Gravity's Rainbow and the limits of empathy.

 

I have been thinking about empathy and Pynchon. How the man can find a way to dramatize strange outright strange and or scary sexual situations. To know the depravity we are all capable of. The internal monolog of a death drive. Of running toward oblivion with arms open with joyful tears at the very thought of certain doom. Yet still, those silly cornball songs lift the spirit... follow that bouncing ball and sing along (and all that).

Yet some people think the bad puns are not enough... I remember distinctly a critic who said something along the lines of "The novel's inventiveness is not enough, it collapses under its own weight of ideas till the puns no longer transcend" (I am paraphrasing the critic tried to find the quote but am too tired to look it up right now).

The central idea of Gravity's Rainbow is the joy of suffering. That it is possible hope is an act of masochism the universe can not accommodate and it is outright losing patience with the very thought of it all.

I can not imagine tripping on acid with this book (Gravity's Rainbow). The erosion of the ego as it struggles to move forward. the glue of paranoia dissolving with every bit of ourselves when the fiction holding the tapestry of the doll's life is gone you are left only with the moment of acknowledging that paranoia is the only thing keeping the show going. We are swallowed by the light more when see and are gone before we even know the rocket hit the theater.

Christ upon the cross "'Woman, behold thy son".

God said let there be light... A screaming comes across the sky...

The miracle is complete, all things are known and we can all move on.

The difference I find between Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy. Is the empathy seems missing in Cormac's books until I read Stella Maris.

Pynchon Lite... does not exist. there is before gravity's rainbow and afterward. If everything he wrote afterward lacks the impact of a V2. then so be it. The song will stop... and we will collapse into ellipses...

As Daniel Johnston sang "Think of all the fun we had even when the jokes were bad."