1944 - початок 1945-го, Друга Світова в Європі наближається до завершення, німці обстрілюють Лондон своєю “зброєю помсти” - ФАУ-1 і ФАУ-2.

ФАУ-1 - це крилата ракета, її навіть навчилися збивати, ФАУ-2 - надзвукова балістика, як ми, нажаль, знаємо з власного досвіду - збивати таке дуже складно, а тоді було просто неможливо. “Надзвукова” - в тому числі означає що спочатку вона прилітає, а потім ти її чуєш, якщо ще можеш чути.  ФАУ-2 - прямий пращур радянської і американської ракетних програм, військової і космічної, це, наприклад,  те що свого часу копіював, а потім модифікував Корольов.  “Веселка тяжіння” - роман про ФАУ-2, не можна сказати що Ракета є головним героєм, пафосно звучить, але скоріше все ж таки ні, проте все що відбувається так чи інакше крутиться навколо неї. 

Якщо поділити мапу Лондона на купу маленьких квадратиків і позначити місця “прильотів”, то виявиться що розподіл прильотів відповідає формулі розподілу [малоймовірних] випадкових подій Пуассона, принаймні в світі Пінчона, наскільки це правда - не знаю.  Людською мовою це означає що ви можете сказати, при заданій кількості запусків, в скільки квадратиків прилетить один раз, в скільки два і так далі. Але де саме розташований той квадрат в який прилетить визначити неможливо. Фактично єдине що ви можете: кожного ранку оновлювати мапу, виконувати перерахунок і констатувати той факт що так, усе все ще знаходиться в рамках того самого випадкового розподілу. Цим якийсь час і займається один з героїв. Жодної прямої практичної користі, людей не врятує, але цікаво, отака от вона жорстока ця наука: статистика. 

Як відомо, там  де офіційна наука не особливо може допомогти, псевдонаука і усякі маги і колдуни радо підставляють плечі. “Єдиний марафон” з псевдоекспертами і екстрасенсами тому дуже добра ілюстрація. Англійці також не проти погратися в цю гру, але німецького містицизму чи української забобонності в них нема, щоби просто так без питань в щось повірити; їм треба якось виміряти, обґрунтувати(, підшити в папку, здати в архів). І тут статистика стає в нагоді: якщо ви можете передбачити, розставити на мапі, величини які виглядають як цілковита випадковість, то це вагомий аргумент на користь того що це не просто співпадіння. Треба досліджувати далі.  Ну й зрозуміло, що цієї історії не було б, якби не знайшовся персонаж який може передбачати прильоти, у свій, дуже дивний, пост-модерновий, спосіб.

Потім війна закінчується [психологічні травми - ні], союзників цікавлять ракетні технології і все переростає в такий собі шпигунський роман. Там де шпигуни з різних сторін на якусь мить зустрічаються в кафешці, продовжують з середини розмову яка розпочалася в іншому місці в інший час, кидають один в одного парою загадкових напівзрозумілих фраз, за цей час встигають один одному вприснути отруту, проковиряти бронежилет, вистрілити, невлучити, прийняти протиотруту і розбігтися в різні сторони на середині речення, для того щоб ще колись, за інших обставин, повернутися до того де зупинилися. Параноя зростає, а разом з нею і абсурдність того що відбувається.

Звучить цікаво, і… воно дійсно цікаво, але в той же час оповідь дуже складна. Складність приходить з різних боків, вистачило б здається і якоїсь однієї Складності, але Пінчон, здається, вирішив зібрати колекцію. 

- Статистично :) очевидне:  пишуть що в книзі близько 400 персонажів,  це не абсолютний рекорд, але всеодно дуже багато. Навіть персонажів до яких оповідь час від часу повертається багацько, не плутаєшся, але вже десь на грані. Не знаю чи рахуються за персонажів установи і організації які згадуються, але з ними виникає набагато більше проблем. Якщо ви маєте звичку щось занотувати під час читання складних книг - накресліть схему організацій і звʼязків між ними, вийде цікава павутинка в кращих традиціях конспірології :)
- Науковість: це вже трохи очевидно зі згадки про розподіл Пуассона, але не Пуассоном єдиним.  Явища з математики, фізики, хімії, біології не просто згадуються, вони перетворюються в художні образи, шикуються в довільний асоціативний ряд і починають жити своїм життям. Навіть якщо ти здогадуєшся про що йде мова, спосіб яким автор вводить їх в текст досить складний: це як більшість шкільних підручників з фізики (боже, як же я їх ненавидів), які замість пояснити, структурувати, розкласти все по полицям все лише ускладнюють. 
- Якщо вам не вистачило науки, то численні посилання на німецьке й американське кіно 30-40-х, комікси і іншу поп-культуру точно добʼють.
- Порнографічність.. у цьому списку для того щоб не згадувати окремо. Це не складно, скоріше буває неприємно. Ок, копрофілія  - це не дуже приємно, якщо ви не отримуєте свої задоволення таким способом. І щоб два рази не вставати: гівна, в прямому сенсі, дуже багато. Взагалі гидотних епізодів вистачає.
- Складна структура тексту. Суттєва  частина розділів виглядає десь отак:

 * Хтось… незнайомий чувак, їде в вантажівці по полю. 
 * В полі стоїть кінь
 * Випадкова історія з випадковим конем у вакуумі.
 * З лісу вибігає кабан, застрибує на коня і мчить вдалечінь.
 * А, стривайте, це не кабан, це - Слотроп в костюмі кабана (головний герой, типу як)
 * Тик-дик тик-дик тик-дик, поле, трава, ммм…
 * Секс з конем
 * Оркестр армії УНР на чолі зі Святославом Вакарчуком виконує відомий хіт “Ой чий то кінь стоїть” (ги-ги-ги “стоїть”)
 * Кабан продовжує скакати на коні вдалечінь, власне ніколи і не припиняв. 

tТак, стоп, а секс з конем був чи ні? І взагалі: чувак у вантажівці, армія УНР, Вакарчук? - що це взагалі було? Наче зрозуміло що кінь і Слотроп знайшли одне одного, і загальна атмосфера їх єднання, але, бля… що відбувається? -  А пофігу.  Що відбувається - що відбувається? - історія продовжується. 


Якщо подивитися на це трохи під іншим кутом… Автор, коли пише текст, намагається балансувати емоції і логіку.  Наукова чи професійна література, особливо якщо це про точні чи природничі науки, - це майже повністю про логіку, про мислення. Художня література - це, як правило більше про емоції.  Автори художньої літератури намагаються тримати мислення в тонусі, звичайно, але більшу увагу спрямовують на відчуття і уяву, іноді виключно на відчуття і уяву, і коли з вами магія автора не спрацьовує і немає ніяких відчуттів і нічого не являється… неочікувано “включається мозок” і в найкращому випадку не знаходить ніякої поживи (ви просто не любите поезію, буває), а в найгіршому ви починаєте дивитися на нелогі��ний, непослідовний сюжет, нерозкритих, тупих персонажів, і… майже все інше на що ви тикаєте в книжці коли вона вам не подобається. 

Чому я про це пишу: оця перенасиченість деталями, складність структури, купа-купа усього за чим треба слідкувати призводить до того що ти ніби то читаєш і художній твір, але сприймаєш його радше як підручник з фізики, або, скоріше, як шизоїдну енциклопедію 30-40-х років XX століття. Це чимось схоже на читання “Улісса”, але у випадку з “Уліссом” певна частина складності повʼязана для нас з відсутністю контексту: ми не народилися в Ірландії початку XX століття, не вивчали давньогрецьку і латину на прикладі класичних творів, так що ці твори прям в’їлися б в кістковий мозок, Шекспір для нас.. ну Шекспір, був такий, один з.. тому окрім того ж “потоку свідомості” який тримає “мозок в тонусі” додається ще дуже багато чого що ми вимушені сприймати інтелектуально, бо на відміну від сучасників Джойса, інакше сприймати ми це не можемо. Пінчон же ж створює цей ефект цілком усвідомлено. Він фігачить складністю допоки не стає очевидним що за складністю треба слідкувати, зв’язки треба пам’ятати, “якщо цю тему не зрозумієш, далі буде ще гірше”… страх, параноя, чого і треба було досягти.  Одночасно, складність тримає під контролем емоції, відповідно тримає читача на певній відстані, не дозволяє повністю занурюватись в цей текст, цей світ, цих героїв, що хороша новина, насправді, це запобіжник від того що ваш дах почне протікати, як він тече у всіх без виключення основних персонажів.

В цілому: цікавий досвід.  Не стане улюбленою книгою, але сподобалось. Багато разів ловив себе на думці що якби це було написано трохи інакше, але про те ж са��е:  Друга Світова, Ракета,- воно скоріш за все полетіло б в мусорку.  Секс, Бухло, Наркота, Ракета.. і Керуак, наприклад, - це рецепт ідеального американського лицемірного блювотиння.  А от Пінчон сконструював щось цікаве.

One of the things that most irritates me is the idea that someone would read books like this purely in order to show off or impress people. I see comments like that all the time, have had them directed at me, things like: you didn’t actually enjoy it; you only wanted to make yourself seem intelligent. Wha? Who exactly would it impress? Some faceless dude on the internet? Well, gee. Or will some super hot girl on a train make lingering eye contact with me over the top-edge of my copy of Ulysses? One can but hope. Thing is, does anyone actually give a shit about the difficulty of what other people are reading, y’know, out in the real world? From the often hostile reaction readers like me get on forums and message boards you’d think that you could walk into a nightclub wearing a 'I’ve read Proust' t-shirt and be mobbed. It simply doesn’t happen.

