A screaming comes across a sky, grey and white. It has happened before. It will continue to happen. Each happening is comparable to others. Midway through the yellow on red screech, the Doppler Effect. Something to the effect of



The screaming picks up steam, piercing, haunting, all anew. It continues forward, to some unknown, perhaps parallel, end. The indoor space is small. Some would say smelly. Some would say dingy. Some would even go so far as to call it dank. It’s no such thing. It is a mainstay, and it’s therapeutic, and it’s home. It’s seen a lot of traffic, this “room”. It’s always there, and it will always be there. And perhaps that’s why it’s valuable. Perhaps the best ability is availability. A place in time. Is it possible that it had always been marked out as the final destination?

* * * * * * *

Al “Fatal” Rationale. When he was leaving The Other Place, he was able to, at least temporarily, distance himself from the visceral feeling that resulted when the name came up. 3 syllables that got his blood pumping that much faster, his heart beating out of his young chest. A stop over in Amsterdam and things changed. When he looks back, it could only have been at that moment. Orchestrated, planned for his arrival. Planned to play when he passed by the speakers on the way to the bathroom. Tonal quality of the noise blasting at him not unlike that of a phonograph.

Hi (Hi), I'm not here to waste your time (Yeah)
You know this ain't a pick-up line (Can I talk to you for a second?)
I just think that you're a dime
We'll just sit there, girl

Well I know that heart that's in your chest
It carries pain and so much stress
But you gotta let it go (Go, go, girl)
Just close your eyes, I'll grab your waist
Next thing you know, you have your pace
Girl, you gotta let it go (Go, go, girl)
I know that you wanna get down (Really wanna get down)
You do deserve to get down
Been working hard all week (All week)
Just tryna make your money (Money)
Girl, go on and shake your booty

Al washes up quickly. Footsteps behind him cause him to spin around, spraying droplets all over the freshly cleaned tiles. It’s a middle-aged man of about 50. He walks forward, no hesitation or deference. “±&*$%%$%?” He asks. Al does not speak English yet. He says the only word (of two) that he knows in the language. “Toilet.” The man doesn’t smile. He shakes his head and asks again. Wait… is he speaking English? Could this not be Dutch, German, French? “Yes. Toilet.” He repeats before rushing out. The song is still blaring, toward the end. How is he picking this up?

* * * * * * *

San Bernardino. California. 1940. Dick and Maurice, a couple of fellas from New Hampshire. They weren’t supposed to be here. Were They? 15 cents a pop, 15 cents a pop. The burnout hit them, as it always does. They cut down, reinvigorated the process, made it assembly line. Made it passive income. That’s the definition of setting the pace. That’s the definition of planning to spread out like the plague. It was always Their plan to do so, and They just needed the spark.

* * * * * * *

n  The Story of Ronnie The Hanging Signn

And so he sits. He has been there, with a few adjustments, for years. He has lost track of when exactly it is that he began to be aware of those milling about, but he may as well be part of the street, a historical site. Of late, he has begun to notice the chubby, myopic kid who walks by. Days where he walks by, toque too large for his head, carrying a bag filled with Magic Tree House books. Today he is testing out his pronunciation – cute, really. He is singing along.

My shadow side so amplified
Keeps coming back dissatisfied
Elementary son, but it's so…

There is no way he understands any of what he has just said. But good for you kid. Good for you. And now here he is again. Chubby still, but a loonie and a toonie in his hands. He has been waiting for this moment all week. Ronnie spies the page he is holding, full of chicken scratches. Huh. Funny, seems to be lyrics to a song.

From Chicago to Toronto
She's the one that they call ol' Whatsername
She's a symbol of resistance
And she's holdin' on my heart like a hand grenade

And now, Ronnie sees him approaching again, but now he has a few friends with him. They are not paying attention to their surroundings. No wonder they are being so rude. Listen to them, chanting nonsense. What is happening to this world?

Yeah, I got money on me
Yeah, baby girl, no problem
Yeah, you rollin' shawty?
Yeah, let's hit [Okay okay okay]

Ronnie could make a living, if only he decided to monetize these stories. This kid was boring, but what about the rest? If he decided to tell about the acts these vermin got up to around him. How about those who would drink and go down the side in the alleyway? He could still see Their reflection in the glass from the adjacent building. Thank god he was well away from those puddles, is all he could think. Or how about those folks trying to get a quick handjob when it was 1 AM? Maybe boring was better. And here he is again. A little leaner. Connected to the WiFi now, so Ronnie can zap in and see what’s going on on that little iPod Touch (which the kid calls iTouch, which is not too far away from what the use of the device, really, outside of the mere 8GB he seems to have on there). Tunes galore.

