Gravity's Rainbow theories and speculation

[Anonymous No.14675332]

What the fuck happened? Who the fuck is Zhlubb and what the fuck is the Orpheus Theater? Why did Slothrop fade away into nothingness? What happened to the Hereros and the 00001?
I want to summon that mysterious Bill Murray figure who solved TCoL49 with Torquato Tasso and have him post more clues. I need more meat to this, something to collate everything here and make sense of things.

[Anonymous No.14675345]

>>14675332
Jack Parsons

[Anonymous No.14675590]

>>14675345
>Marvel WHITESIDE Parsons
>Buddies with Von Braun before the war
>Becomes the leading non-German authority on rocketry
>Converts to Crowleyist esotericism
>Founds JPL
>Summons a Thelemic goddess to conceive a messiah in his downtime
>Kicked out of JPL for Satanic shenanigans
>Fucks around with his wife's sister until she leaves him for L. Ron fucking Hubbard
>Spies for Israel and dies mysteriously in an explosion
What the fuck

[Anonymous No.14675966]

>>14675332
https://americanaejournal.hu/vol6no2/lacey
I like this guy's interpretation.

[Anonymous No.14675993]

>>14675332
based oldfag

[Anonymous No.14676261]

>>14675332
i can't participate (nor mouse over your spoiler tags) because i haven't finished the book, but i did upload my Slothrop and Katje animation. Hope you all enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ImqgsAogiY

[Anonymous No.14676336]

>>14675590
>>14675345
Hehe. Pynchon's military service provides much of the context you seek. Just SigInt things.

[Anonymous No.14676398]

>>14676261
This is incredible, the music and style fit the tone of that part of the book perfectly.
Can't believe you spent 96 hours working on a project based on a book you haven't even finished,

[Anonymous No.14676513]

>>14676261
Really like that candle dick

[Anonymous No.14676605]

>>14675966
I'm reading through and definitely like his analysis of the book's themes, I agree with all of those points and picked up on most of them as I read. Those tie into the ends of the Counterforce lads and Blicero quite well. What I don't get, and what so far this piece hasn't touched on, is the conclusion of the stories of Slothrop, the Hereros, the 00001, and that fucking theater in LA that comes out of nowhere. That's all much less clear, I feel like. But I'll keep reading to see if he does elaborate on these.
>>14676336
AHHHHHH JUST FUCKING TELL ME, EXPLAIN RUGGLES TO ME RIGHT NOW OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU

[Anonymous No.14676742]

>>14675966
>The only means of escape from Them is to disappear into preterition
Holy shit it makes so much sense I should've seen that coming from halfway through
The very end still baffles me, but Slothrop certainly doesn't

[Anonymous No.14676885]

>>14676605
I saw the final episode with Manager Zhlubb being harassed by harmonica freaks on the Pasadena freeway as a depiction of the Force/Counterforce dynamic existing in the present day of 1973, as well as a way of making it unclear whether the final rocket impact happens in the past or the present.
I'm not going to pretend like it's the most satisfying ending ever, but it does make sense in terms of the novel's structure to end the story where it began - with the rocket suspended over its target in the moment of indeterminacy just before impact where causality breaks down etc.

[Anonymous No.14677499]

>>14676261
dude this is great, would love to see more stuff if you continue doing things like this

[Anonymous No.14678859]

[Anonymous No.14679530]

>>14676885
This still leaves a lot of questions but I do like it.
The more I think about the last hundred pages the more little oddities I remember though. Whose anxiety was Pirate Prentice channeling when he wandered around that taffy factory with Katje and spoke to the preacher? Or was that a scene in reality? What was the long sequence of Slothrop on some kind of show with those cartoon characters in a horrifying stadium? Did somebody spike him with sodium amatyl again? Was the colonel getting his haircut the Kenosha Kid, and either way, how was he wrapped up in everything with Jamf in that Happyville sequence? I keep remembering all these one-off chapters that seem completely disconnected from the main story near the end.
Fuck. If I had time to read it four more times and figure all this shit out I'd get started right now.