Of course, when choosing to read any book, the themes, the plot [or content] have to appeal to me in some way, but, assuming that is the case, that I have two novels to choose from both of which appeal to me, and one is straightforward and one is not, why would I pick the difficult novel? The simple fact of the matter is that I like, I genuinely enjoy, being challenged, being stretched. As the 'serious reader' in my circle of friends and acquaintances I’m often invited to borrow best-selling books – detective novels mostly, or thrillers – and I always politely decline, not because I’m judging anyone, merely because I know that I don’t get off on that kind of thing. I need to be made to think. Recently I went on holiday and I took with me a hefty collection of Anton Chekhov’s short stories and Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White. I don’t do beach reads. In a way, I wish I did. I’d probably be a lot more at ease in myself. Anyway, it was for this reason – this desire to be challenged, to be made to work – that I took up Gravity’s Rainbow [GR].

To some extent GR’s reputation as unreadable or alienating is overstated. I mean, it’s only a book, and they’re just words, yo. If you can read, then you can read GR, only it might require a little bit more patience than your regular kind of novel, and you might have to accept that not every reference, not every paragraph in fact, will make sense, will be familiar, or recognisable. I think a lot of the time when the term unreadable is thrown around by people it simply means: I hated it. Which is fine. I hate a whole shit-tonne of things. But I think it’s unfair to try and turn others off reading something purely because you didn’t like or enjoy it. However, it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the stuff that traditionally turns people away from GR:

There is some science
And maths
And psychology
There are a bunch of acronyms, some of which are never explained
There is a huge cast of characters, and you won’t keep them all straight in your mind
There are extreme flights of fancy, that drop in on the reader without warning and appear to have no connection to what the author was writing about at the time

More so than the obscure references, the science, etc, I feel as though the real impediment to enlightenment, vis-a-vis GR, is Pynchon’s style, his syntax in particular. This is especially true of the first 200 or so pages, which are by far the most challenging. I must admit that the way the man puts together a sentence, his grammar and his word-order, is weird, is sometimes baffling. The style reminded me a lot of Faulkner, actually, especially Absalom Absalom. Like with that book there are some sentences here that appear to be random words strung together in no particular order; the words themselves aren’t obscure, they simply don’t naturally follow each other. Another thing that the two books have in common is what I call selective grammar. What I mean by that is that for a page or two the grammar seems conventionally correct, so obviously the author knows his business, and then one will suddenly come across a large chunk of text that appears to be missing the necessary commas, full-stops etc. Occasionally distracting or even tedious that might be, but it is not especially tough to navigate. Perhaps the most irritating thing for me, about GR and the style, was the way the story would shift perspective from one character to another without warning, almost in the middle of a sentence. And it would sometimes take a paragraph or two to realise that it had happened. That feeling of catching up with the book, of sometimes being one step behind, instead of riding along with it, was frustrating.

After the first two hundred plus pages the book becomes so so so much easier to read; if Part 1 is like being caught outside in a storm without an umbrella, then entering Part 2 is like stepping through your front door out of the rain; suddenly everything is clearer, more comfortable. There is *gasp* some straightforward plotting, but, more importantly, the writing is cleaner, more accessible. It is as one luxuriates in Part 2’s ease that one might start to wonder why Part 1 is the way that it is. With the marked difference between the two parts it is almost as though Pynchon wants to disorientate you, only to lead you toward enlightenment. It’s a kind of literary tough-love. In a lot of novels it is the main character who moves from psychological confusion to clarity, in GR it is the reader. But that, of course, still doesn’t explain why. One could say that as Part 1 is set mostly in war-torn London the disorientation is appropriate; most of the numerous characters are living in circumstances in which bombs are dropping all around them and at any moment one could take them out. The characters who don’t appear to be as concerned about death are at least professionally or psychologically under extreme duress. The war, in all its mind-fuckery, its horror, is being brought to bear on everyone in Part 1. In effect, then, your confusion, your disorientation, mirrors theirs and vice versa. Likewise, the world of Part 1 is in a state of disintegration, of collapse, and the characters are attempting to impose order on this chaos, just as you, the reader, are trying to impose order on the chaos of the text.

A lot is made of the book’s flat characters; it is the one of the chief criticisms of GR in particular, and the author’s work in general. By flat what these dissenting voices mean is that the characters are under-developed, simple, one-dimensional. They don’t, they say, feel like real people. We never, they continue, get to know them. Two things strike me as interesting about the flat characters accusation. Firstly, where are these novels which have characters in them that feel like real people? The critic Michael Hoffmann once wrote of Ebenezer Le Page that it is one of the few books that gives you the full man. I’ve always found that absurd. No book can actually give you a full man. As far as I am concerned, all characters in all novels are flat if what you want are real people.