But I know that if I stay stunting
All these girls only gon' want one thing
I can spend my whole life Good Will Hunting
Only good gon' come is this good when I'm cumming

Settle down kid. That function has barely come into play. Relax. Take it easyyyyyyy. And here he is again. Cannot stop coming. This time there is a cute blonde girl with him. But Ronnie can sense it. It’s not what he thinks, and it’s definitely not what she thinks. Later, when the inevitable happens, he is almost immediately by Ronnie. Let’s see what the kid has got on, shall we?

Well, centuries are what it meant to me
A cemetery where I marry the sea
A stranger thing could never change my mind
I gotta take it on the otherside

And now it’s July, and Ronnie has vapours coming off of him, it’s so goddamn hot. And here is the kid again! Well, not so much a kid anymore, he is shaving. And a couple of others with him, it looks like. They stand back. He sips a slushie. As they walk away, Ronnie can hear a couple of them belting it out.

Photoshoot fresh, looking like wealth
I'm 'bout to call the paparazzi on myself
Uh, live from the Mercer
Run up on Yeezy the wrong way, I might murk ya
Flee in the G450, I might surface
Political refugee, asylum can be purchased
Uh, everything's for sale
I got five passports, I'm never going to jail

When will he be back?

* * * * * * *
A farm, yes, but one on a more metaphorical scale, as opposed to the ranch house that housed a project assembled by workers in its master bedroom, just before the arrival of folks like Lawrence, Groves, and Chadwick. A farm that would form the bedding on which thousands of nubile participants would exercise post-club rites of passage for years to come. And Al is fighting the farm with his will, because They want him to end up there. They want him to go there so bad that They will wage a war of propaganda for years. The same movie over and over again. What happens after 30 straight days? Who knows. He cannot pretend to care. He has to shoot up in secret. He has to keep it under wraps. And he does. For now.

* * * * * * *

n  The Story of Ronnie The Hanging Sign - Cont.n

Wake up Ronnie. He is coming. The kid is fresh off of filming a project. And that’s someone new with them. Got his acoustic guitar too, must be why the kid’s tune is changed.

No, I'm not color blind
I know the world is black and white
I try to keep an open mind
But, I just can't sleep on this tonight
Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly, won't someone stop this train?

Look at him - he is denying the whole fact that he is experiencing existential thoughts. Isn’t that funny Ronnie old pal? You and I experienced that a long time ago, didn’t we? He thinks he’s meta. He’s not meta. This is what he was listening to earlier today and pretending it’s because of the prestigiousness of the duo, not the content. Suck a dick, you know?

There are so many things that I don't understand
There's a world within me that I cannot explain
Many rooms to explore, but the doors look the same
I am lost, I can't even remember my name
I've been, for some time
Looking for someone
I need to know now
Please tell me who I am

A..and Ronnie! Here he is, look at him! Is that really the same kid? Hard to believe. He is stumbling! Oh my god, our little boy is drunk! Yipeeee yipeeeeeeeee. Shhhh, he has just discovered the power of a primordial guitar. Let him sing Ronnie, let him sing.

Staring straight up into the sky, oh, my, my
A solar system that fits in your eye, microcosm
You could die but you're never dead, spider web
Take a look at the stars in your head, fields of space kid

Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie. He is avoiding you my friend! He is not down! What is he working toward, the little bastard? And at first you didn’t give a flying fuck what happened to him, did you? And now look at you! LOOK AT YOU! You actually wait to see him approach. Well, none right now. He is on the Gardiner. They are having fun. Let it be.

If you were worried about where
I've been or who I saw or
What club I went to with the homies
Baby, don't worry, you know that you got me
I've never worried about where
I'm at or who I saw or
What club I go to with the homies
Baby, don't worry, I know that they got me (6ix)

Annnnd here she is. Ronnie, don’t be jealous. He is visiting more than ever, because that’s the nature of the relationship. They play it late at night. Be happy that you are there and get to witness it.

Slide on a late night
You like to slide on a late night
You sent a "Are you here?" text without an invite
That's that shit that I don't like
We both slide on a late night
Do things in our off time
We both, yeah
Made some mistakes, pon road
Yeah, how's that for real?
You toyin' with it like [Whoah]

Ronnie, he is at peace. This is the happiest right now. He is here with you, and with the other boys, and with her. He is not trying to throw out a turn of phrase to see someone’s chocolate starfish. How nice, how at peace. I couldn’t be happier for him. Right Ronnie? You agree?

Uh, the coupe came imported (Hey)
This season's Off-White come in snorted (White)
Green Lamborghini a tortoise (Lambo)
No human being, I'm immortal (No)
Patek and A.P. full of water (Patek)
Hundred K, I spend on my señora (Racks)
My pinky on margarine, butter (Margarine)
And my ears got [Hey now]

* * * * * * *

Al turns left. Debating it. Wanting it. Needing it. The greatest source of fuel in human history - clocking in at 390 calories, 23g of protein, 7% of daily fibre needs and 20% of the daily calcium needs. That o..or the royalty upgrade to the stash that, in New Mexico, might be given to you with a roasted chile? Or perhaps the opening of that cardboard box that has made ole Don (“Legend”) Gorske who he is, starting one fine day on May 17, 1972. Displaying signs now that would get him a diagnosis of panic disorder in all the provinces and territories. You’re gonna be okay kid. Just breathe. JUST BREATHE.