[Anonymous No.14680391]

>>14679530
I only read it once but I'm about ready for round 2. The first time was more of a "go along for the ride and enjoy the schizophrenia", now I must delve deeper.

[Anonymous No.14680522]

The more posts I read the more episodes I realize I've forgotten since I read it about a year ago.

[Anonymous No.14681662]

>>14676605
GR is written in present tense as if you are watching a movie and this is a caricature of that with Zhlubb being a thinly veiled caricature of (Richard M.) Nixon.

>>14679530
Kenosha Kid is Orson Welles

[Anonymous No.14682088]

>>14681662
What the fuck does he have to do with anything?

[Anonymous No.14682118]

>>14681662
>>14682088
Wait a minute, did he make the movie in the Orpheus Theater that everybody's watching and communicate with Slothrop as the director?

[Anonymous No.14682204]

>>14676261
Art-style reminded me of that book of one illustration per page of GR or whatever.
Fucking great.

[Anonymous No.14682426]

Bumping because the video is great and GR is an amazing book I need to re-read despite finishing it not too long ago.
>>14678859
I would watch the absolute fuck out of this movie.

[Anonymous No.14682444]

>>14678859
>Gottfried as a little kid
I could've sworn Blicero "discovered" Gottfried as an enlisted man, and that he was a young adult twink
Or was he supposed to be Hitler Youth?

[Anonymous No.14682467]

>>14682444
I’m pretty sure Gottfried was just an adult twink, but he is described in very childlike terms (to the point that I thought I misread and that he was a kid) toward the end there.

[Anonymous No.14683753]

>>14676398
>>14676513
>>14677499
>>14682204
>>14682426
Thank you for being so kind. If any of you posted last thread, too: I'd like you to know you're the only reason I uploaded it at all. I'll keep reading. We'll see if some other scene finds me more confident to animate (maybe in 3D...?).

[Anonymous No.14684449]

>>14682444
Weren't the Germans conscripting young boys to fight near the end of the war?

[Anonymous No.14684562]

>>14676261
Great stuff, appreciate the effort.

[Anonymous No.14684571]

how long master

[Anonymous No.14684599]

>>14676261
I just finished GR about a week ago, the hallway scene and the Katje in the bedroom with the snifters are fucking bang on mate, well done.

[Anonymous No.14684630]

>>14684449
yeah but Gottfried was in the dungeon from like 1943 onwards. He's portrayed in this Hansel way but I think he is probably 21 or so

[Anonymous No.14684641]

>>14678859
Hey Terry Giliam was my idea after Kubrick died
But I think Pynch doesnt want it.
But who knows what will happen after he dies.

[Anonymous No.14684887]

>>14676261
This is fucking fantastic anon, I remember posting in the thread where you asked about what Slothrop looked like

[Anonymous No.14686025]

>>14684641
GR is one of those books that's "unfilmable," not because the story wouldn't work as a film (it absolutely would), but because there's absolutely no market for it and no producer willing to put up the money for such a large and potentially controversial project.
We can dream, though.

[Anonymous No.14686037]

>>14675332
Bleeding Edge is better than GR.

[Anonymous No.14686098]

>>14686025
>but because there's absolutely no market for it
yeha but was there a 'market' for Dr Parnassus or Zero Theorem?

[Anonymous No.14686116]

>>14678859
A lot of these are perfect casts but for some reason my favorite is Belushi as Pig Bodine.... Could have put him in V as well.

I always imagined Pudding as someone like The Major from Fawlty Towers

[Anonymous No.14686124]

>>14686037
Why is that? The only other Ruggles I've read is Lot 49.

[Anonymous No.14686136]

>>14686116
>>14678859
I still think Enzian should be Idris Elba and Tchitcherine should be Idris Elba in really awful whiteface

[Anonymous No.14686257]

>>14686037
To me, Bleeding Edge feels like tech vernacular was wedged in at every possible opportunity and slightly forced. Somehow the physics vernacular of GR rolls out more naturally.... Maybe it's Pynchons background and maybe it's that I'm more familiar with the computer networks than rockets.

