…Pynchon…invests his work with mythological associations on a vast scale, in a manner both deliberate and mocking, utilizing both central myths of Western civilization and popular culture myths. Orphic myths, manifested in various descents into the underworld, jostle against Faustian legend, which calls for trips up the Brocken, the Walpurgisnacht mountain, and these in turn are juxtaposed with fairytales like Hansel and Gretel, children’s stories like Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz, and archetypical figures from movies, such as Dracula, King Kong, and Jack Slade. In addition, there are allusions to classical, kabbalistic, and Christian contexts. By far the most significant are references to Norse and Teutonic myth. Swirling in the background of the novel are the trappings of Northern epic: runes, the Northern Lights (the flickering light given off by the Valkyries), dwarves, the titans Etzel and Utgarthaloki, and rainbows (the bridge to the abode of the gods), The distillation of meat and the novels first scene. Two of the principal figures are Blicero, or “white,” and his former love, the Herero Enzian, or “blue,” a name Blicero borrowed from Rilke; the body of the Norse goddess of death, Hela, is half white, half blue.
From Joseph W. Slade’s long essay “Living on the Interface: Preterition in Gravity’s Rainbow.” The essay is part of Slade’s 1974 book Thomas Pynchon, part of Warner Paperback Library’s “Writers for the 70’s” series.
(Thanks, Ben).
December 6th.–A fairy tale about chasing Echo to her hiding-place. Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror,
A house to be built over a natural spring of inflammable gas, and to be constantly illuminated therewith. What moral could be drawn from this? It is carburetted hydrogen gas, and is cooled from a soft shale or slate, which is sometimes bituminous, and contains more or less carbonate of lime. It appears in the vicinity of Lockport and Niagara Falls, and elsewhere in New York. I believe it indicates coal. At Fredonia, the whole village is lighted by it. Elsewhere, a farm-house was lighted by it, and no other fuel used in the coldest weather.
Gnomes, or other mischievous little fiends, to be represented as burrowing in the hollow teeth of some person who has subjected himself to their power. It should be a child’s story. This should be one of many modes of petty torment. They should be contrastedwith beneficent fairies, who minister to the pleasures of the good.
Some very famous jewel or other thing, much talked of all over the world. Some person to meet with it, and get possession of it in some unexpected manner, amid homely circumstances.
To poison a person or a party of persons with the sacramental wine.
A cloud in the shape of an old woman kneeling, with arms extended towards the moon.
On being transported to strange scenes, we feel as if all were unreal. This is but the perception of the true unreality of earthly things, made evident by the want of congruity between ourselves and them. By and by we become mutually adapted, and the perception is lost.
An old looking-glass. Somebody finds out the secret of making all the images that have been reflected in it pass back again across its surface.
Our Indian races having reared no monuments, like the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, when they have disappeared from the earth their history will appear a fable, and they misty phantoms.
A woman to sympathize with all emotions, but to have none of her own.
A portrait of a person in New England to be recognized as of the same person represented by a portrait in Old England. Having distinguished himself there, he had suddenly vanished, and had never been heardof till he was thus discovered to be identical with a distinguished man in New England.
Men of cold passions have quick eyes.
A virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He sees what she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herself completely into his power, and is ruined,–all in jest.
A letter, written a century or more ago, but which has never yet been unsealed.
A partially insane man to believe himself the Provincial Governor or other great official of Massachusetts. The scene might be the Province House.
A dreadful secret to be communicated to several people of various characters,–grave or gay, and they all to become insane, according to their characters, by the influence of the secret.
Stories to be told of a certain person’s appearance in public, of his having been seen in various situations, and of his making visits in private circles; but finally, on looking for this person, to come upon his old grave and mossy tombstone.
The influence of a peculiar mind, in close communion with another, to drive the latter to insanity.
To look at a beautiful girl, and picture all the lovers, in different situations, whose hearts are centred upon her.
