so i started gravity's rainbow the other day

i don't even remember a jesuits thing in m&d and i'm pretty sure i read it twice

― thomp, Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

! the sino-jesuit conspiracy and the 'ghastly fop' story-w/in-a-story/subplot

it's not the themes that i'm contrasting -- it's the way the books are structured both on a macro-scale and from scene to scene. GR was basically the book that taught me how to read books as something other than a linear narrative with some ornamental pleasures (descriptions, gags, set pieces) dangling off. CoL49 is a book that doesn't need to be read in other than that way.

i remember the ghastly fop & pynchon cheating at the end of it, but still ... hm. i guess i have to read it again

i think lot 49 does a really good job at doing a bunch of pynchon things in short and organised form, but that means missing out the other half of the things that you'd file under pynchon. but if you don't like encyclopedic novels / 'anatomies' / shaggydog sprawl it'd make sense to like that more than the others.

that col49 gets into but in my mind it's kind of portrait of the artist / ulysses type of thing.

funny that 'lot 49' doesn't appeal as much to hardcore pynchonites -- i feel like i've heard similar disdain toward 'portrait' and even 'dubliners' from ppl who really really love 'ulysses.'

ok clover i get what you're saying, and i hope you get that's what i'm getting at w my analogy

ulysses obv structured in a different way although it does have a similar thing going on in terms of how it uses space (thinking about how the characters wandering in ulysses take on particular shapes vs how the narrative forms a parabolic arc in gravitys rainbow)

i think lot 49 does a really good job at doing a bunch of pynchon things in short and organised form

This is key to what I like about it, such a succinct & distilled version of his sprawling paranoia.

And I love the Balkan part at the end of AtD! Great descriptions of weather and topography as the bedraggled love triangle blunders toward escape from Babylon.

there's a classic reading of GR that argues it's pretty much structured in response to ulysses, in terms of a very rigid underlying structure w/r/t time, thematic balances, etc. in this reading, the narrative doesn't form an arc so much as the rocket mandala. in fact, i get how the novel is bracketed by the arc of a rocket in some sense, but i've never seen the actual structure as an arc.

I should also say that reading pynchon for themes misses the point, I think, and his increasing maturity as a writer has been marked in part by his gradual abandonment of the idea that a novel needs to be "about" something, or some things. in that sense yes, CoL49 is the most explicitly "thematic" of his books, but that's what I think it's weakness is. To the extent that GR mines similar material, it's hard to say that it's a theme so much as a setting, or an ambiance.

oh come on, everything has a theme

i think the parabolic arc structure is more apparent in the "ascending" and "descending" parts and not so much in the middle, but anyway how interesting is a parabolic arc (not very)

i did have a very beautiful looking book of essays on GR from the 70s which i never read and tossed, i think it had an essay on it

this one

well that's not true, i read the first article and then tossed it, but the first one was good, can't remember what it was about though ...

I think it would be a pretty narrow reading of GR to say it was "about" paranoia or a particular conspiracy or even the helplessness of in any meaningful sense. I guess you could say that there are a lot of "themes" running through pynchon's later books, but they're more like motifs in my mind, or really ideas and concerns, or moods. I don't think it's bad that you can't say precisely what they're "about", and i generally think the idea that novels have to be "about" something is sort of pernicious.

I'm really loving how visual/cinematic the book is, all the flights he goes on read like stage direction or something

the distinction between themes vs motifs is a little over my head tbh

I think it would be a pretty narrow reading of GR to say it was "about" paranoia or a particular conspiracy or even the helplessness of in any meaningful sense. I guess you could say that there are a lot of "themes" running through pynchon's later books, but they're more like motifs in my mind, or really ideas and concerns, or moods. I don't think it's bad that you can't say precisely what they're "about", and i generally think the idea that novels have to be "about" something is sort of pernicious.

― s.clover, Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:14 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the distinction between themes vs motifs is a little over my head tbh

― the late great, Friday, May 11, 2012 12:23 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This might be too obvious, but if you're reading Pynchon/GR as standard metafiction then the distinction is a little clearer. Typically, a book's motifs, or reoccurring symbols or structures, are what inform/elucidate the book's themes, and those themes are kind of the End Point / What the Book Is About. If you're coming from a metafictional angle, then those themes are no longer the End Point, but just another reoccurring motif that informs a larger metanarrative.

It might also be tough to wrap one's head around since GR just has so many interweaving elements and so many dark corners that it's tough to ever feel like you have a toehold. Shit is just dense, fun, complicated, and rewarding inasmuch as you feel like penetrating. Basically, if you're a reader whose reading pleasure rests in feeling like you've confidently figured out a book's themes, GR will either severely disappoint or change the way you read/think about texts.

ok sure i know my list of literary devices from 9th grade honors english and i know a motif is a way of talking about repeated use of devices (imagery for example) that can establish a theme

i don't really see the distinction in practical terms though or what clover's getting at when he says "oh that's just a motif but not a theme"

i wouldn't say my pleasure in reading gravitas rainbow rests in figuring out the themes either - personally i love the startling imagery and the way he uses voices and the pseudoscientific digressions he gets in to

and i realize the themes are more complex (and there are many more of them) than in, say, "the old man and the sea"

but i do think that it's possible to suss out a few of the things pynchon wants to say about the anxieties of living in the postwar military industrial complex driven world and how they are similar or different or emergent in the anxieties of the war and prewar and how different people deal with those anxieties

fuk u if u disagree

the late great do you hate being talked down to more than anything?

yes

i thought my response was pretty mellow though, this time

hee hee "gravitas rainbow"

but i do think that it's possible to suss out a few of the things pynchon wants to say about the anxieties of living in the postwar military industrial complex driven world and how they are similar or different or emergent in the anxieties of the war and prewar and how different people deal with those anxieties