* * * * * * *

n  The Story of Ronnie The Hanging Sign - Cont. (Again)n

I looked into it the other day. Something about the nature of a witch/crone in Hansel and Gretel. Something about the symbol of the archetype for the devouring mother. He will be back. That’s psychological fixation, if I’ve ever seen it. I have been here for years. He will come to me for years.

A great big bang and dinosaurs
Fiery raining meteors
It all ends unfortunately
But you're gonna live forever in me

And that’s that, really. This better take a while, because I am getting cozy, seeing him so often. Love that little bastard.

I got dosed by you and
Closer than most to you and
What am I supposed to do?
Take it away, I never had it anyway
Take it away and everything will be okay
Way up on the mountain where she died
All I ever wanted was your life
Deep inside the canyon, I can't hide
All I ever wanted was your life

I am one with him, really. I am one with him. I feel him, and this has grown to something beyond what I could ever have imagined. And there he is, in his office. A grown man now, would you believe. Young and grown, not the chubby little brat. Look at him lay his head back and let the words work through him. Those very words will change his life for the better, and they may draw us closer. Let’s see.

Never comin' down, uh
I was running away from facin' reality, uh
Wastin' all of my time out living my fantasies
Spendin' money to compensate, compensate
Cause I want you, baby, uh
I be livin' in heaven when I'm inside of you
It was simply a blessing wakin' beside you
I'll never let you down again, again

What is happening?

Father, father, father, father
Father, father, father, father
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit
Father, into your hands
Why have you forsaken me?
In your eyes, forsaken me?
In your thoughts, forsaken me?
In your heart, forsaken me? Oh

He has never been more content. Don’t forget about dear old Ronnie. Seriously. I am still here. Look at this fucking kid. He is sitting there, reading a book by Thomas Pynchon. Gravity’s Rainbow. And look at him highlighting away.

n  “We must also never forget famous Missouri Mason Harry Truman: sitting by virtue of death in office, this very August 1945, with his control-finger poised right on Miss Enola Gay’s atomic clit.”n

And

n  “In one of these streets, in the morning fog, plastered over two slippery cobblestones, is a scrap of newspaper headline, with a wirephoto of a giant white cock, dangling in the sky straight downward out of a white pubic bush. The letters

MB DRO
ROSHI

appear above with the logo of some occupation newspaper.”n

…Will I lose him?

Right on the verge, just one more dose
I'm travelling from coast to coast
My theory isn't perfect, but it's close
I'm almost there, why should I care?
My heart is hurting when I share
Someone open up, let it show


* * * * * * *

And the ones who like to think of themselves as smart but the very same ones that beat themselves up for not doing any maintenance of these so called “smarts”... these are the analysts that call it brand loyalty, say it with an ironic roll of the tongue as if They are plugging into a higher power when making a joke in irony, as if the invoking of irony is an end in and itself. Symbolism is strong. Story is strong. Narrative is strong. Through the fibre optics of our minds, we are transported ages into the past to see why. A cursory, poor reading of the situation is thinking of it through a capitalist/communist lens. About the circle of desire, about consumerism, about a few other ideas surrounding class and systems and the rigidity of social movement. A deeper reading of it? You don’t form in the... the… You are unable to make meaning out of the hundreds of millions of grains of opportunities that are given you every single day. If you are able to stick to a symbol, a stick, a rock, or a couple of attached semi-curves for meaning? Then, brother, nothing can stop you.

* * * * * * *

Now you see it, now you don’t. Morgan Spurlock drinks a lot of alcohol and doesn’t disclose it. This comes out later, not making as loud a bang as his original words did. But no one cares. "Who do you want to see go first, you or them?" Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Firth bibbing up. Adam Sandler talking about how the younger generation has it easier, how they have always had things available to them. 4 seconds late. 30 minutes and 4 seconds late. HORSE SHIT! Is it 10:30 or 11? Who knows. Eddie Murphy is Prince Akeem, a..and he gets it. The absolute fucking real shit, the absolute fucking zenith, the absolute dream. Macaulay Culkin and Jonathan Hyde had me wanting to become a zillionaire because of how casually They were able to flip the doors open to it. John Travolta. Twice. But then Samuel L. Jackson again too, lest we forget. Jason Alexander as George Costanza, sitting and listening. Salma Hayek talking about Puerto Rico. Steve Carell telling B. J. Novak that it took several months. Chris Rock. Lisa Kudrow. And of course… Michael Keaton.