Jon Frankel’s The Man Who Can’t Die is new from Whisk(e)y Tit. Their blurb:
New York, 2180. Manhattan is cut with sewage-filled canals and walled in by levees. The world has been suffering from epidemic despair and apathy, when Dr. Ruth Bryson invents Paragane, a Euphoric drug that cures ennui and depression. Monozone Inc, the monopolistic pharmaceutical who employs her, is thrilled.
There is only one problem: the drug kills 10% of everyone who takes it. Monozone decides to market it anyway, despite Bryson’s objections, and puts her former lover Owen Bradlee in charge. Bryson knows she must either fix Paregane or stop it, but if she is caught she will certainly be killed.
Meanwhile, Felix and Veronica Clay are typical pod-dwelling office workers, whose lives seem like an endless extenuation of meaningless circumstance. When Veronica plunges into psychosis and tries to kill herself, her doctor prescribes the new drug Paragane, and everything changes. Soon Felix is also taking the drug, and they spend their nights under its influence, roaming Paradise and conversing with Angels. One day Felix returns from work to discover her dead, of no apparent cause. In short order, he loses his job and apartment and soon finds himself living in the wilds of upper Manhattan, addicted to Paregane, unable to find Veronica in Paradise, unable to die. Meanwhile, Dr. Bryson searches for a test subject. When she discovers Felix they are set on a course that will lead them deep into the Iroquois territories of upstate New York and a bloody struggle for survival.
First two paragraphs:
The handsome Senator from Texas, the Capitol’s leading heartthrob, a former astronaut, and a likely future President, was in bed with two ladies, a young intern and the more mature Secretary of the Interior (the Senator called her the Secretary of the Posterior and had just made several charming off-color but complimentary remarks about hers, bringing an embarrassed flush to all four of her cheeks, and giggles from the intern, who was playing with two of them), when his private security phone chimed with the news: “The Martians have landed! In Texas!” He kissed the ladies, donned his spacesuit and helmet, and sprang into action.
The Senator flew his private jet directly from his ranch to the Martians’ landing site, not at all surprised that they had chosen the great state of Texas for this historic occasion. There, in an internationally televised address, he welcomed them to the once sovereign Republic of Texas, the last best place on earth and the heartland of the American nation, to which it also presently owed allegiance. The Martians poured out of their pear-shaped spaceship like spilled soup. They were pea-green, as anticipated, but with fluid bodies and multiple limbs that appeared and disappeared in the sticky flow. A random scattering of startled eyes blinked like tree lights. It wasn’t easy to see what separated one Martian from another.
[Editorial note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews of Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise. I’ve preserved the reviewers’ original punctuation and spelling. More one-star Amazon reviews].
quips
UGH
rubbish
chubby wife
Verble sparing
Love the cover
nothing happens
frequently witless
watching paint dry
orgasmic experiences
Barak Hussein Obama
supremely unamusing
my daughter hated this
rampant commercialism
trying to be ironic but failing
it’s not clear what the point is
hated this book with a violent passion
he goes to the grocery store about 4 times
slobbering self appointed literary pillocks
Fred Flintstonesque postmodern hectoring
some generic non-descript mid-western city
ultra trite unimaginative obsession about death
Theme is supposed to emerge from a work of fiction
desperately avoids any of the conventional trappings of fiction
a silly trick by a critic’s darling to help us feel more self-rightous
A left wing hipster might relate to the message the book is trying to communicate
It has good ideas and themes for a literature class if you look at it from that perspective
Feels false, like the author was trying to make sublime points about human nature and the direction of society
The cartoonish characters are about as credible as the windbag Biden is on foreign policy
felt like the author was just using the characters and the plot as puppets
I invested almost six minutes reading this book before I threw it out
I read this book so I’m smarter than the rest of you
Even allowing for the mid 1980’s publication date
entire pages go by and nothing really happens
moaning middle class left wing academics
they go through an airborne toxic event
the Sopranos and Anne of Green Gables
dated technology/consumer references
Droned on and on and on about death
wasn’t a single character I cared about
a Hannah Montana puke fest
tossed it into the trash
watching grass grow
I prefer life to death
local supermarket
A Seinfield book
literary (as if?)
he goes crazy
anal vacuity
it bore me
dullardish
it just ends
Biblioklept 