first and try to add to the conversation here.

Don't listen to the doubters! All you have to do is keep going, it doesn't matter if you're behind. Eat a banana and carry on.

[Anonymous No.10541449]

"You will have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood."

The epigraph to Part Two is attributed to Merian C. Cooper, who produced King Kong in 1933. Cooper said this line to actress Fay Wray, who starred as Ann Darrow, when he was telling Wray his plans for her co-star. Wray thought "the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood" was Clark Gable until Cooper showed her a picture of King Kong scaling the empire state building.

A couple times now, Jessica has been compared to Fay Wray:
"It's eminently fair," Roger now cynical, looking very young, she thinks. "Everyone's equal. Same chances of getting hit. Equal in the eyes of the rocket." To which she gives him her Fay Wray look, eyes round as can be, red mouth about to open in a scream, till he has to laugh. "Oh, stop."(58)

"Meantime, Jessica has gone into her Fay Wray number. This is a kind of protective paralysis, akin to your own response when the moray eel jumps you from the ceiling." (279)

About 20 pages earlier, the first (?) mention of King Kong, during the scene at Raoul's party:
"Slothrop is just settling down next to a girl in a prewar Worth frock and a face like Tenniel's Alice, same forehead, nose, hair, when from outside comes this most godawful clanking, snarling, crunching of wood, girls come running terrified out of the eucalyptus trees and into the house and right between them what comes crashing now into the pallid lights of the garden but––why the Sherman Tank itself! headlights burning like the eyes of King Kong, treads spewing grass and pieces of flagstone as it manoeuvres around and comes to a halt." (250)

[Anonymous No.10541522]

Pynchon compares Slothrop's sexual conquests, as well as the documentation of them, to Mozart's Don Giovanni:

"No, it was he and he alone who authorized the Anglo-American team of Harvey Speed and Floyd Perdoo to investigate a random sample of Slothropian sex adventures. Budget was available, and what harm could it do? They went off practically *skipping*, obsessive as Munchkins, out into the erotic Poisson. Don Giovanni's map of Europe––640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey *but*, but, but––in Spain! in Spain, 1003!––is Slothrop's map of London, and the two gumshoes become so infected with the prevailing fondness out here for mindless pleasures that they presently are passing whole afternoons sitting out in restaurant gardens dawdling over chrysanthemum salads and mutton casseroles..." (274)

In Don Giovanni, Don Juan has many sexual endeavors across Europe. The aria Pynchon alludes to is sung by Don Juan's servant, Leporello, in Act I Scene 5. In this aria, Leporello sings to Elvira, one of the woman Don Juan slept with, and shows her a catalog he's been keeping of every woman Don Juan has had sex with.
https://youtu.be/qgC3GGxF1E0?t=7

This passage is also the first appearance of an early title Pynchon had for the novel, Mindless Pleasures:
"According to Gerald Howard, who was an assistant editor at Viking Penguin during GR's editorial process, Pynchon submitted the manuscript without a title, "which at some point acquired the working title Mindless Pleasures... Although Mindless Pleasures was used in Viking's original announcement to the press, no one at all seemed pleased with it (it comes from a phrase that occurs twice in the book), and Kennebeck floated, with the air of semidesperation one feels in these situations, such duds as Powers That Be, Angel of the Preterite, Control, and Slothrop Dodging (well, you try it). I'm guessing that Pynchon came up with Gravity's Rainbow, which was perfection." (Pynchonwiki)

>>10541449
Also, another King Kong passage I forgot to add:
"...they are real, they are living, as you pretend to scream inside the Fist of the Ape." (281)

[Anonymous No.10541627]

Just read the part where Slothrop "saves" Katje from the octopus. What is Pointsman's endgame?

[Anonymous No.10541798]

>>10541627
I think he just wants to do research on slothrop so he can be like his idol Pavlov

[Anonymous No.10542380]

[Anonymous No.10542888]

[Anonymous No.10542896]

[Anonymous No.10542897]

>>10542380

[Anonymous No.10542915]

>>10511694

[Anonymous No.10542982]

>>10542897
>>10542915
was bumping the thread in style ya know

[Anonymous No.10542992]

>>10542982

[Anonymous No.10542997]

>>10542982
why not bump the thread by talking about the book?