* * * * * * *

They have an exact grasp on how it comes across. They know the exact amount of Guerrilla marketing that is needed. And you know what? It’s something They have known for longer than any of us have been alive. From the crib, really, we have known it. The baby reaches for it. At that point, it’s over. Exactly what They wanted all along. Did you escape it and define yourself in opposition to it? Two parabolas that have taken over the world. They wrap the concrete and the smog. Their sound fills the basin and mountains further than any mortal could ever move. Calorie’s Rainbow.

E. I. E. I. O.

Now everybody–

Gather ‘round, everyone, and hear the tale of why the reasoning (not the rejection itself, mind you) behind the rejection of this novel for the Pulitzer Prize of ’74 fucking pisses me off.

Their reason? Obscenity. I would hope that they at least wrote an essay justifying their decision that went beyond an insipid mix of morally outraged blatherings and oblique mentions of coprophilia (he ate what? Poop? Oh, we cannot stand for this we simply must not accept this and god forbid we even think for a moment on the context or, you know, try to understand).

Because right before, right before this event that in my particular edition takes up a mere two pages out of seven hundred and sixty, yes, 760, count ’em, of wonder and glory that I will expand upon later once I have clearly demonstrated the idiocy of the rejection, yes, right before the passage that describes the horrific act in all its gory detail, we have:

n  They have taken him so far from his simple nerves. They have stuffed paper illusions and military euphemisms between him and this truth, this rare decency, this moment at her scrupulous feet…not it’s not guilt here, not so much as amazement—that he could have listened to so many years of ministers, scientists, doctors each with his specialized lies to tell, when she was here all the time, sure in her ownership of his failing body, his true body: undisguised by uniform, uncluttered by drugs to keep from her communiqués of vertigo, nausea, and pain….Above all, pain. The clearest poetry, the endearment of greatest worth…n

I have never been in a war. I do not claim to understand the agony that those who participate go through, neither the soldier nor the civilian. But this I can recognize, this horrid disconnection from reality that results from society blocking you off from the realities of life with words, words, worthless words that rise like so much smoke and fall like so much ash when you realize it is all lies and there is nothing, nothing to prepare you for the truth of life and you become exquisitely aware of what They have conditioned you to be. And the question arises of whether life in this sleazed and sycophantic lubricant is worth it, and reality dims to a faint question of hunger and thirst, and your thoughts clamor at you to the edge of the precipice and all you can think about is how a permanent vacation from all this banality of evil would be nice. Very nice indeed. And the only thing that can draw you back is some confirmation that through all the living muck you are indeed alive. What is an easier answer to that eternal question than pain? Better yet, what is a more conscientious answer than pain, willingly inflicted upon the self in a controlled and safe environment, rather than going out and inflicting oneself on others in the forms of murder, rape, and physical destruction? With that in mind, who dares claim that they, an untouched outsider, have the right to condemn such a thing?

What is even worse than this flimsy excuse is what was lost when the baby, with so much joyous potential and wondrous insight, was flung out with the merest trickle of slightly smelly bathwater, flung to die on the streets for showing itself as being human.

Do you know what was lost? Knowledge, and better yet, a love of knowledge, sheer ecstasy at the mere sight of knowledge, adoration of subjects ranging from geography to organic chemistry to folk lore of cultures other than European to religions other than European to philosophical meanderings upon death and life and lust and shit and piss and the War, the War in none of its popular culture trappings of honor and glory and instead in its vulgar horror of wasted lives and idiotic bashings and the eternal chance of being blown to smitherings no matter if you were suffering in the worst of concentration camps or if you had found some small and precious moment of laughter in these bleak and desperate times, run by Them. Always by Them. They, who know the rules and run the show and will catch you by the genitals and nail you to the rate race and leave you to run or hang, silently screaming in pleasure all the way in an invisible construct too devious for words.

Why? Because it is the very foundations of what Homo Sapien is built upon, that instinctive organism that found itself growing a shell of thought, of conscience, enough to persuade itself that it was beyond all those biological trappings, those helpless desires, those inane fears, those shameful pleasures. Because when faced with death, the natural response is life, and the natural precursor is procreation, and the natural instigator is, what? Some call it love. Others call it lust. And perhaps it would be that clean if you ignored all that social indoctrination, all those millennia of cultural bonds and civilized underpinnings, the conformation of the animal to a world of new materials, new ideas, new awareness of pain and terror in the face of an overall useless existence. If you force a creature to like something and live with it from day one, and then keep to the beat their descendants forever on, you better be ready for a blending of the biological instinct and the cultural indoctrination. You better be ready for the fetish, those inexplicable psychological bonds between a whole range of objects and ideologies, all linked up to the evolutionary instinct, the need to fuck.