I feel as though what readers are actually wanting from characters in books, when flat is thrown around as a criticism, are people who have a detailed back story and who subsequently grow or change or learn lessons and behave in ways that make sense to them, the reader. Don Quixote is flat, they’d say, because he does the same things over and over again. GR’s Slothrop is flat because we are told very little about his life and his feelings, beyond his paranoia, confusion and fear of death. My response to that is: yeah and so what? This is the second point of interest for me: why are some readers so put off by what they see as flat characters? Why is flat wielded as something with which to strike down a book or writer? Maybe it’s just me, but I like different things; I am able to appreciate a book that tells me, in detail, a bunch of stuff about a character’s mental life, but I am also equally able to enjoy a cornucopia of characters who merely serve the author’s themes or ideas. Books aren’t real life, the characters in them are not real people, so why do we insist that they must strive to be so? Search me.

Another fallacy when discussing Pynchon’s fiction is to label it cold and unemotional. I genuinely don’t get that. Of course, it is wrong on a literal level, because his work is obviously full of emotions such as fear and paranoia etc, but even if you put those aside, as I don’t think they are the kind of emotions people are missing in Pynchon’s work, I’d still say it’s a bad call. I’d say that Pynchon is one of the most sentimental and compassionate authors I have read. In fact, I think he takes it too far on occasions and his stuff can become mawkish. Take Jessica and Roger, who are two vulnerable and confused people who are unsure whether they are genuinely in love or whether they merely need each other in the appalling circumstances of war. All of their interactions are shot-through with longing and tension and doubt. Consider, also, the justly lauded dodo killing scene; the clumsy, not-made-to-endure dodos are clearly a stand-in for man, particularly those in war situations, civilians and soldiers. There is an atmosphere of pathos throughout almost the entirety of GR.

So, I hope I have gone some way to at least debating, if not refuting, some of the popular criticisms of Pynchon’s work. I also hope I have maybe gone some way to convincing those of you who have been previously put off by its reputation that it is possible to read Gravity’s Rainbow, that it isn’t nearly as intimidating as some would like you to believe. However, you may at this point be thinking: all that is fine and all, but you gave the fucker three stars.Yes, yes, I did. [I even *whisper it* considered giving it two stars.] So, what gives? Well, I think it is possible, and necessary, to defend the book - or any book - against petty or wrong-headed criticism, but it does not, of course, follow that you are therefore obliged to have fun reading it. Cards on the table? GR bored me quite a bit. I kinda felt as though Pynchon had made his point in the first 300 pages and, as the novel progressed, was starting to repeat himself, was starting to get on my nerves; I felt as though if I gave up I wouldn’t be missing anything, and that’s perhaps, like with a relationship, the point at which you know you ought to part ways. In all honesty, I just don’t think Pynchon and I are a good fit, because although I like the idea of his books I hardly ever love them, in the reading. In fact, the only one I have genuinely loved is Mason & Dixon. That’s a great book. But the rest of his stuff? Meh.

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AS HORROR

A truly terrifying novel, from it's opening nightmare with the raw language of "A SCREAMING comes across the sky", to the dark paranoia, extraordinarily violent images, murders and battles and Nazi experiments and trapped children. This is not just your regular, "They're out to get me" Paranoia, this is wild Paranoia implicating the reader, confirmed by the narration, insane, surreal paranoia. Explosions, rockets, secrets, monsters, true EVIL. Gravity's Rainbow is a truly chilling horror novel.

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AS COMEDY

A truly hilarious novel, from its slapstick cartoon characters bashing heads to the various jokes and worldplay to the custard-pie fights between Nazi aircraft. The novel truly takes nothing seriously, anyone can jump down the toilet to swim in the sewers at any time. It's a free-wheeling drug-fueled adventure of people bumbling around, blowing things up, wandering around in pig suits, and fighting giant octopuses.

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AS TRAGEDY

A truly heartrendingly sad novel, with its themes of lonely lyrical lost love. Roger Mexico and Jessica Swanlake torn apart by the vagaries of loyalty and war, great sweeping flights of narrative fancy showing us the melancholy beauty of ordinary soldiers, Slothrop numbed and overwhelmed by the news of the death of his friend, Pokler and his daughter, and always this soaring, operatic sadness, a longing for a better time glimpsed sometimes through the fog of war, allowed sometimes to breathe, before disappearing forever...

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AS ADVENTURE

A truly exciting novel, full of wild shootouts and crazed chase scenes, and conspiracies conspiracies conspiracies, intrigue in high places, secret books, codes and ciphers, Nazis vs. Good Guys, an ol' fashioned pulp adventure, explosive and maniacally fun, a rambling, insane action-thriller as gunfight-packed as "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Possibilities...
Gravity's Rainbow as Philosophy
Gravity's Rainbow as Politics
Gravity's Rainbow as Romance
Gravity's Rainbow as War Story
Gravity's Rainbow as Fantasy
Gravity's Rainbow as Science Fiction
Gravity's Rainbow as Art

It took me a couple of tries to make it through Pynchon's Great Thing; the first time I began it eagerly enough, only to smash headfirst into an impenetrable wall of thick, viscous prose that so entangled and bewildered me that—after some seventy-odd pages—I said Enough! and moved on. However, the book nibbled away at my mind, and about three weeks later I gave it another try. Determined this time to see it through, I hit the ground running to match pace with A screaming comes across the sky...; somewhat surprised, I found I myself fairly easily clearing hurdles that I had earlier stumbled over and, flush with confidence, made it past my previous checkpoint. It was with bracing speed and excitement that I showed up at Un Perm' au Casino Hermann Goering, confident that I would not only be able to finish this sucker, but that it would be an amazing, difficult, revelatory, hilarious journey to undertake.