[Anonymous No.14686555]

>>14686257
Even as somebody well-versed in it, the physics vernacular of GR was absolutely amazing. He writes about physical concepts better than most physicists and doesn't do so inaccurately or unnecessarily. It's not Jimmy Neutron obfuscation-to-sound-smart, it successfully adds depth.

[Anonymous No.14686970]

>>14686555
I was blown away to see organic chemistry used well in a novel. Something about Jamf preferring the strength and power of an ionic bond to the sharing central to covalent bonds. STEMfag’s wet dream.

[Anonymous No.14687024]

This thread is really pushing me towards a re-read.

[Anonymous No.14687356]

>>14683753
Please finish the book, it's truly great
>>14686025
I agree and I also disagree. They made Requiem For a Dream into a movie. Not saying the time has passed but I feel like the film would've worked best either in the mid 70's or in the late 90's as a PTA style ensemble film. Maybe now in a multi part series like the new Twin Peaks was done.
>>14686116
Totally agree with Belushi. Cleese is a perfect pic by whoever made that chart
>>14687024
Guys I will re-read this book if we get enough people to read it together. It's that good. Plus the readers guide is super helpful on a re-read.

[Anonymous No.14687358]

>>14687024
then do it, homo :p

[Anonymous No.14687403]

>>14676261
Congrats on persevering and getting it done! I look forward to more from you in the future be it scenes from this or other books!

[Anonymous No.14687623]

>>14687356
>if we get enough people to read it together
I’d be interested. We’ll all start on Valentine’s Day, since there’s so much fucking and sucking in it.

[Anonymous No.14687693]

>>14687623
sounds like a plan. currently reading the recognitions and ill probably be done by then

[Anonymous No.14687841]

>>14676261
Slothrop is black.

[Anonymous No.14687872]

>>14687841
No Slothrop goes undercover as a black man due to pigment change chemicals, he's an English white guy.

[Anonymous No.14688276]

>>14687841
wait, i'm only 200 pages in, but doesn't PISCES mine Slothrop's subconscious for fears about blacks to use against Germany (~64)--Operation Black Wing (76)?

[Anonymous No.14688944]

>>14688276
PISCES was discovering internalized racism. Just kidding, he’s obviously a WASP from Massachusetts, that other fella was probably commenting on his name. None of Slothrop’s interactions with Marvey make sense if the former is a Negro.

[Anonymous No.14689543]

>>14675332
>Why did Slothrop fade away into nothingness?
He went completely psychotic. Remember: Slothrop was MKULTRA'D by Pointsman and Laszlo Jamf

[Anonymous No.14689552]

>Why did Slothrop fade away into nothingness?
He went completely psychotic. Remember: Slothrop was MKULTRA'D by Pointsman and Laszlo Jamf

[Anonymous No.14691158]

Decent thread and I have nothing to contribute but bumping to save it from archival oblivion

[Anonymous No.14691517]

Does anybody have a link to the illustrations that guy did? Would make for an interesting companion to the book based on the few images I've seen.

[Anonymous No.14691554]

>>14691517
"Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow" by Zak Smith
It's on libgen. Some of the pictures are better than others.

[Anonymous No.14691683]

>>14676261
I only know GR from the memes but I really enjoyed that anon. Good job

[Anonymous No.14692391]

>>14691554
Thanks friend, just grabbed it.

[Anonymous No.14692666]

>>14689552
Terrible interpretation, did you even read the book? He was already batshit and paranoid all the way back in the casino.
The only good answer I've seen is that he joins the preterite so seamlessly that he disappears from his own narrative to become an anonymous dweller of the Zone. It's much more thematically consistent. Think about his last appearance - happy, but anonymous, debatably not even there. If he just "went crazy" he would've been found by the many factions looking for him.