And when you put these individuals, who have adapted to strictly controlled world in ways that would put Casanova to shame, into a pressure cooker of death and destruction and technology specifically calibrated to rend bodies in a grotesquely unbelievable artistry, a World War that made the previous paltry and has not yet been surpassed? Furthermore, when you get Them, who sense all of this, in addition to sensing how society readily acquiesces to stories of violent rape and yet frowns on the consensual sexual relations that happen to deviate from the norm? That calls the former an inevitability brought upon by the victims themselves, and the latter a perversion, a deviation, a thing of disgust and shame? Then, dear Reader, you have the conspiracy of the millennia, where War drives sex drives shame drives settling under the thumb of Them who caters to your secret erotic delight. Who drives the War. For what? Money, of course. Ah ha, you say, of course. That excuses everything.

Regardless, seems a bit wonky, no? Seems a bit, well, conducive to discussion of how civilization chooses to harness the biological drive, how it silently condones rape and loudly condemns the erratic spillover of voluntary intercourse, no matter how privately or safely it is conducted, no?

Finally, going back to the knowledge. Right now, the liberal arts and the hard sciences hate each other. Loathe each other entirely. I’ve been on both sides, and I’ve heard the same story riddled in pride and ignorant contempt and secret fear from both. I’ve even experienced both, back before I got a handle on things and started to understand the gorgeous beauty inherent in both, which exists in both the masterfully derived equations from which we control the heavens, to the powerfully themed piece of literature that speaks to the souls centuries after conception. And you know which book combines that all in a singular, sexy package? Do you know which book not only breaks the rules of what the general populace deems is the proper way to write a novel, but blurs and cracks and subsumes the boundaries between the knowledge deemed ‘nerdy’ and the knowledge deemed ‘useless’ and wraps them all in a glory that only wishes to expand the appreciation for worlds both mathematical and geographical, both emotional and quantifiable, where a sunset is appreciated for its blend of colors as well as the wondrous calculations of the atmosphere that generate such a sight? All the while skipping over emotional raptures and objective information, capturing the tragically beautiful persistence of the human spirit in nine pages recounting the tale of soldiers caroling one winter’s night; the horrific capabilities of the human spirit in thirty-six pages that range from the fervent desire to breach the horizons and surpass stagnant conceptions of possibility, to the helpless lust in the face of overwhelming obliteration of body and soul, finally ending with complete disconnection except for one last push, one last tiny effort of goodwill.

Simply, this is not an issue with the book, which chooses not to follow the path of literature referencing literature referencing literature ad infinitum, hardening the bubble to an insoluble force field of fear and close-minded intolerance. Which, by the way, makes it perfect for teaching, small excerpts taken out of a context that still retains enormous amounts of contextual information, spanning scopes of knowledge and lines of reasoning with simple skips of words and sentences. No, this is an issue with education itself, the handling of separate subjects in separate ways that result in the same lesson. We learn to hate learning, whether it be by the mindless cramming of scientific gobbledygook or the training to view books as a sponge to be soaked dry of every pointless and emotionally draining detail. We are taught by those who have found refuge in the ideological constraints, concentrated themselves in high enough amounts of personal pride and vicious disdain for anything that lies outsides the traditions of their specific field. We are trained to hate neutrality and loathe those who refuse to subsume their selves under a single formula, see them as traitors to the cause.

As if the human mind, ever metamorphosing in endless streams of fickle time and violent happenstance, constantly shifting in reaction to similar seething cauldrons of fate and fortune, is a block that once fitted can never go back. As if empathy is equivalent to proposal, as if understanding the viewpoints of others without being able to ignore their faults is a secret sign of defending said faults. As if any other reaction to capture bonding (born and bred and colonized and commercialized) beyond stoic subservience (be grateful you have been passed over) is not a screaming across the sky for survival, is not only heresy. It is evil.

Where is the joy? Where is that feeling of acquiring something and loving it so much that one wishes to show it to others, help them understand that this thing they may have feared has so much beauty and really is not so frightening or impossible to comprehend? Where is the recognition of that conspiracy of the ‘Other’, subconsciously mandated as a survival technique (incomprehension leads to fear leads to anger leads to prejudice leads to incomprehension) and now subconsciously harnessed by ‘Them’, a recognition that does not stop and gaze wistfully over to the Zone of action? Ignorance is bliss is the true evil of neutrality, and those loaded words are used to good measure of their full range of context.

---

I’m not going to lie to you. This book is hard. The only reason I got what I did out of it is due to the following personal characteristics that were acquired by pure chance:

-Love for the German Language
-Formulaic Education in Engineering (specializing in Polymers) Greatly Exceeding that of FE in English
-Penchant for Iconoclasm (sociocultural, sexual, linguistic, you name it, I will break it and make it bleed for the purpose of my own understanding and comfort)
-Reverential Devotion to Literature
-Experience (for every rule I break, I break my own brain over books like these)

That’s my side of the equation. This is how I cheat. I can’t cheat for you, but trust me, the test is worth everything.