Now, to finish GR, even when under its anticipatory spell and dazed by its glamors, still presents a challenge. The text can switch from Keystone Cop routines and breezy pie-fights to steel cable paragraphs and triple-size airbags, inflated by super-dense sentences, that bring your forward momentum to a crashing halt. There are also stretches where you become exasperated with Pynchon, or bored, and only determination keeps you slogging on; and one still has to imbibe Pynchon's rapid-fire dispensation of culture (both high and low), technology, conspiracies, and science, parse it, and try to make sense of where he is leading you to with his variegated passages of breathtaking and stomach-punching prose—and Dorothy-O, it sure ain't Kansas. One thing that seized me was entropy-to-heat-death: the human body shedding energy as it freezes in the ever-slowing nanoseconds before the absolute-zero, moss-encrusted-stillness of non-life; the encephalic frost ushered in by almighty science as it fills its guts with exuberant energy and spews out entropic dung, the great equalizer that achieves parity in scything a playing field of rictus-limned corpses in an eternal cast renewal for the grand cosmic joke which ends with but a geriatric, wheezing Time inching along astride a single Galactus-like figure channeling Isabella Band-Aid and Wondering what it's for? Is it a truism in GR that those who expend energy in the pursuit of any ambition higher than fraternity hijinks end up paralysed or corrupted by their desires, enter fully into one or the other of the master-slave paradigm that seems the rising cream of the mass human psyche? I pondered whether Pynchon's twentieth-century could best be described as the thousand-fold madnesses of man—in the thrall of brilliant technologies hatched from his own rational mind, many of them mass-murder machines—the paranoia and irrationality, the dissipation of his spirit and sanity born of being forced to stare that mighty, slow-moving tsunami Death full-on into his fathomless, inert, coal-mine eyes without any sense of surety or stable footing whatsoever; of the observer and abyss sharing an eternal kiss of gazes, now that the concealing curtain has been consumed in firing the ovens. Can this be the peak of the parabola traced by the V2 painting gravity's rainbow?

I have no idea, because I've only read the book once, and more than almost any other cosa asombrosa I've ingested, GR screams to be consumed several times—if only to figure out what those square symbols fucking mean: vaginal or anal pursing chronologically branded by a god with more of an angular, less perfect bent? Geometrical hints regarding how to mathematically calculate the commonplace soul's daily suffering? This book stimulated and provoked and entertained me so much that I went on a Pynchon tear, one that—by the time I turned the final page of Mason & Dixon—had worn me to a frazzle. I still have Against the Day in my pile of to-reads; once the latter has been put to bed, I do believe I'll go back to Tyrone Slothrop and Benny the Bulb, to Pynchon's best of a handful of great books and the core of his canon, take a seat in the front-facing car, and experience the highs and lows of this inimitable and wild roller coaster ride once again.