See, this is where I disagree. I mean the setting of GR is one time period, and the concerns of GR, the society it "lives in" (and that pynchon lived in writing it) is of another time period, but first off for a deeply historically researched novel, with the exception of some of the interesting bits drawn from research (herero in particular) (and then of course it's difficult to tell the fiction from the nonfiction) I don't think it has anything to say about the WWII time period at all, or the people in it. And I don't think it has anything to say about living in a "postwar military industrial complex driven world," or for that matter, about anxieties of anyone! On the one hand, it's more concerned with characters making choices in a certain set of trying contexts, and how it feels to live with these choices. And on the other, it's a complex network of symbols and relationships (like, literally symbols -- logos, parabolas, mandalas, tarot cards, graffiti, visions, other gnostic elements) that shift in and out of focus and configuration to create the underlying movement of the novel, which i see basically as an emotional one. I mean, it's like if you ask me what a Bartok Concerto is "about". I can tell you what it *does*, maybe, sort of, and the context it exists in of other work, but I can't tell you what it *means*. Or I can't do so in a way that isn't nearly entirely just what it means to me.

btw my use of theme vs. motif isn't drawn from any particular notions of how they're used in a literary setting, but more how we might use them in talking about a symphony.

“Which would you rather do? The point is,” cutting off Gustav’s usually indignant scream, “a person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like listening to Beethoven is going out and invading Poland. Ode to Joy indeed. The man didn’t even have a sense of humor. I tell you,” shaking his skinny old fist, “there is more of the Sublime in the snare-drum part to La Gazza Ladra than in the whole Ninth Symphony. With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is the one great centripetal movement of the World. Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are breached, the balconies are scaled—listen!”

let's agree to disagree then - still not following your argument entirely, or maybe i get but dont agree. i get yr point about hermeneutics but it seems like a very hard-line stance. surely you would say the ring cycle is about something?

we both agree GR is one for the ages, that's the important part

xposts, totally didn't mean to sound like I was talking down to you, was all meant in good faith, etc., sry :/

GR just hits me on an epistemological level, and maybe that's why clover's themes-as-motifs instantly makes a lot of sense to me-- normally motifs serve the themes, and in GR's case, it seems like the themes are themselves motifs serving something larger and more to the heart of wtf narrative/storytelling does at its basic level. Just seems like the book isn't built the way it's built in order to say something about post-war anxiety is all. So I guess fuck me I disagree :(

heh i was just defending my right to dissent

Its not that I feel vehemently "you are wrong" so much as i just love getting to talk and think about pynchon. also i've put so much into and gotten so much out of GR that there's no reading of it (including my own) that I'm not going to find reasons to say "no, that's missing the point".

anyway after i finish my MA i swear to every mod on ilx that i will read this mfing novel next summer

― kell surprise (country matters), Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:42 (3 years ago)

So it happened last night then, and how's this for a little bit o' Country Matters Hyperbole - this is the greatest artistic achievement of the twentieth century, as it stands, course there's Vlad and Jimmy J lurking in the sideroom...

wtf. Once a week and it's not about barca being stymied.

took you a little while to finish that MA did it

The degree of Master of Arts is awarded to BAs and BFAs seven years after matriculation, without further examination, upon the payment of a nominal fee.

bwahaha

i am so over thomas pynchon. i feel quite sad when i remember how much more of a thing thomas pynchon used to be for me. i won't lie, this is when my friends who still take drugs start talking about how much of a thing thomas pynchon is and must always be for everyone in perpetuity.

I never really got over him. I reread about half of Mason & Dixon earlier this year and was rapt. Rapt. For all his faults (which have become more obvious as I've grown up), there's no living novelist I'd rather read.

death of the author changes everything

yeah i've reread half of mason & dixon a couple times, is the thing

so over thomas pynchon

get out

The first novel I've read that has made me burst into tears for about an hour afterwards, crying for Slothrop's beautiful disintegration, for the heroic Counterforce that is the whole damn novel, for the scattered and headlong resolutions of those astonishing, damaged characters, all resolved truth by the Rocket's catharsis, for the dreams and the visions, thegenuinely Gnostic harnessing of High Math as religious conduit, for us all, and our comedy in the face of oppression...this would make for the greatest movie of course but only really if done as a ten-hour anime...fuck, this was so much of what is real to me

i kind of want to see it made in the style of 'inglorius basterds'

i mean, whatever. we all read anthony powell down here kid

damn, once a week, that is the most compelling 'reaction' to pynchon i've ever heard. maybe it is time to force myself to read all of this damn book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-NBPpM--pY

once a week is ample still otm

:)

Had I but world enough and time
I still wouldn't make it to the end of this book

this would make for the greatest movie of course but only really if done as a ten-hour anime

oh dearie me..

Couple of days ago was @ nu-Foyles - looking for a new book (which they didn't have). There was a guy looking over which Pynchon to buy first. He had a good look at GR but went for Lot 49 instead. I felt the urge to shake him out of it, but you know..

how are you finding nu-foyles xyzzzz__? haven't been in yet. but went in to the old one for the first time since I worked there in the late '90s before it moved and felt it still had the best range and depth of any bookshop in London. hoping move hasn't involved a "rationalisation".

Fizzles its really good - actually been to the coffee shop a couple of times just to read. I think the shop is just as strong in terms of depth as the old one if not more so.

Compare to Waterstones CX where the fiction section is def slimmed down.

waterstones near the university is the only great waterstones in town now, imo

Gower st has an ok 2nd hand section. Reminds me I should go there in August to have a look.