I’ll be adding to these and then doing more the next time (?!) I read Gravity’s Rainbow.* Pages 82-83: The White Visitation, etc. Page 103: Black Markets, King Kong, etc. Pages 148-49: Preterite/Elect, Lurianic Kabbalah, Uncanny X-Men, etc. Page 203: Rainbows, Fuck-yous, Plastic Man, etc. Pages 204-05: Paper, mise en abyme, a silkenness of girls, etc. Page… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow annotations (so far)
I’ll be adding to these and then doing more the next time (?!) I read Gravity’s Rainbow. Pages 82-83: The White Visitation, etc. Page 103: Black Markets, King Kong, etc. Pages 148-49: Preterite/Elect, Lurianic Kabbalah, Uncanny X-Men, etc. Page 203: Rainbows, Fuck-yous, Plastic Man, etc. Pages 204-05: Paper, mise en abyme, a silkenness of girls, etc. Page… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow annotations (so far)
In a corporate State 1, a place must be made for innocence, and its many uses 2. In developing an official version of innocence, the culture of childhood has proven invaluable 3 . Games, fairy-tales, legends from history, all the paraphernalia of make-believe 4 can be adapted and even embodied in a physical place, such as at Zwölfkinder 5. Over the… Continue reading A place must be made for innocence | Gravity’s Rainbow, annotations and illustrations for page 419
Overhead, on the molded plaster ceiling, Methodist versions of Christ’s kingdom swarm: lions cuddle with lambs, fruit spills lushly and without pause into the arms and about the feet of gentlemen and ladies, swains and milkmaids. No one’s expression is quite right. The wee creatures leer, the fiercer beasts have a drugged or sedated look,… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow — Annotations and illustrations for pages 82-83
A week before she1 left, she came out to “The White Visitation”2 for the last time. Except for the negligible rump of PISCES, the place was a loony bin again. The barrage-balloon cables3 lay rusting across the sodden meadows, going to flakes, to ions and earth4—tendons that sang in the violent nights, among the sirens… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow — annotations and illustrations for pages 627-28 | Our optimum time is 8 May
Well1, if the Counterforce2 knew better what those categories3 concealed, they might be in a better position to disarm, de-penis and dismantle the Man4. But they don’t. Actually they do, but they don’t admit it. Sad but true. They are as schizoid, as double-minded in the massive presence of money, as any of the rest… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow — annotations and illustrations for pages 712-13 | The Man has a branch office in each of our brains
Don’t forget the real business of the War is buying and selling 1. The murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways 2. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to… Continue reading The real business of the War is buying and selling | Annotations for page 105 of Gravity’s Rainbow
WEISSMANN’S TAROT Weissmann’s Tarot is better than Slothrop’s. Here are the real cards, exactly as they came up. Significator: Knight of Swords Covered by: The Tower Crossed by: Queen of Swords Crowning: King of Cups Beneath: Ace of Swords Before: 4 of Cups Behind: 4 of Pentacles Self: Page of Pentacles House: 8 of Cups… Continue reading Weissmann’s Tarot | Gravity’s Rainbow
I 1 think that there is a terrible possibility now, in the World 2. We may not brush it away, we must look at it. It is possible that They 3 will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever 4—though we, of course, will keep dying as we always have.… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow — annotations and illustrations for page 539 | There is a terrible possibility now, in the World
Kekulé 1 dreams 2 the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World 3. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used 4. The Serpent that announces, “The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning,” 5 is to be delivered into a system 6 whose… Continue reading The Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth | Gravity’s Rainbow, annotations and illustrations for page 412-13
Toward dusk, the black birds descend, millions 1 of them, to sit in the branches of trees nearby. The trees grow heavy with black birds, branches like dendrites of the Nervous System 2 fattening, deep in twittering nerve-dusk, in preparation for some important message… . 3 Later in Berlin, down in the cellar among fever-dreams with shit leaking out of… Continue reading No knightly hero | Gravity’s Rainbow, annotations and illustrations for page 364
There is that not-so-rare personality disorder known as Tannhäuserism 1 . Some of us love to be taken under mountains, and not always with horny expectations 2 .—Venus, Frau Holda, her sexual delights—no, many come, actually, for the gnomes 3 , the critters smaller than you, for the sepulchral way time stretches along your hooded strolls down here, quietly… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow, annotations and illustrations for page 299 | Some of us love to be taken under mountains, and not always with horny expectations
The War has been reconfiguring time and space into its own image 1. The track runs in different networks now. What appears to be destruction is really the shaping of railroad spaces to other purposes, intentions he can only, riding through it for the first time, begin to feel the leading edges of… .2 He checks… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow, annotations and illustrations for pages 257-58
He 1 gets back to the Casino just as big globular raindrops, thick as honey, begin to splat into giant asterisks 2 on the pavement, inviting him to look down at the bottom of the text 3 of the day 4, where footnotes will explain all 5. He isn’t about to look. Nobody ever said a day has to be… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow — annotations and illustrations for pages 204-05
Outside, he 1 heads down toward the quay, among funseekers, swooping white birds, an incessant splat of seagull shit 2. As I walk along the Bwa-deboolong 3 with an independent air… Saluting everybody in uniform 4, getting it to a reflex 5, don’t ask for extra trouble, try for invisible 6.… bringing his arm each time a bit more… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow — annotations and illustrations for pages 203-04
Why here? 1 Why should the rainbow edges 2 of what is almost on him be rippling most intense here in this amply coded room? say why should walking in here be almost the same as entering the Forbidden 3 itself—here are the same long rooms, rooms of old paralysis and evil distillery, of condensations and residues… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow — annotations and illustrations for page 203
—(Quietly) 1 It’s been a prevalent notion 2. Fallen sparks 3. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation 4. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment 5. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home 6—only the millions of last moments… no more.… Continue reading Gravity’s Rainbow — annotations and illustrations for pages 148-49 | Our history is an aggregate of last moments
Biblioklept 