[Anonymous No.10543187]

>>10542997
>>10542992
better than nothing, and I was just saying that incase that anon was failing to pettyly mock me, because my actions did indeed possess utility, and they maybe thought I was just being willy nilly, though I was, for I had no precise insights or intrigues to offer in regards to the book, but alas, better than nothing.

[Anonymous No.10543491]

[Anonymous No.10543660]

>>10543187
>>10543491
How far along are you? Do you like the book so far?

[Anonymous No.10543747]

>>10543660
all caught up, but starting page 287 now. Yeah I like it

[Anonymous No.10543761]

I am having difficulty following this book page to page. I am about 150 pages in and while I think I may understand what is going on narratively, I feel like I am missing out on a lot. Will anyone offer any reading tips?

I had the same issue with Infinite Jest that I finished in December. I am trying to get back into regular reading.

[Anonymous No.10543767]

>>10543761
ive been reading along to audio book
https://archive.org/details/GravitysRainbow001ADehissed/Gravity's+Rainbow+003A+dehissed.mp3

[Anonymous No.10543832]

>>10543761
Weisenburger's companion is great for explaining references and stuff if you're interested in that. It's practically a page by page guide.

[Anonymous No.10544226]

Slow down, please
The number of posts have decreased a lot
You need to slow down
I beg you

[Anonymous No.10544592]

>>10541522
Gentle reminder that Kierkegaard considered Don Giovanni as the archetype of man in the aesthetic phase.

[Anonymous No.10544621]

>>10544592
gentle reminder kierkegaerewr

[Anonymous No.10545132]

It seems like a lot of people are catching up and that the discussion has come to a halt. I wouldn't mind taking a few days off for people to catch up, I guess, but it wouldn't make sense to do that if the people that are behind are the vast minority.

For those that are behind schedule, how far behind are you?
Should we keep the current pace or take a few days and wait for people to catch up?

[Anonymous No.10545327]

>>10545132
can we read 2-3 pages a day instead of 20? 20 pages really cuts in to the time i use to call other anons plebs

[Anonymous No.10545792]

>>10545132
is it just me or did these past sections have a lot of sex scenes, middle of the book, the top of the rockets arc?

[Anonymous No.10546392]

>>10545132
Let’s keep the current pace. It’s very manageable. If you’re behind it’s because you are lazy, started late, or don’t have enough time in your life to be reading this anyways.

[Anonymous No.10546821]

>>10545132
Just got here

[Anonymous No.10547123]

>>10546392
I think it's really manageable, yeah. I've only gotten behind once or twice and it was around the days off so I always had time to catch up. I think keeping the current pace is best.

>>10546821
Oh that's not bad, to be honest. Part two is pretty quick and lots of fun.

[Anonymous No.10547625]

>>10506600
lurking this thread just now, but if this anon is still around i'd rec reading The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge at some point!

[Anonymous No.10548050]

I'm a little bit ahead. Is The Zone in anyway a Roadside Picnic reference? I've never read it, however I have seen Stalker and I wonder if it could have some significance, although I doubt it. I also got a little bit lost in between Slothorp's escape from the American soldiers and the Herero stuff, although I'm way past that now. Hope these thread don't die because it seems things are perhaps coming together now, but you might have also said that 100 pages in and been totally wrong. I sort of miss the White Visitation stuff, have't heard from Pointsman and Mexico for a while.

[Anonymous No.10548089]

>>10548050
I'm gonna keep these threads going and keep reading, even if it seems like nothing's going on here. I've only read the first few episodes of Part 3 so far, though, so I can't comment on what you said yet.

[Anonymous No.10548095]

>..say something provocative. Slothrop sticks his head out in the long tunnel and hollers in his most english accent "major marvey sucks"

[Anonymous No.10548109]

>>10548095
What happened on top of the train again? There's Slothrop and Major Marvey, and someone goes tumbling off and rolls down a hill or something?

[Anonymous No.10548142]

>>10548050
"It was first published in the Avrora literary magazine in 1972...first published in english in america in 1977"
gravitys rainbow published in 1973

The Zone is the (or maybe a) war zone, a place of a different kind of order and anarchy.

[Anonymous No.10548160]

>>10548109
I just got up to that line and thought it was funny, and the line soon after that

[Anonymous No.10548215]

>>10548142
I think The Zone refers (either wholly or in part) to Allied-occupied Germany and the different zones within them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Germany

[Anonymous No.10548392]

>>10548215
does the mysterious rocket have anything to do with the atom bomb?