CNP C. etc Gravitons & Rainbovitons


super nebulous or "difficult" authors , but dig this --
my right eye is dominant so I can read well enough
dozens of instances of pedophilia
telepathic elves who ride wolves
a lightbulb, randomly intersect
jargon-filled defenses of this book
if only we knew the melody
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
the mark of a literary genius
A girl I dated in college said it was her
I quit reading at the coprophagia scene
a person with ADHD having an acid trip
the masterpiece literary snobs think it is
supposed to be one of the best books of the 20th century and all
I found myself laughing out loud as I progressed
waving his arms and shouting "look at me"
that I feel about David Lynch
Swaths of obscurity
But it was just annoying
the Pulitzer Board had difficulty with its coprophilic focus
nonchalance toward many a co-conspirator's favorite author
and throw it harder the second time
what I'd have for me tea
the brain of an untreated ADHD patient
the main reason a lot of people love this book
obsession with phallic objects
in their 20's while smoking clove cigarettes and drinking some PBR
as there's a later scene of coprophilia
I'd worry about you
it in its stupid ass
I ever read
the parts that were uncomfortably and pervertedly sexual
favorite
literary milestone that people seem to think it is
the writer's extreme hubris manages to shine through the written garbage
were on LSD the whole time
you feel as if you've been raped and torn to pieces
the myriad two page paragraphs filled with run on sentences that overwelm
also considered to be difficult
they fail to create the necessary feeling
LSD induced hallucinations, poor humor, anti-prose
Fuck his erections, fuck the rocket, fuck the S&M and shit eating and the fucking bananas
arsenic sauce represents pedophilia and/or
be rambling and incoherent
the mess appears some sense and cohesion
overblown, ridiculously difficult, wandering and fails
I'm a prude and lacking humor
banana pancakes
many loosely connected character developments
beauty in language
and it's author for having written it
a guidebook to help me understand it
bedazzled by the literary pyrotechnics
the rambling, self-impressed noodling
comic means smiling wryly every 100 pages or so
I reached a pedophilic sex-scene
...e poi e poi e poi?
taking the piss almost
misunderstood is to be thought great by critics
impenetrable - impenetrable and not worth reading
take drugs
unreadable
a long swim through a sewer makes me stupid
love this book or you don't get it
as complete gibberish
disjointed and uninteresting
take no more
writers that you love or you hate
shit
getting a boner
the company of a pretentious hipster
Just
filled stream-of-conscious writing
non stop stream of conscious bullshit
get it
grâce à de fulgurantes érections
kill me for what I am going to
doing some very serious drug
deserved a smack upside the head for abusing his readers
the assumption that his work is worth following
understand without tedious pretension
Han dynasty Chinese poetry in the original
so good ones or pretentious ones; esoteric ones and erudite ones
of contrived "postmodern literature"
show off his scientific prowess
thank God I did not
'literary classic' sometimes has to mean it is written in impenetrable
carry me along
sound your barberic yawp
have actually finished it
over-the-top theatrical fluff
"unreadable, turgid, overwritten, and obscene"
brutal
definitely a lost cause
flip open to random pages
one of the "great" authors
this insufferable book even without those people
get throug hthe whole thing
get through the first one hundred pages
literature at its best
guy goes down the toilet
great awards
morally outraged
Something about a banana breakfast
12 year old children and their math teacher
Sucked
a genius
bizarrely juvenile sex-obsession and dubious racial politics
realize this is supposed to be a classic
supposed to like this
war machine and scatophagia
picked for the 1974 Pulitzer
summers reading challenge
waste
getting this
negative stars aren't available
Pretentious!
a mechanical engineering textbook
Get off my lawn
Impenetrable
failed
about S/M, depravity
a graphing calculator
call this tome
Wordy author
didn't see any reason
Obscene pretentious assprat
impenetrable
Life's too short
Readability is a good thing
my worst enemy
Un-readable
finished in college
still wondering what
life's too short
understand what
The word "pretentious"
get into it
thirty years
painful
about T. Pynchon's nob
only person
dreck
En pausa hasta nueva orden
want to
0 stars
lightshow
age well
small coffee table of an epic
Not
Horrible
Hate

It took me the better part of seven months, going 10 to 20 pages at a clip and excluding all other novel-reading, but I have finished. And while I'm proud of my focus and tenacity, I'm not entirely sure it was worth it.
I'm not going to bash something that obviously means a lot to so many people. It just didn't mean much to me.
I have long contended that genius isn't just having a brilliant thought, but communicating that thought to others. If this work conveyed some amazingly deep meaning to you, then great. Pynchon is a genius. It simply didn't speak that way to me. I recognized several moments of really insightful writing, but they were buried too deeply in meandering subplots and obtuse characters I couldn't keep track of. I don't care if a book doesn't have a plot, but it needs to have a point.
The novel is a remarkable achievement and a one-of-a-kind literary benchmark. It's just not my cup of postmodern tea. I'm happy to be done with it so I can put it back up on the shelf and get back to actually enjoying my evening reading instead of just getting through it.

This novel: pure dynamite. The many stops and starts preceding my reviewing this thing were probably to be expected, after experiencing much the same in my reading of it, over some four months of feelings both extreme and paradoxical: annoyed incomprehension and delight, mad disgust and awe, blessed amusement and horror, etc., until settling into a kind of sad comforted confusion by the novel's quasi-end.
.
A work of impossibly mind-numbing yet -invigorating complexity, sinking to murky moral depths but also surfacing then soaring to awesome philosophical heights, Pynchon's monsterpiece boasts a hella impressive multiplicity of ideas, themes, and forms (moving beyond the novel to include film, comic-book, theatre, musical, even mathematical formulae: in a great postmodern pastiche), which nevertheless somehow crystallises into a singular brilliance, as of a rocket's flare, exploding to amazing if discombobulatory effect. All this demands a lot, i.e., patience, humility, sheer stubbornness, even in the face of the most impenetrable passages, because their more accessible if not epiphanous counterparts lie ahead, often just around the corner: waiting like pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.

"Gravity's Rainbow," like the V2/A4 rocket central to the novel and its many, many moving parts, defies conventional plot summary, yet here's my (pitiful) attempt anyway. Divided into four parts, the book roughly follows paranoid American Tyrone Slothrop during 1944 as he finds himself in the middle of serious and fast-developing shenanigans after various governments and organisations (whether British, German, Soviet) discovered the weird correlative if not causative link with rockets exploding all over Europe in places coinciding with Slothrop's sexcapedes. Now that's greatly simplifying this book, being the main thrust of a story with such smorgasbordic imagination it has things as bonkers as Pavlovian octopi, sentient pinballs, immortal light-bulbs (also sentient), superheroes, witches, seances, etc., but somehow makes them all hang together, in some tableau of beautiful chaos.