[Anonymous No.14694097]

>>14687841
Nope

[Anonymous No.14694113]

>>14692666
Sounds about right, also why only osbie could still make him out. It's basically what he was talking about in lot 49 with the old sailor and the thread through time

[Anonymous No.14694123]

>>14691517
I also found some low-res images of drawings by a German artist named Max Haering, they're pretty neat. He's also drawn some scenes from other Pynchon books.
https://www.maxhaering.de/pynchon1/pynchon_1.html

[Anonymous No.14694403]

>>14686970
The Kekulé chapter and the part at the beginning of Peenemünde where he goes into extreme detail of the double integral in relation to the rocket arc were honestly a joy to read

[Anonymous No.14694461]

>>14676261
Based! Well done, anon

[Anonymous No.14694484]

>>14692666
I thought the event that sent him over the edge was discovering Bianca's body in the Anubis engine room, it occurred roughly 2/3s of the way through the book which is where a kind of decoherence event occurs in pretty much all of Pynchon's books where the established jumble of conflicting yet workable apertures through which different characters comprehend the world collapse as a working function and rather than a climactic moment, you or the character(s) are just kind of left to try and pick up the pieces for the remainder of the novel (in Mason & Dixon it was the kids inserting their own narrative seamlessly into Wicks' story, in Against the Day it was Tunguska, in Bleeding Edge, 9/11)
I went through the book seeing Tyrone as a kind of avatar for the American ethos and I think Pynchon showed the corrupting nature of that ethos with his relationship with Bianca. She's just a girl and Slothrop views her as this beacon of hope and purity to be protected but also has this conflicting carnal lust for her that corrupts and likely contributes to her suicide, not that we didn't see this coming, everywhere the man fucks through part 1, a rocket follows behind. It's a little hard to follow because the Bianca death scene is never explicitly stated, only strongly implied that that's the body he discovered, but reading from that section-the end of Part 3 there are repeated mentioning ignota Bianca that make a lot more sense with the context that he discovered her dead.

[Anonymous No.14694500]

Oh my fucking god, now you are going to make me read Gravity's Rainbow.

Good.

[Anonymous No.14694549]

>>14694484
>suicide
Wasn't she swept overboard by the storm? I thought Slothrop's episode in the engine room was a hallucination due to his guilt over both fucking her and not being able to save her. The "decoherence event" interpretation makes a lot of sense, and probably explains why I'm having a hard time remembering that part of the book.

[Anonymous No.14694613]

>>14694549
I just reread that section and I think you're totally right, (I have the 760 page edition and the part where she's swept overboard appears on 491) and I still think her death is Tyrones breaking point. I was mistaken in thinking his seeing her in the engine room was her death scene, but if that was a complete hallucination had by Tyrone, that too supports my theory that he starts to unravel when he loses Bianca.

[Anonymous No.14694827]

>>14676261
More

[Anonymous No.14694948]

>>14694613
I think it's a turning point and you're right there, but he doesn't lose his mind.
The biggest thesis of the book is on the value of preterition. Slothrop obsesses over it, the Hereros obsess over it, Tchitcherine obsesses over it, it's the driving theme. Mba-kayere. He does not violently lose himself, he fades out of coherence and disappears. His last "appearance" is peaceful, vague, and almost-not-there, he is clearly fading away and not burning up in madness. Between the crushing power of Them and the doomed We (Roger Mexico even voices his distaste for the We option), Slothrop chooses none of the above and finds salvation in preterition, and Pynchon's genius is that he achieves this for Slothrop by hiding his fate from the reader himself.

[Anonymous No.14694959]

>>14686037
The Freud/Fraud dynamic in BE is unparalleled, but it's overall a bit too obvious to touch something like GR.

[Anonymous No.14695604]

>>14694948
Slothrop never goes completely insane, but he does frequently hallucinate/have visions throughout the novel. How else do you explain his going down the toilet and the Racketenstadt episode near the end of the book? It may not be indicative of mental illness, but Slothrop is constantly seeing things that (maybe) don't exist in reality.