[Anonymous No.10548409]

>>10548392
What do you mean? 00000? I've only just started part 3 today. I don't know much about what it means in the big picture.

[Anonymous No.10548796]

>>10548409
yeah, maybe,

[Anonymous No.10549514]

>>10548215
That is exactly what the Zone is, most of what Slothrop visits in GR is the region around Berlin and the coastal region North of it (in the Russian and British zones).

On another note, as people seem to be struggling to keep up and the discussion about the book seems to be slowing down alot, i'd like to ask you all a few baisc questions to get some GR related discussion going no matter where you are in the book.

Before you started reading GR, did you have any experience reading postmodernist literature or philosophy? Like, did you know enough about postmodernism to write a simple assignment on it?
I'm wondering what you guys were expecting getting into this. Let me put it like this:
>Have you read other postmodernist literature and if so, which?
>Have you read anything else by Pynchon?
>What do you know about postmodernist literature beside 'muh quirky tropes'? Have you read a work specifically on postmodernist fiction? (besides wikipedia)
>Could you name a few postmodernist philosophers and explain some of their most basic ideas? Like wikipedia style, but without having to consult it.
>Have you read anything at all by Derrida, Foucalt, Deleuze, Baudrillard or Lyotard?

If you rad the following quote in a journal, would you be able to understand it and discuss it in a meaningfull way?

>"Allthough I think that claiming postmodernism had a direct impact on the election of a man like Trump is an all too simple analysis, I think that postmodern relativism is a form of intellectual concrete degeneration which has played a role in the intellectual disarmament of the progressive left."

[Anonymous No.10549532]

>>10549514
cont.

How about the historical aspects of GR? I assume most of you have a solid grip on WWII history, but what about the details? To be clear, i'm not claiming those critical to understanding the text, but they do help.
>What do you know about the production of the V2 in Northern France?
>What do you know about German colonialism?
>What do you know of the Soviet's impact in Central Asia?
>Do you know which city was hit hardest by V2 missiles? (It's not London btw, that's why i'm asking)
Besides these 'details', did you have a good grasp of historical theory before going into this?
>Could you explain the difference between classic historicism and the postmodern approach to history and it's relation to GR?
>Do you know who Wallerstein was and why this is relevant to GR?
>What did you know about the historical aspect of the military industrial complex before getting into this? Do you know who coined the phrase? Who most famously used it and where? Why it was (and is still) an academic topic?
How about the other topics of the book? I guess those would fall under general education.
>What do you know about the difference between Freud's and Pavlov's approach? (As both are relevant here).
>Have you ever read an academic psychology textbook, even if it was just an introduction?

To be clear: i'm not insulting you guys, or claiming you are stupid, i'm genuinely asking. I'm really curious.
I personally think these kinds of things are part of what makes the difference between an in depth read of GR and a superficial one.
I know I hadn't done all of these things before I read postmodernist fiction. Hell, I hadn't even done all of them before I read GR for the first time (allthough, to be honest, I did do most of them).

[Anonymous No.10549623]

>>10549532
If you'd like, could you say something on how an understanding of postmodernism could help you in understanding what GR is doing or is trying to say? I have read works of Pynchon before but sadly still a limited understanding of postmodernism :(

[Anonymous No.10549755]

>>10549623
I think an understanding of the postmodernist concept of 'truth' (or its impossiblity) is interesting in the case of GR, especially since Slothtrop is trying to piece togheter a truth that in a postmodernist view might not necessarily 'exist'. Slothtrop touches on the 'sublime' or that which exceeds the human grasp and starts going mad because of it (not to be confused with the romantic concept or the Kantian sublime).
The (radical) postmodernist idea that all historiography is self-referential, that objective historical truth doesn't exist and that history is a construct in the same way as literature is also relevant to the themes of GR. I don't know if Pynchon agreed with these ideas (allthough i don't think so, at least not entirely).

In my opinion, some background in postmodern philosophy helps to understand what GR is trying to say about the nature of reality, history, society, identity and the sublime.
>Slothrop 'losing' his identity
>Where is the line between fiction and reality and how do they influence eachother? E.g. the Schwarzkommando.
Knowlegde of postmodern literature lets you appreciate how he's saying it. (Instead of "lolz so random and muh prose).
>The arc of the plot and its significance.
>Characters tangled in a web of 'real' history, pop-culture and weird fiction.
Even an introduction level understanding of psychoanalysis and behaviourism helps you pick up on the themes of identity and (sexual) behaviour as well as some of the symbolism in the book.
>The rocket being compared to fallic object on several occasions.
>Obession with Death and Lust (Eros and Thanatos anyone?)