But what I enjoyed most about "Gravity's Rainbow," even when I didn’t Get It, are those frequent reassurances Pynchon plants throughout the book: that it’s Totally Okay not to understand some or all of it, that there too can be grace and humility in the not-knowing, the not-understanding. Paranoia is Slothrop’s defining characteristic, and also “Europe’s Original Sin—the latest name for that is Modern Analysis.” “Nobody,” Pynchon however cautions, “ever said a day has to be juggled into any kind of sense at day's end.” While there’s irony in my masochistic disregard of this very good advice and nevertheless ceaselessly annotating his book to hell and back, the margins scribbled over with desperate arrows and symbols, it’s no small relief to find these occasional little kindnesses, these meta-pats on the back.

Video review
Reading project

Shit Happens (... For A Reason???)

Un’orma nell’anima

Da qualche parte ho letto e mi sono appuntato l’osservazione che “L’arcobaleno della Gravità” va considerato come un’esperienza e dunque, qualunque sia l’epilogo del rapporto che si ha con esso, il libro lascerà un’orma nell’anima.
Ancorché sintetica, mi è sembrata una definizione molto appropriata, fra le tante in cui mi sono imbattuto, e che annulla ogni proposito di abbozzare una recensione analitica o anche solo un commento, quanto meno nel senso cui siamo abituati su anobii e nelle nostre teste.

Lungo l’interminabile percorso di quest’opera, Pynchon semina talmente tante suggestioni in chi è disposto a raccoglierle (ma anche in chi resiste a questo anomalo processo di contaminazione) che possono produrre collegamenti immediati nella nostra immaginazione o più spesso riaffiorano in forme o in momenti inaspettati (anche al di fuori della lettura…) o ancora si percepiscono allo stato di latenza nel nostro subsconscio.

Inutile ripetere che non esiste trama o quando una parvenza di questa sembra affiorare si esaurisce nell’arco del singolo episodio, si contraddice e si sfilaccia, perché l’autore adotta (non sempre in modo esplicito, poiché ce ne si rende conto solo col procedere) la tecnica del deliberato depistaggio, nei confronti dei personaggi e dei lettori, seppellendo il fantasma della trama sotto un accumulo sterminato di materiali, estratti dalle matrici più disparate: dal cinema alla fisica, dai fumetti alla musica, dalla fantascienza allo slapstick, dalla pornografia alla balistica.

Altrettanto superfluo citare specifici passaggi che si imprimono con maggiore efficacia nell’immaginazione e nella memoria, perché credo che tale selezione sia decisamente soggettiva, dal momento in cui il lettore innesta il pilota automatico e si lascia andare al proprio personale itinerario mentale, imbattendosi in pagine percepibili come perle sofisticate, mattoni indigeribili o tutte le varianti intermedie, condensate in un magma che alla fine, si voglia o meno, non può lasciare inalterata la percezione stessa del leggere, il chè non è che un modo diverso per tornare a ribadire il concetto iniziale.

Years ago, the retina of my left eye detached and I underwent major surgery. Since then, the annual eye exam has brought a certain amount of anxiety, and yes, paranoia over every flash and floater. A week ago, the eye doctor identified a hole in the macular of my left eye. If a V-2 nano-rocket hit the the retina, it might look like this macular hole:

n  n

The macular hole has an interesting effect on my vision:


n  n

Fortunately, my right eye is dominant so I can read well enough, for now. The surgery is scheduled in a couple weeks. It is an out-patient procedure under a local anesthesia, but recovery requires I spend 2 weeks with my face kept parallel to the ground.

The reason I'm bringing all this up is to to garner sympathy explain how I 'saw' Gravity's Rainbow and why I've given it only one-star and deter a skewering by Pynchon lovers who wouldn't kick a girl while she'd down—would they?

Some scenes were all too clear: S&M acts including consumption of shit and urine, the sad plight of an adolescent sex slave (enjoyed by Slothrop, a major protagonist), bad 'poetry', bizarre appearances of what could be described as slapstick or burlesque acts out of nowhere, etc. However, amidst all the drugs, sex and despair were concise and interesting nuggets of wisdom, such as:

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.

Paranoia is perhaps the major theme.

No doubt, Pynchon is brilliant, and some passages were inspirational, but I felt I had to sift through lots of...sand. At times, my comprehension of an idea felt as exciting as panning for gold—if one tiny morsel sparkled, I was thrilled.

Despite the difficulty reading Gravity's Rainbow, I continued to the end in hope of pumping up my linguistic muscles and cleansing my linguistic palate. I understand that patterns in what we read or write prime us to repeat those patterns automatically in our own writing. Psycholinguists refer to this influence as structural priming or syntactic persistence. Priming occurs at the subconscious level. It is very powerful, and for that reason, I will not finish novels that strike me as poorly written.

