/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13232391]

Alright, I actually did it. I actually finished this. It was difficult, but I really enjoyed it. The only question I have is, what exactly happened? Like in the whole book? I honestly feel so lost still. So many vignettes...

[Anonymous No.13232477]

Somewhat related, did all that pedophilia even happen? Was Slothrop just fucking crazy and made it all up?

[Anonymous No.13232982]

Were the bananas important?!

[Anonymous No.13233002]

>>13232391
>what exactly happened
a guy named Tom sat down in the 70's on acid and wrote a book

[Anonymous No.13233035]

>>13233002
Should I have read it on acid then?

[Anonymous No.13233090]

[Anonymous No.13233098]

>>13232982
yes, if you do not understand the bananas you have no hope of understanding GR

[Anonymous No.13233105]

>>13233090
yikes

[Anonymous No.13233112]

>>13233090
>OMG I LOVE HARRY POTTER!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.13234550]

There’s a whole interweaving or themes, symbols, and imagery which ties into the plot in a complex way (from one point of view) but also in a very simple, straight-in-your-face way. This sounds paradoxical. The thing about Pynchon is that on a sentence-to-sentence, scene-to-scene level, he can be very dense. However, he’s pretty in-your-face about his themes and symbols if you can understand the story. What he’s doing is combining the ideas of sadomasochism, duality, entropy, and Pavlovian conditioning in a way such that it runs throughout the whole story and is a commentary on the modern human condition, on pollution, and on war. In Pavlovian conditioning, as Pynchon points out, there’s an “ultra-paradoxical phase” where a negative stimulus can result in a positive response and vice versus. The union of opposites, basically. This is related explicitly by Pynchon to occult traditions (the Kabbalistic Tree of Life of Jewish mysticism, for instance, where there are two pillars representing Mercy and Severity; yin and yang; the Masonic checkerboard of black and white representing the union of opposites) where opposites are combined. Cf. also Jung’s idea of the union of opposites as a psychological archetype running through the world’s religious and mystical systems. Pynchon also relates this to transvestism (two genders combined) and sadomasochism (pain and pleasure combined). One poster a long time ago also made a great post pointing out how Pynchon constantly and subtly juxtaposes the colors black and white throughout the book.

Entropy, the state of randomness, lack of order. This is crucial to the book. The book sort of leads you on with a bunch of vignettes and subplots and conspiracy theories, making you think they’ll be tied together in the end. Instead, in Part 4, everything sort of disintegrates, becomes a surrealistic haze. This is almost, if not outright, metafictional: it could represent the rocket 00000 exploding at the end, causing a state of chaos in its explosion represented by the fragmented state of the end of the book. This ties in to war: humans willingly destroying themselves (Thanatos, Freudian death drive, sadomasochism again), increasing entropy. This is a brief overview, there’s more complicated analyses possible, but overall Pynchon’s symbolism and themes are pretty clear. It’s understanding what literally happens in the book that’s the issue at times. Once you get that, the symbolism is clear.

[Anonymous No.13234580]

>>13232391
Can't be fucked to write an essay on the themes of the book.
>>13234550 did a good job
On a very superficial level the book is about two stories set in WWII.
Slothrop's paranoid adventure trough Europe unveiling weird subplots with weirder conspiracies and Pointsman and the bunch at White Visitation handling the progress of the war.

[Anonymous No.13234598]

>>13234550
Its also about technology

[Anonymous No.13234608]

>>13233090
The entire kenosha kid passage.

[Anonymous No.13234655]

Pynchon is a joke. But the punchline is a good one.

[Anonymous No.13235679]

>>13232391
The key (one of the many) lies I think in the rejected epigraph for part four which is an excerpt from joni mitchell's Cactus Tree. I think it binds things together because at least what i found was that at the end of this surreal, entropic labyrinthe was a very warm, tender, and delicate humanistic core. (Which is not to deny the book's political ambitions but to affirm them in this very 60s way. It's a relic of an alternate history where the hippies "won" and didnt fuck themselves up with drug abuse)

[Anonymous No.13235692]

>>13235679
To add to this, because i just remembered, the dedication to Richard Fariña one of the first of many casulties of the 60s is also an important element of this.

[Anonymous No.13236354]

>>13232391
A Screeching comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare to it now.

[Anonymous No.13236359]

>>13234550
ty anon

[Anonymous No.13236366]

>>13232391
So what happened to Slothrop?

[Anonymous No.13236386]

>>13234550
>n Pavlovian conditioning, as Pynchon points out, there’s an “ultra-paradoxical phase” where a negative stimulus can result in a positive response and vice versus. The union of opposites, basically.
I don't think that's quite right. I wouldn't call it a union of opposites but rather the reverse-engineering of a causal link (making a void/absence/lack into a stimuli in of itself). It also ties into why slothrop's weiner is able to predict where the bombs are going to fall, because he's been conditioned to become aroused by impolex G . tie that in to the idea of "going beyond the zero", and it becomes apparent that the book is essentially one long reimagining of Freud's 'beyond the pleasure principle'.

[Anonymous No.13237375]

>>13236366
It's just a book bro

[Anonymous No.13238308]

Oh fuck he can't keep getting away with this...

[Anonymous No.13238328]

>>13236354
lol. beware beware, soithrop

[Anonymous No.13238332]

>>13238308
shits on
>IJ
>GR
>Finnegans Wake
he praises
>Slaughterhouse 5

/lit/ btfo

[Anonymous No.13238357]

>>13232391
So long as you pikced up on Biancas death and how the seances worked you should be mostly fine

[Anonymous No.13238364]

>>13238332
Pseud

[Anonymous No.13238365]

>>13238357
>Biancas death

He doesn't know

[Anonymous No.13238385]

>>13238357
So Bianca was real then?

[Anonymous No.13238387]

>>13238308
#rekt

[Anonymous No.13238393]

>>13238385
as real as any of the other women

[Anonymous No.13238399]

>>13238393
So no?

[Anonymous No.13238420]

>>13238399
it's a fiction book bro nobody was real

[Anonymous No.13238635]

>>13238308
Slaughterhouse 5 reads like some reddit kid wrote it. It's absolutely childish.

[Anonymous No.13239619]

>>13238635
Is this why I enjoyed it when I was 12?