[Anonymous No.10549768]

>>10549755
Could you rec me some introductory thing I could read to get some grasp on it

[Anonymous No.10549776]

>>10506577
Weren't the Ancient Egyptians dismissive of the brain's functionality and believed the heart did the thinking? Or was that superstition just relegated to an era?

[Anonymous No.10549777]

>>10549514
>Have you read other postmodernist literature and if so, which?
The only other postmodernist lit I've read is V. and The Crying of Lot 49.
>Have you read anything else by Pynchon?
See above. I'm reading Pynchon in order.
>What do you know about postmodernist literature beside 'muh quirky tropes'? Have you read a work specifically on postmodernist fiction? (besides wikipedia)
I haven't read any essays or books about postmodernist lit, no. It's hard to explain, but I understand the gist of it but I have a hard time explaining it. This video comes to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2doZROwdte4
>Could you name a few postmodernist philosophers and explain some of their most basic ideas? Like wikipedia style, but without having to consult it.
I'm not really interested in philosophers and/or poetry, nor am I really interested in reading their work.
>Have you read anything at all by Derrida, Foucalt, Deleuze, Baudrillard or Lyotard?
I don't know who any of those people are, but maybe I've heard of what they've written. I'd appreciate if you elaborated on this.
>If you read the following quote...
I understand it for the most part but discussing it here would be off-topic and not in my interest, anyway.

[Anonymous No.10549784]

>>10549532
>>10549777
cont.
>What do you know about the production of the V2 in Northern France?
In Northern France? Nothing. Like with all Pynchon, my approach is to read the book with a general understanding of what it's about, look up references, locations, people, and other allusions that pique my interest as I go, and then read as many essays and critiques on the work after I've read it.
>What do you know about German colonialism?
Nothing, really.
>What do you know of the Soviet's impact in Central Asia?
Nada. My grasp on world history is pretty weak. I'm generally familiar with WWI and WWII but not too much beyond that, specifically.
>Do you know which city was hit hardest by V2 missiles? (It's not London btw, that's why i'm asking)
Nope. Like I said before, my grasp on history is very general. I tend to look things up as I go and try to understand what I'm reading as I'm going through the book.
>Could you explain the difference between classic historicism and the postmodern approach to history and it's relation to GR?
I kind of understand what you're asking but I'm not good at articulating what I would say.
>Do you know who Wallerstein was and why this is relevant to GR?
Didn't know who he was until just now. Can you elaborate on this, too?
>What did you know about the historical aspect of the military industrial complex before getting into this? Do you know who coined the phrase? Who most famously used it and where? Why it was (and is still) an academic topic?
Oh geez, I feel like I'm back in school. Nope.
>What do you know about the difference between Freud's and Pavlov's approach? (As both are relevant here).
Don't know a whole lot about Freud but I knew about Pavlov before.
>Have you ever read an academic psychology textbook, even if it was just an introduction?
No. I don't really read textbooks and don't have a huge interest in the subject.

[Anonymous No.10549811]

>>10549777
>>10549784
Good on you reading Pynchon in order.
>I don't know who any of those people are, but maybe I've heard of what they've written. I'd appreciate if you elaborated on this:
As far as the philosophers are concerned: I think the works of Foucault are especially relevant. He talks about how or society deals with control, from a historical aspect. His ideas about social discipline, control of ideas through education, language, image of sexuality... He basically explains the means of control and repression in liberal democracy in the West. Derrida's ideas about how history is formed by texts referring to other texts is also relevant to GR.
>the quote
Yeah, i don't want to discuss, it was just the first thing i could think of to test a basic day to day understanding of the political consequences of postmodernism.
>Northern France
If you ever get the chance to visit La Coupole (pic related), do. It's worth a visit and it's the kind of installation Slothrop visits in Germany.
>German colonialism
I won't give you a history class, but reading at least the wikipedia page is kinda crucial to the herero plot if you ask me.
>Soviet's impact.
Idem, but what the Soviets did to language there is pretty much an example of Foucault's control through language which is touched upon in the book, also check West-Flemish post above about alphabets.
>City
I don't know how relevant this is, but it's a good test to see how much people know about the Vergeltungswaffe while reading GR.
>Historicism and postmodern history
Do try?
>Wallerstein
Read up on his world-system theory if you want, i guarrantee you it's relevant to GR. (Note that his world-system ≠ they)
>Military Industrial Complex
I could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure this was a big part of CoL49 as well. Read the wikipage at the very, very least. Ideally, read the Power Elite by Mills.
>psychology
Meh, i get it. Shame really, it's a core part of GR.