But writing isn’t just about forming varied and understandable sentences. It is about creating syntactic delights that thrill the reader, most of whom find pleasure in encountering language that departs from what they are primed to expect. I admire writers who find new ways to employ language.

I did not enjoy Gravity's Rainbow; it deviated so much from my own priming that I often found it incomprehensible. Although I used a reader's companion guide, many of the references were unrecognizable as vocabulary--just not on my personal map. Reading GR was as frustrating as trying to read with my bad eye, through which straight lines are wavy and letters in the middle of my vision collapse into a blurry gray hole.

Mis notas/guía de lectura para El arco iris de gravedad, de Thomas Pynchon


El arco iris de gravedad es de esa clase de obras que son capaces de llegar a lugares que la ficción convencional no puede ni imaginar. No esperen una relación fría, vaga y simple que solo nos exija un mínimo de concentración y una dosis mísera de participación. Con la ficción pynchoniana, se conforma una especie de reciprocidad entre el lector y el escritor que tiende a agarrarnos por la fuerza y empujarnos hacia un viaje que se puede tornar demasiado intenso. En un libro de Pynchon, no cabe la linealidad, la coherencia y la claridad: todo es un delirio, en la vastedad del tiempo y el espacio, una ascensión hacia el caos conspirativo y una colisión de alucinaciones que hace de la exégesis una meta casi inalcanzable. Para representar lo que digo me voy a colgar de un diálogo que mantienen dos personajes, los rusos Mravenko y Tchitcherine: "'¿Tienes alguna idea de lo que está pasando?'. Mravenko rio. '¿Acaso lo sabe alguien?'".

La megalomanía y la paranoia persecutoria son dos factores que rigen en toda la novela, y no solamente por la historia y sus personajes, sino también por el lector, que lucha por hallar la imagen final de un rompecabezas cuyas piezas nunca dejan de cambiar. Si algo nos ha enseñado Pynchon es que siempre es más confortante pensar que existe un plan maestro en el que nosotros interpretamos un rol esencial que pensar que somos cuerpos arrastrados por la corriente del tiempo sin un rumbo deliberado. De allí se desprende el delirio paranoico, que afecta a una gran cantidad de sus personajes, en especial a Slothrop y Enzian, quienes continuamente buscan quebrar la superficie de lo que se muestra a simple vista para dar con una verdad arduamente especulada. En esto también subyace la ineludible burla de Pynchon a la documentación histórica. Las realidades subjetivas de los protagonistas ponen de manifiesto que del caos individual surge el acontecimiento, y un acontecimiento surgido del caos nunca es fehaciente.

Otro aspecto que me gustó mucho de El arco iris de gravedad es que el autor se centra en las consecuencias que tiene la beligerancia en los inocentes. Hay una parte extraordinaria, afortunadamente extensa, en la que Pynchon nos narra la devastación de la guerra en la Navidad y su efecto en los niños. Pynchon nos ayuda a contemplar cómo la condena y la libertad se forjan en un terreno de mentiras, y que las victimas siempre terminan siendo los que jamás quisieron la guerra.

Por supuesto que también están presentes temas recurrentes en su ficción. Uno de ellos es el colonialismo (personalizado por el capitán nazi Blicero/Weissman), que en esta ocasión se concentra en la ocupación alemana en el sudeste de África y el posterior genocidio herero, algo que me pareció muy bien tratado, y que se vuelve aun más interesante cuando, poco a poco, vamos conociendo la Schwarzkommando y sus facciones. En la relación de Enzian con sus subordinados y su confrontación con los Vacíos se puede apreciar claramente la dualidad entre el Bien y el Mal, como asimismo la autodestrucción humana que impregna en su totalidad la atmósfera bélica de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Otros de los contenidos habituales del genio norteamericano (frecuentemente tratados con un humor tan bueno que es hasta posible terminar con una subluxación de costilla) son el sexo impúdicamente estrafalario (a veces excesivo, sin embargo), la manipulación de la entropía, ciencia real y contemplativa (en este caso le tocó el turno a la experimentación pavloviana), estupefacientes y sus respectivas secuelas alucinógenas, y un largo y variado etcétera. Queda en evidencia que Pynchon puede escribir sobre lo que se le dé la gana.

¿Es difícil El arco iris de gravedad? Sí, pero no ilegible como había leído en un sinnúmero de sitios. Con su inherente estilo barroco y la fragmentación narrativa, Pynchon juega con la causa y el efecto, tanto como con la fantasía y la realidad, lo que puede tornarse un poco exhaustivo para la humilde mente del lector; pero mientras exista paciencia y voluntad, llegar al final no es una tarea imposible y les aseguro que será un tour de force más que placentero. A Pynchon hay que leerlo con un cuaderno a mano, concentración y café. Mucho café.

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–