---

Epilogue

Anonymous: YOU CONDONE COPROPHILIA?
Aubrey: I’m sorry?
Anonymous: I just finished your review of Gravity’s Rainbow, and YOU CONDONE COPROPHILIA? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Aubrey: Déjà vu.
Anonymous: What?
Aubrey: Irony.
Anonymous: YOU’RE SICK IF YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY.
Aubrey: Okay. You know what. Closure. I get it. Here, all nicely formatted and quotable.

n  “Looking back on things, it seems to me that whatever the fuck is wrong with me is in some way related to whatever the fuck is wrong with Pynchon. And if that is indeed the case, well. I can live with that.”

t-Aubrey (June 16, 2013)n

A few weeks ago, a guy at work asked me to look up the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and what I read scared the shit out of me. There's a chapter in my neighbourhood. But how much can you really know about a hermetic order? This guy is constantly name-dropping places I've just been, and circling around my life in a way that is altogether uncanny. I've overheard him say that I work for the FBI. Who's paranoid now? Who's watching who? I've caught myself listening to him across crowded rooms.

This afternoon, he casually mentioned (three times) that he was headed to the library. Well, shit. That was my plan too. Did he know? I can't let him control my life, can I? But when I saw him stalk through the entrance, fists clenched as ever, I fled between the stacks. Good work, agent. Don't mess up.

□□□□□□□

There, in the last pages of Gravity's Rainbow, the Order of the Golden Dawn surfaces. I paled. You can run but you cannot hide.

(What if he finds this review?)

I think Pynchon is starting to get to me.

‘What is the real nature of control?’

tFrom the first sentence of Pynchon’s National Book Award winning novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, the Reader is transplanted into a threatening world where death strikes first, the cause second. It is a world of frightening realism and comic absurdity, all fueled through drug induced hallucinations, paranoid ramblings, and psychological investigations that is not all that unlike our own reality once you remove yourself to view it from afar as if it were some painting in a gallery. This is the Zone, and Pynchon is your field guide through the wasteland of paranoids, preterits and pornographers. The novel is stylistically staggering and so carefully researched that the line between fact and fiction blurs and is not always easy to deduce. It is carefully plotted out with extreme precision, aligning the events with actual weather detail from the days played out and in keeping with a metaphoric representation of the zodiac signs through the passing months. While this novel can be demanding, it is also extremely rewarding for those who make it through this wild rocket ride of literature.t

A first time Reader should be cautioned that Part 1 of this mammoth text is exceedingly difficult. Pynchon seemingly takes great joy in pummeling the Reader with a labyrinthine structure of characters and plot lines, each accruing through dramatic left turns in the narrative. The effect is pure disorientation, obfuscation and outright frustration. It feels just like spinning plates. It is, in a sense, Pynchon’s boot camp for the real war awaiting across minefields of prose; it is where he must break you down and reconstruct you as he sees fit. While the Reader must keep their head down and gut through, soaking up as much of the swirling stories as they can, Pynchon lays out the groundwork for the larger themes to come. Many of the ideas expressed early on won’t seem particularly meaningful, but by the end of the novel the Reader will realize it was all right there in their faces from the start. As characters will come and go like ghosts, with only minimal dimension and reference to them, the Reader will begin to realize that the coming tribulations are not there for the growth of the characters, but for the Reader themselves. The Reader must come out the other side changed in order for the novel to be a success. They must let go of their notions of story and plot, for Pynchon views even the smallest plot structure as comfort, they must let go, give in, and submit to Pynchon. He demands it, and he will fire off heady diatribes against your intellect with philosophy, theology, conspiracies and actual rocket science.

tThe novel takes off running once the gun sounds the start of Part 2 when, dropped from foggy London town, the Reader finds themselves in the Zone. Early on is a discussion of Pointsman and Mexico, Pointsman being crafted as the ultimate embodiment of Pavlov’s cause-and-effect conditioning and Mexico being considered as ‘the Antipointsman’.

’The young statistician is devoted to number and method, not table-rapping or wishful thinking. But in the domain of zero to one, not-something to something. Pointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like Mexico, survive anyplace in between…. to Mexico belongs the domain between zero and one – the middle Pointsman has excluded from his persuasion – the probabilities.’