Did I miss anything? I'll try to answer all question as good as I can (which isn't that good to be honest, i'm nowhere near a scholar on postmodernism or Pynchon or WWII)

[Anonymous No.10549823]

hmm of all these technically inept writer fags out there Pynchon is the only one I could actually imagine browsing this autistic shithole forum

[Anonymous No.10549835]

>>10549811
Thank you for the recommendations. For now, I'll definitely check out the wiki articles. I don't really have a lot of time to read other texts alongside GR, but I'll make a note of them.

[Anonymous No.10549848]

>>10549768
>About the military industrial complex
The Power Elite by sociologist C. Wright Mills
>Foucault on means of control in liberal democratic societies
Madness and Civilization
Discipline and Punish
History of Sexuality
Discourse on Language
All of these are worth reading in their own right, but a decent intro might be Power by Faubion or The Essential Foucault by Rose. The bare minimum is his wikipedia page.
>Derrida
Writing and difference is a good collection of his lectures, but really same as with Foucault, if he interests you check the wikipedia for books of him you might read and to get a general gist or read an introduction.

I read about postmodernism in a uni textbook about historical criticism and one about literary history as introduction but googling introduction to postmodernism should give you a few options (be aware of the difference between postmodern theory and literature, they are often treated separately). Same for historical criticism, Wallerstein and psychology. Read the wikipedia page about Wallerstein's worldsystem-theory, about Eros and Thanatos in the work of Freud and about the methods of Pavlov and Skinner if you want to go short.

[Anonymous No.10549894]

>>10549532
>Could you explain the difference between classic historicism and the postmodern approach to history
Can you talk about what you know about this? What do you mean by a postmodern approach to history?

[Anonymous No.10549903]

>>10549755
>The (radical) postmodernist idea that all historiography is self-referential
By this you mean "judgement of history"? All judging the value of historical events are self refeerential? And attempting to understand motives?

>that objective historical truth doesn't exist
There is a difference, a great grand one, between objective historical truth not existing at all: and objective historical truth absolutely existing, but just being extremely difficult to fully know and grasp and understand

[Anonymous No.10549985]

>>10549894
Basically what this anon is asking about:
>>10549903
In the most radical sense, a postmodern belief could be that judging the value of all historical events is self-referential. Even attempting to understand the motives. Because everything you say about history, is an interpretation of academic literature, which is someon else's interpretation of said literature and intepretation of often written soucres, which themselves are written by an individual. There's the level of yourself, a subject with specific thought and history, reading work of others (with their own thoughts and history), reffering to sources which are also just referring to the 'objective' facts. It's with this kind of reasoning postmodernists might (not all do) conclude that all historiography is just texts and person, referring to other texts and persons, with very little (or even no) reference to reality.
There is a huge difference there indeed, between it not existing and it being hard to know and understand. I believe that the postmodern idea is that it is impossible to know anything else than the reflection of history in other peoples minds and writing, never history itself. The most radical idea is that because of this it doens't exist at all.

I myself thin it's extremely hard to know, some parts of it will remain impossible to know, but that it's quite obvious something did exist. This is easier for material facts: it's relatively easy to proves castle's exist. It's harder for immaterial things like... the emergence of a centralized state in medieval France. Or the existence of a military industrial complex behind WWII.
Busy day, so i didn't bother to spellcheck, sorry in advance.

[Anonymous No.10550995]

[Anonymous No.10551023]

Just gonna post a couple of fragments I've really enjoyed over the last few sections. Can't be fucked getting into definitions of postmodernism.

"Information. What's wrong with dope and women? Is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange."


"perhaps it had to do with the people somehow, pedestrian mortality, restless crisscrossing of needs or desperations in one fateful piece of street . . . dialectics, matrices, archetypes all need to connect, once in a while, back to some of that proletarian blood, to body odors and senseless screaming across a table, to cheating and last hopes, or else all is dusty Dracularity, the West's ancient curse . . ."