[Anonymous No.14695735]

>>14676261
excellent, you should make one for byron the bulb

[Anonymous No.14695743]

>>14695604
Yes, this is absolutely correct, but if he's crazy the entire time it just makes it even more clear that "and then he goes crazy" is not a satisfying conclusion for the character. We see him being delusional and paranoid for the entire book. We do not see him give up on his opposition to Them and become part of the anonymous preterite because we CAN'T see that, Pynchon hammers it home by making Slothrop slip loose of the narrative of the book entirely.
Finding Bianca is a turning point for him not because he suddenly goes insane like a Lovecraft narrator but because it adds a sudden gravitas to all his shenanigans. He's been dicking around, having an adventure, picking up women, going off on little jaunts to the side, and now all of a sudden there are real, serious consequences. A girl has died. It jolts him back to reality. He struggles with it in his weird delusional way by experimenting with going completely over the edge (the Racketenstadt episode) and then finally has the epiphany that there's only one way out if he doesn't want to be destroyed or have more innocents destroyed in the process: quitting the whole game.

[Anonymous No.14695783]

>>14695604
Also, the "going down the toilet" episode happened because he got drugged with sodium amatyl. Even a completely sane person would've had those hallucinations. Der Springer undergoes the same thing when they find him being interrogated, he's babbling complete nonsense that a Russian officer frantically transcribes and has no idea where he is or who his rescuers are.

[Anonymous No.14695797]

>>14695604
I always assumed the toilet thug was sodium Amytal or something but I don't know. One thing that I think is really interesting is to look back at all mentioning of Jamf's conditioning of baby Slothrop and his father selling him because while they're all quite detailed narratives, they are largely unsubstantiated and I seem to remember somewhere in Pt 4 it being suggested (possibly by Slothrop, I can't remember) that there never was a Lazlo Jamf and all the talk of his conditioning was just another manifestation of his own paranoia, but again, who knows what's real and what isn't.

[Anonymous No.14695853]

>>14695743
Wait, who kills Bianca? I thought it was her mom because she did that child sacrifice stuff earlier but you seem to be suggesting it's Them or something

[Anonymous No.14695861]

>>14695797
If there was no Laszlo Jamf and Slothrop never got conditioned, then literally none of the events of the book can happen. PISCES obsessing over him sets up the entire plot and is the only way for him to ever be involved in anything. No Slothrop leaves you... The Herero and Tchitcherine plots, pretty much, and even they both need to interact with him in order to conclude in the way they do.
He questions his own memories because he's a paranoiac, but in the world of the book there has to be a Jamf and he has to diddle baby Tyrone. To assume otherwise is to essentially turn the entire narrative into an "it was all a dream" deal. Events in the Zone are more up for debate than the ones outside of it, I remember in a thread a couple weeks ago when I was only like a third of the way through somebody implied that Katje was the only woman Slothrop ever actually slept with the entire time, and I wish he'd elaborated on it because that sounds like a more interesting path to go down.

[Anonymous No.14695883]

>>14695853
She was thrown overboard before Slothrop during the storm, remember? I think the person who retrieved her body and stuck her inside the guts of the ship was the same person who beat the shit out of the slothrop in the dark
And we don't know who it is.

[Anonymous No.14695885]

>>14686025
I read a blog of a guy who bought a GR first edition, and it was stamped as "property of Warner Brothers Films" or something, as in they were considering adapting it. And there were notes or a bookmark or something from the studio that indicated whoever was reviewing it for adaptation only got to page 30 or so.

[Anonymous No.14695891]

>>14695853
I don't know, and unless I missed a hint somewhere, I'm not sure you're ever supposed to know. At least two posters ITT seem to think she washed over the side in the same storm as Thanatz, and I never noticed where that was implied, so it's very much possible I missed a key component there.
But I read it as a legitimately unknowable mystery. Slothrop at least makes no attempt to figure it out himself, he's just horrified. I saw that as him assuming, no matter who actually did it or even if she did it herself, that it was all part of the machinations of Them, and that the game had suddenly taken on much higher stakes. In the theory of him going over into preterition, Bianca is the point of inflection where he realizes it's not something he can win or that's even worth trying to win anymore.

