The October 1980 issue of Esquire ran a piece titled “What to Think about Gravity’s Rainbow” by the poet Terrill Shepard Soules. It’s not really a what to think piece, though (the title seems an editorial intervention), but rather a witty glossary.
“WHAT TO THINK ABOUT GRAVITY’S RAINBOW”
by Terrill Shepard Soules
VERY CLEVER.
THOMAS PYNCHON, AUTHOR, KEEPS A LOW PROFILE.
MAIN CHARACTER: TYRONE SLOTHROP.
FIRST LINE: “A SCREAMING COMES ACROSS THE SKY.” NICE FIRST LINE.
LONG — 760 PAGES IN HARD-COVER.
BUZZWORDS: PIGS, PARANOIA, B MOVIES, SEX, NAZIS.
PUBLISHED 1973; EVERYONE WENT CRAZY.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD, OF COURSE. PULITZER JUDGES LOVED IT, PULITZER TRUSTEES THOUGHT OBSCENE. ALSO INCOMPREHENSIBLE. NO PULITZER PRIZE. SOMETHING LIKE ULYSSES THAT WAY. A FREQUENT COMPARISON.
INSIDERS CALL IT RAINBOW. INSIDERS ARE INSIDERS BECAUSE THEY LOVE THE IDEA THAT
SOME RECLUSE (A CORNELL GRAD?) WROTE A 760-PAGE BOOK ABOUT PIGS AND PARANOIA. ALSO BECAUSE THEY KNOW SOME VERY EXTRAORDINARY WORDS FROM RAINBOW, LIKE THE ONES IN THE GLOSSARY BELOW (FROM THE HARD-COVER EDITION).
BOOK 1
Beyond the Zero
NARODNIK [p. 11]
From Russian narod, “people.” Intellectual trying to metamorphose peasant into revolutionaries. The Narodniki flourished in the late 1860s. In the late 1960s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activists were referred to as narodoniks. By show-offs.
PRETERITION, PRETERITE
[p. 15 and throughout]
A passing over. Preterition is the Fluke Cosmic, the doctrine that God in John Calvin’s breast (cf. the Jampere-phrenia in Alien) decreed that you and you and you are heavenbound no questions asked but We’re going to have to think about the rest of you — don’t get your hopes up.
MAFFICK [p. 17]
The founder of the Boy Scouts defended the garrison at Mafeking against the Boers for two hundred seventeen days. When the siege was raised, on May 17, 1900, London went crazy, and the jubilant celebratory maffick — it’s a verb! — was born. Here, part of Lieutenant Oliver “Tantivy” Mucker-Maffick’s moniker.
TANTIVY [p. 17]
Mucker-Maffick’s nickname. Means to gallop along, or a blast on a horn, or that headlong gallop itself.
LOVE-IN-IDLENESS [p. 22]
The perfect word for violet. Pynchon’s choice is dazzling. First, on a map of London there’s a star for each of Slothrop’s women, Slothrop “having evidently the time, in his travels among places of death, to devote to girl-chasing.” Second, the many stars are of many colors. Third, Slothrop gets the idea that the stars look like flowers. Now Viola tricolor, the flower in question, turns out to be a violet with yellow, white, and purple petals and several country names. The name our author finally selects enables him to pull off a genuine rampage-prose triple play: “and all over the place, purple and yellow as hickeys, a prevalence of love-in-idleness.” Continue reading “A partial glossary for Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow”
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