He's good isn't he the old goofmeister. Really enjoying this now. I'm not really one for detailed analysis on a first read so am just enjoying the ride (and other anons takes in these threads). Feel like I'm pretty much alright regarding plot etc, sure lots of references are going over my head but it's fun as fuck to read.

[Anonymous No.10551193]

>>10549755
Spoiler:

Is the Kirgiz Light also this absolute truth you describe?

[Anonymous No.10551905]

[Anonymous No.10551940]

>>10550995
>>10551905
You don't have to clog up the thread with off-topic images, anon, nor do you have to bump the thread. There's plenty to talk about.

This anon >>10549514 asked some very good questions, so why not answer them?

[Anonymous No.10551952]

>>10551940
fine I will never bump the thread again and I hope it dies and you too

[Anonymous No.10551981]

>>10551940
ok I will not bump anymore and hope the thread dies

[Anonymous No.10551990]

>>10551952
>>10551981
Geez, it was more than one person? What about all the school of rock pictures? What did any of that shit contribute?

[Anonymous No.10552025]

>>10551990
no, I deleted that post, I didnt do the school of rock, that was someone attempting to mock me

[Anonymous No.10552121]

>>10552025
Shit, I'm sorry. I thought it was one person being a shit eater. I appreciate you keeping the thread alive. I'm just frustrated that there's not as much discussion as I thought there would be.

[Anonymous No.10552174]

>>10552121
As I already said myself awhile ago, I have fallen behind.

[Anonymous No.10552181]

>>10552121
I might be reading ahead, I think I am, but the part discussing chemicals is really amazing and beautiful

[Anonymous No.10552193]

>>10552174
I've lost track of who's who in all this. Even if you're behind, I'm glad you're reading with us. Sorry again.

>>10552181
Are you before or after the chase scene between Slothrop and Major Marvey? The description of the shape of the tunnels was really nice.

[Anonymous No.10553507]

>>10551193
After reading the book, the kirghiz light was something i didn't get at all. I have no idea.

[Anonymous No.10554357]

In "A Journey Into the Mind of P," Allen Rush compares The Zone to "a quantum smashing chamber. Everything's been smashed. This is a small moment where all the energy is up in the air for grabs, and whoever can force their will on it the most is going to coalesce those particles...In my opinion, good ol' Tyrone Slothrop does what we call quantum tunnels. Quantum tunneling is when a particle––completely against all laws of logic––vanishes from the scene and appears somewhere where it cannot possibly be by logic. This happens all the time in sub-particle physics."
https://youtu.be/bwXLDvAk5LA?t=3857

In sub-particle physics, there's a phenomenon that happens in what is called the Double Slit Experiment. In short, the outcome of the experiment changes depending on whether or not the particles are being observed. Here's a video that better explains the idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tKncAdlHQ

Back in Part Two:
"Slothrop having about decided to make a flanking run for the tank when YYYBLAAANNNGGG! the cannon lets loose an enormous roar, flame shooting three feet into the room, shock wave driving eardrums in to middle of brain, blowing everybody against the far walls ... But loud noise and all, look––he doesn't seem to have an erection. Hmm. This is a datum London never got, because nobody was looking." (251)

[Anonymous No.10555187]

>>10554357
Nice going anon. That part about Slothtrops behaviour in the zone is spot on if you ask me.

Hate to say that Slothrop wasn't conditioned to loud noise though.

[Anonymous No.10556334]

>>10539720
I'm almost to part 2 (but its my second reading)
>>10540287
>Is the cheap nihilism referring to Mexico's detached attitude?
Yes
>What does this refer to?
Mexico's detached attitude
>>10541325
>The oven
Der kinderoven (the child oven)
The Oven is the rocket site
Katje and Gottfried are basically held captive (like the jews) by Blicero (the Nazi). They are acting out a myth (hansel and gretel) rooted in their culture (life imitating fiction/following archetypes) where Blicero (the witch) wants to cook the children (parallel to nazis cremating jews?(not too unlikely considering the dodo section a few pages later)) but because they all know how the story ends Blicero expects Katje (Gretel) to push him into the oven (death by heat/betraying him to the allies and bombing the rocket site) but in the end Blicero still manages to put Gottfried in rocket 00000 as sacrifice (pushes Hansel into the oven)
That's really the most I can make of it, I'd like to hear your interpretations.
>>10541798
Basically. Because Pointsman is a behaviorist to a fault, he actually believes Slothrops boners are causing the rockets to fall and he's seeking to uncover that link between cause and effect (mainly for his own glory)
>>10549514
>>10549532
Not well versed in postmodern theory in the slightest but I think it pervades our society enough that we inherently sort of see history and understanding in the ways you're explaining. Based on the couple Pynchon books I've read, I feel like his works boil down to the illusion of understanding (with all its different implications). The illusion is a result of our language-structured reality.
Please let me know if I'm way off the mark. I'd like to understand GR in the best possible light and contributions like yours help keep this discussion alive