[Anonymous No.14695894]

>>14695797
Here it is
http://www.theoxenofthesun.com/2014/05/thomas-pynchon-gravitys-rainbow-first.html

[Anonymous No.14695897]

>>14676261
I saw you from the other thread. This is pretty fuckn sick, anon. Good stuff

[Anonymous No.14695898]

>>14695885
Here it is
http://www.theoxenofthesun.com/2014/05/thomas-pynchon-gravitys-rainbow-first.html

[Anonymous No.14695901]

>>14695883
>the same person who beat the shit out of the slothrop in the dark
I read that bit as him running into things in the dark and imagining that it was either Bianca's ghost or some personification of his conscience beating him up, which would explain why the voice seems to know he's guilty of something and why nobody is there when the lights come on again.
>>14695898
>they got filtered by the adenoid scene
Of course.

[Anonymous No.14695915]

>>14695898
The adenoid was Pirate channeling the anxiety of Manager Zhlubb from the Orpheus Theater of the future, right? I don't really understand why and it seems odd that he both has the power to do his psychic thing AND time travel without the latter being mentioned, and I don't know what Pirate has to do with him, but the adenoid is a pretty fucking specific thing to be ailed by.

[Anonymous No.14695936]

>>14695915
I don't think you're supposed to take that connection literally, the adenoid is just a general symbol of establishment anxieties that can show up in different places.

[Anonymous No.14695951]

>>14695915
I think I remember reading something about swollen adenoids inhibiting the ability to speak being important.

[Anonymous No.14696356]

>>14676261
pretty cool

[Anonymous No.14696397]

y'know, somehow, the fact that Slothrop is still physically alive somewhere by the end, I'm wholly satisfied with how everything turned out with Blicero.

[Anonymous No.14697788]

>>14696397
>"There's supposed to be a last photograph of him on the only record album ever put out by The Fool - an English rock group - seven musicians posed, in the arrogant style of the early Stones, near an old rocket-bomb site, out in the East End, or South of the River. It is spring, and French thyme blossoms in amazing white lacework across the cape of green that now hides and softens the true shape of the old rubble. There is no way to tell which of the faces is Slothrop's: the only printed credit that might apply to him is 'Harmonica, kazoo - a friend.' But knowing his Tarot, we would expect to look among the Humility, among the grey and preterite souls, to look for him adrift in the hostile light of the sky, the darkness of the sea..."

[Anonymous No.14699068]

>>14696397
>There are literal nazis in our very government you guys

how can you be happy with that?

[Anonymous No.14699078]

>>14699068
lol how can you not?

[Anonymous No.14699094]

>>14699078
im not a cuck for starters lol

[Anonymous No.14699408]

>>14699078
The ones that got here and sold their souls to the US would be the Blicero-esque degenerates. Even if you're dense enough to think "lol based Nazis," we aren't talking about the ones you would like or the ones who would like you.

[Anonymous No.14699898]

>>14676261
Someone should send this to Pynchon

[Anonymous No.14700013]

>>14697788
such a gorgeous end to a character, man.
God, why aren't there more novels like Gravity's Rainbow in terms of cosmic and spiritual breadth?

[Anonymous No.14701322]

>>14699898
What's his email address?

[Anonymous No.14701682]

>>14694403
I had to do a bunch of extra reading so my dumb ass could understand that bit, so fucking satisfying when it all clicked though

[Anonymous No.14701740]

>>14700013
How do M&D and AtD compare? Going to read them in the coming months.

[Anonymous No.14701770]

>>14701740
M&D concerns itself with its characters a bit more, but the narration does, as it always does with Pinecone, tend to take a mystical sort of tone.The story and themes aren't that similar, though.
Haven't read AtD

[Anonymous No.14702037]

>>14701740
M&D’s prose doesn’t quite reach the level of GR’s, but I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything as warm and satisfying as it in my life. It’s a beautiful and redemptive book, perfect chaser for GR.
Gonna read it again once the weather turns warm and things start getting greener here.