Much of this novel deals with these two major perspectives. Pynchon often establishes structure, the Pointsman method, merely to deconstruct it and show the faults that lie within. By showing two specific points, in this instance excluding those inbetween points, Pynchon is able to demonstrate moments of symmetry, which he will then reverse. Normally a rocket would be heard before it explodes in a ball of death, but with the V2, now we have the death before sound (reversals also play a large key to the novel, from the countdown before a launch, to hypnotic imagery of English explorers sailing backwards to home).

tThese two specific points are also expressed as binary differences, such as black and white, life and death, good and evil, preterition and the chosen few. These binaries are clear-cut sides, direct opposites of forces in keeping with the theory of entropy which rules the novel, sides that we clamor to reach in order to have a firm ground to stand on and a cut-and-dry vision of who is friend and who is foe. But Mexico, and Pynchon, rejects these binaries. Mexico acknowledges the space between zero and one, which is a wild, lawless no-man’s land (recall the McCarthy-esk western vision of Slothrops where there is one of everything – a endlessly compounding ‘one’ that creates an asymptote never actually reaching 1) where everything and anything is possible. It is a place more dream than reality, and the hallucinogenic nature of Pynchon’s spiraling prose and plots do well to express the ambiguities inherent in such a Zone. However, the novel never fully subscribes to one theory and can be interpreted as a cautionary tale for those who wander into this territory. Plot, laws and binaries are structures that keep our minds at ease and provide comfort and safety, so when we enter into the infinite freedom of the decimal we open ourselves to forces that may scatter us, kill us, and rub us out into oblivion.

tPynchon himself will try to scatter and thwart the Reader in consequence of stepping into his Zone. He acknowledges you are in his territory, and will speak as he chooses, often with what seems an intention of belittling your own intelligence. He only occasionally makes concessions to the reader when he realizes at least a slight bridge must be made in setting a scene such as saying ‘you will want cause and effect. All right’, which, considering the rejection of such an idea in this novel, also serves to mock the reader for scrambling to grasp the reassuring ledge of the pool in the deep end he has thrown us. To swallow this novel on a first read, a reader must attack it somewhat like middle school mathematical story problems – find the important information in the bloated paragraph, divide and conquer. There is a plethora of information to choose from as he will offer a vast variety of the same symbols and metaphors (the symbolic us of the letter S, for example, shows up as the SS, the shape of the bomb factory tunnels, people spooning, the symbol for entropy, etc. There is a death/life metaphor on practically every page) Yet, Pynchon seems hell-bent on keeping you on your toes and disoriented. He will allow the Reader to slide into a groove of strong forward velocity, and then deliver a scene so grotesquely funny or vilely disgusting to shock the readers mind and scatter their thoughts and perceptions from decoding this vast network of ideas and then tries to evade us in a web of looping plots, obtuse anecdotes and countless characters (some of which come and go with hundreds of pages between mention). The maze of a plot that must be navigated is acknowledged as being similar to the course of events Slothrop encounters on the way, which he compares to the Boston public transit (MBTA):

‘by riding each branch the proper distance, knowing when to transfer, keeping some state of minimum grace though it might often look like he’s headed the wrong way, this network of all plots may yet carry him to freedom.’

There must be a sense of trust that eventually, if you keep gutting through, there will be a conclusion to satisfy a journey of such magnitude. Honesty, this is successful and not only did I feel a massive sense of accomplishment for finishing this beast, but also felt satisfied intellectually and narrative-wise.

tThere is a constant paranoia overwhelming each printed word, a paranoia that the Reader must assimilate by proxy in order to fully appreciate the madness at hand. Yet paranoia itself must be a sort of comfort as well. While there is a fear of the Invisible Hand at play, pushing us through psychological nods in the right way, it is still a comfort that we are part of Their greater plan. For the preterits, this They is the only sense of God they will ever feel, as they are looked over by God himself. This whole novel is the interaction of such Preterits, from the self-proclaimed fetishists to the colony of escaped concentration camp members, and the Reader must become a member of these second sheep as they must lose their selves along with Slothrop. The Reader is dragged through the mud and muck of a smattering of various theories, and to keep their sanity, they attempt to assign meaning to these elusive threads flashing about them in order to keep going.

But perhaps this is just what Pynchon wants us to do, assigning Him the role of the They, and the Reader will begin to feel paranoid that this is all in jest, that Pynchon is simply pulling the world over their eyes and will begin to question even their own powers of deduction. We have learned that all that is comforting must be released (not yet knowing at these points in the novel that there is only a void awaiting with total freedom), and even the paranoid ponderings are only a comfort for us in Pynchon’s world.

If there is something comforting – religious, if you want, about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long. Well right now, Slothrop feels himself sliding onto the anti-paranoid part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him going back roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard images now of the Listening Enemy left between him and the wet sky’

First, note the reversals in this, then swoon at the powerful prose in the second half. Now, assign meaning to this quote – but Slap, no! – Pynchon says there is no meaning. But then feel yourself become transparent and weightless, fading into oblivion with no reference to the world around you. This is the ultimate dilemma we are faced with in the Zone.