[Anonymous No.10556569]

Is reading comprehension just a meme?Ultimately, what does is matter that you "get" what you're reading. As long as you ingest the words, they become part of you

[Anonymous No.10556589]

>>10556334
>Gottfried
Too cheap of name play?
Gottfried is a masculine German given name. It is derived from the Old High German name Godafrid, recorded since the 7th century. The name is composed of the elements god- (conflated from the etyma for 'God' and 'good', and possibly further conflated with gaut) and frid- ('peace, protection').

Got-Fried

[Anonymous No.10556877]

What should the next thread picture be?

[Anonymous No.10557079]

>>10556877
Someone do a bad shop of a where's Waldo cover, where's Slothrop? with pynchon's face on Waldo.

[Anonymous No.10557151]

How many people here have read Society of the Spectacle or The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America?

Or are into how interpersonal relationships are structured? Maybe some history making as finger pointing? Sometimes even a lone digit pointed to the sky....

[Anonymous No.10557165]

>>10556877

[Anonymous No.10557170]

>>10557165
That's actually great

[Anonymous No.10557288]

>>10557079
>>10557170
Thanks. Here's a Waldo version, poorly done as per request

[Anonymous No.10557368]

>>10557288
ooh shit i've got another one in the works. i like this a lot though

[Anonymous No.10557427]

>>10557079
>>10557288
Here it is. I had too much fun making this.

[Anonymous No.10557546]

>>10557288
Better than I could've imagined anon
>>10557427
I like this a lot too

[Anonymous No.10558293]

Did Blicero Weissman rape Katje and the other guy in the Hansel and Gretel game thing?

Is the Schwarzkommando a real thing? It seems so now, but I thought it was a fiction made up by PISCES.

What is the significance of 00000?

Why did Marvy want to kill Slothrop if they're both American?

What is the Final Zero?

Sorry but I don't understand these and the Pynchon wiki hasn't helped. Not demanding answers, but if you feel like it or think it might start good discussion please help anons. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.10558471]

>>10556334
This anon gets it.

And yeah, I think that this point of view towards history has found its way into the mainstream mentality of our age, it's still relevant in academic circles (allthough not followed as much as say, 30-40 years ago).
The illusion of understanding and the implications of that on the personal level are a mayor theme in at least GR and Col49 (i can't speak for his other works).
>>10557151
I haven't read it. Could you give me a quick run down on it's relevance to GR?
I had a college course on interpersonal relationships back when I was studying social work, but if there was something there that's directly applicable to GR, i'm not seeing it.
>>10557427
This is amazing. Great content.
>>10557288
This is nice as well.
>>10558293
>Rape
Yes, big time. Allthough they might have been sort of into it, it's hard to say no to an SS captain so i'd say there was no real consent.
>Schwarzkommando
Read on, it will become clear soon and your confusion is shared by the characters in the book.
>00000
Finish the book...
>Marvey
Iirc. Slothrop insulted him? Or Marvy thought he was a spy? Or both? Or rememberd that he pushed him off train? I really forgot.
>Final Zero.
I don't remember, but my first guess would be the definite borderline of conditioning.

Sorry, it's really been a while and I have some books to read before I start my second read-through..

[Anonymous No.10559817]

antiuninvaluable bump

[Anonymous No.10560280]

>>10556569
>Please enter me words, make me a big boy, I need to be very strong, word-wise
W-what you want to say is that even without full comprehension you'll pick up a lot of stuff and reading a book is still worthwhile.

[Anonymous No.10560482]

>>10558471
Thanks anon!

[Anonymous No.10561497]

holy shit this is one of them books you just dont want to end; at parts it feels a bit sluggish and bashing you over the head to get through but you will miss it when its gone: and the writing is so dense and all over the place it is hard to memorize (like I sort of do with some movies or this and that, to the point where it would feel excruciating to sit through it again because you are so familiar with the essential gist around every corner, so ingrained in your brain its just enough already I dont need to re experience this its right there) so I feel it can be read over and over and the lines and phrases and statements and themes and phonetics and poetic prose just can wash over you and timelessly be pleasant. There is just so much room to breathe (and at times none, equally enthralling) and so much up and down to the sonorous vernacular of writing, that every line is a treat to experience it and can never get sick of any of them, I imagine each time I read or hear a line it is just as fresh.

[Anonymous No.10561793]

>>10561497
I haven't been on lit in like 3 years and your post makes me really happy, and I'm probably gonna start GR, only got halfway through last try, but i can relate to your words man

[Anonymous No.10562072]

>>10561793
sweet man, best of luck and joy

[Anonymous No.10562333]

whats with the random 'film cues, camera directions': I know some of it is a film being made, katje, and then shown to the octopus: but I felt like there were cues beyond related to that: I do feel like I recall hearing something about the ending so wonder if its related to that

[Anonymous No.10562635]

>The peer flung himself at full length, Attitude 8.11, Torpor, Undergraduate.

I have no idea what he was going for with this sentence.

[Anonymous No.10562775]

>>10562635
post surrounding sentences

[Anonymous No.10562800]

>>10562775
I think I get it now anyway, it's when Slothrop first meets Sir Dodson-Truck (page 209 in my Penguin copy).

>The man just materialized one day, out on the beach in a black suit, shoulders starred with dandruff from thinning carrot hair, coming into view against the white face of the Casino, which trembled over him as he approached. Slothrop was reading a Plasticman comic. Katje was dozing in the sun, face-up. But when his footpads reached her hearing, she turned on one elbow to wave hello. The peer flung himself at full length, Attitude 8.11, Torpor, Undergraduate. “So this is Lieutenant Slothrop.”

I'm thinking it's just describing Slothrop lying on the beach looking up at Dodson-Truck (attitude 8.11, aviation terminology I think) as he lazily reads his comic book. The peer being Dodson-Truck. No big deal, just a strange sentence.

[Anonymous No.10562916]

>>10562333
Spoiler The book is a film you're watching in a theater as the rocket from the novels opening is about to strike YOU directly. The chapter breaks (□□□□□) are film sprockets
>>10562800
>materialized
This is the important word here. Dodson-Truck doesn't just stumble upon Slothrop...

[Anonymous No.10563767]

>>10506280
is this readable?

[Anonymous No.10563792]

>>10561497
was it hard to type with pynchon's dick in your hand?

[Anonymous No.10564050]

>>10562916
literally the best film ever made. Why has Pynchon never made a real film himself? If he was so interested and had such a knack and likely the resources and connections?

[Anonymous No.10564051]

>>10563792
is it hard to be an idiot and like shitty writers and feel compelled to attempt to say something to someone who likes not shitty writers?

[Anonymous No.10564105]

This book made me pick up the kazoo

[Anonymous No.10564129]

>>10562916
>The chapter breaks (□□□□□) are film sprockets

i thought they were the bolts in the rocket, like we're literally in the fucking rocket

[Anonymous No.10564414]

>>10564105
GUH-HUH

[Anonymous No.10564531]

How many pages in are you all?

[Anonymous No.10564773]

Someone make a new thread, because this rockets bout to land

[Anonymous No.10565606]

>>10564051
pynchon must be pretty small if you're this butthurt over it

[Anonymous No.10566161]

>>10565606
how butthurt are you ASSuming I am? I wish every person ever when they are losing an argument and made to feel as stupid as they are but we know what should be much more and theres no need to comment on any of what im saying here, that it is very lame of them to project that someone is le ebin butthurt XDDDD just because they wrote a 5 second response with a little spicy flavor. What a retarded thing for you to say.

you must be... you must be sooooo butthurt...

I guess this is further proof right 19 year old?

[Anonymous No.10566182]

>>10565606
to be honest you said something pointless and stupid and I hate that which is pointless and stupid. Furthermore, your rebuttal is furthermore pointless and stupid. "I said you like the writer you wrote about writing!", I said you are stupid, "why are you so butthurt!!!", again, you are pointless and stupid. preempting your rebuttal, "woahhhhh bro...dude...bruh...bruh...smdh....you are double ebin double butthurt squared XDDDD"...again, you are super duper triple dipple pointless and stupid

[Anonymous No.10566253]

New thread >>10566245