It is no surprise the Reader is made to feel so paranoid in a novel rife with corporate conspiracy, much of which is highly researched and forms an impressive historical fiction aspect to this novel. If those rambling through the Zone are the preterits moved by the They, than these corporations are one of the highest tangible link to the They we can see. They decide who lives and dies, who is rich and from who wealth is gatekept, what we want to consume and how we consume it (‘consumers need to feel a sense of sin’) and They exist in a realm where the War is simply a shuffling of power.

‘This war was never political at all, the politics was all theater, all just to keep the people distracted…secretly it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology….by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques’

Throughout the course of Gravity’s Rainbow, we have endless looks into mans thirst for technology, which in itself is a thirst for death based on the nature of the technology, even when it is also a life-giving force such as is the case of Pokler who had no life until the Rocket, and how this goes beyond the War itself. Even the White Visitation simply uses the War as a reason for more funding. Mans role in technology is at the heart of every idea in this book. Entropy is a measuring stick which this novel employs (in a book that sets out to dissolve all rules, having a rule that is upheld highlights its importance), and all events and ideas serve to counterbalance each other in keeping with the conservation of energy with the preterits being the heat burned off. As a quick aside, if I may, many of these preterits, Mexico and Jessica’s romance or the concentration camp members (‘their liberation was a banishment’) for example, are directly tied to the war and become a casualty of peace – the budding romance (there are some tearjerker lines, Pynchon really shows his soft side with them) being the ‘waste heat’ in a chemical reaction. The Rockets, being the focal point of the book, are both life and death images as well as phallic metaphors while many of the literal phalluses in the book being used as metaphors for rockets. Film plays another large role, with much of the book containing constant allusion to pop culture, and Der Springer believes he can reshape reality through film.

tThis struggle of life and death is something that must be embraced as two parts of a whole in this novel, much like man and machine become one with Gottfried and the 00000 Rocket. Life and death are found strung together all throughout the novel, yet, as critic Harold Bloom points out in his essays on Rainbow, in Pynchon's book so focused on the idea of Death, the Reader never actually experiences or witnesses one - not one in all of the 800 pages. Many deaths are spoken of, some ambiguous like Tantivity’s, and others referred to plainly such as Pudding’s (note that ‘shit’ is spoken of as a metaphor for death, ‘shit is the presence of death’, and he is made to ingest it during – for him, not us – a sexual peak as another way life and death bind together in the novel), but the camera of the prose, if you will, always cuts right before the Reader must be an active participant in the death. Like Gottfried again, we know he dies, but because the com-link is only one way, we never can know the precise moment. Even Peter’s clubbing to the head cuts before the club can land. In this way, the novel is shown actually as a celebration of life, all the moments moving from 1:life to 0:death but never getting to the zero. We are forever in the Zone, for better or for worse. But with the final words of the novel, nay, the final two words, he pulls us from oblivion back to the whole. We escape death by existing in the moments between 1 and 0, and, ironically, in a book bent on annihilating structure and group alignment, he calls us all back into one large group: humanity.

tGravity’s Rainbow is a massive novel that takes quite a bit of decoding and deboning in order to devour. But this is precisely what Pynchon wants and requires of us. This is a book that more or less requires a second reading just to grasp all that it has to say, the first is just a test of survival. The agglomeration of ideas are too much to chew and savor on one trip, and there is so much ambiguity present that, like Joyce’s Ulysses, he intends to scholars to dissect and analyze this novel for years and years to come. In the novel, the Zone members gather to become Kabbalists of the Rocket, ‘to be scholar-magicians of the Zone, with somewhere in it a Text, to be picked to pieces, annotated, explicated, and masturbated till it’s all squeezed limp of its last drop’. This book is Pynchon’s Rocket, ‘our Torah…our darkness’, which he cast forth into the 1970’s literary scene as a harbinger of destruction to all preconceived notions of literature. Pynchon in this way is not all that unlike the Rocket launchers, hidden far away out of sight in his reclusiveness, avoiding photographic surveillance, sending his Rocket into a brave new world. We, the Readers, are Gottfried strapped inside with ‘fire beneath our feet’ as Pynchon, as Blicero, hurls us forth into the irreversible future.

Now everybody-

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'Each bird has his branch now, and each one is the Zone'

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I would also HIGHLY recommend the A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel to any readers of this novel. It was a huge help, especially with the pop culture allusions. Just be wary that it does occasionally give away plot elements and devices, sometimes long before they appear in the novel, and will practically double your time reading the actual book because there is so much information.

Also, I have to thank Stephen M's wonderful group read for inspiring me to read the book, while doubling as a support group to get us all through this tome! The discussions and links there are extremely helpful and insightful.

Last, but certainly not least, I'd like to direct you to the amazing reviews of my reading buddies on this strange ride, Steve, Ian, Jenn, Mark,Shan, Sean,  Paquita, and many more to come!