Gravity's Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom

302 Pages·2013·2.33 MB·English

by  Luc Herman

Gravity’s Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom
Gravity’s Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom
Luc Herman and Steven Weisenburger
© 2013 by the University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
All rights reserved
Set in Sabon and Futura by Graphic Composition, Inc.
Printed digitally
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Herman, Luc.
Gravity’s Rainbow, domination, and freedom / Luc Herman and Steven
Weisenburger.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8203-3508-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8203-3508-8
(hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8203-4595-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN
0-8203-4595-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s rainbow. I.
Weisenburger, Steven. II. Title.
ps3566.y55g73455 2013
813'.54—dc23 2013015147
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN for digital edition: 978-0-82034655-7
Contents
Acknowledgments
“What’s Free?” (An Introduction)
One. Novel and Decade
Chapter 1. Fromm and the Neo-Freudian Library
Chapter 2. Marcuse: (No) Chances for Freedom in Advanced Industrial Society
Chapter 3. Brown’s Polymorphous Perversity and Marcuse’s
Repressive Tolerance
Chapter 4. Total Assault on the Culture
Chapter 5. The Law and the Liberation of Fantasy
Two. Domination
Chapter 6. Controlling Slothrop
Chapter 7. War as a Cartel Project
Chapter 8. Working for the Nazis
Chapter 9. The Logic of the Camp
Three. Freedom
Chapter 10. Liberating Narration
Chapter 11. Narrating Liberation
Chapter 12. Tyrone Slothrop’s “Fuck You!”
“Too Late” (A Conclusion)
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
The concept and argument for this book took shape during our joint 2009
fellowship at the Flemish Academic Centre for Science and the Arts in Brussels.
Without the center’s generous support and collegial environment, no amount of
transatlantic emailing or Skype calling would have gotten us here. At the center,
Marc Demay, Inez Dua, and Chris Brossé provided thoughtful and kind
encouragement and assistance—and daily coffee! Also in Brussels, at the Royal
Library’s Center for American Studies, Myriam Lodeweyckx provided access to
and guidance through the center’s holdings. Southern Methodist University
provided a research leave, enabling Steve’s residency at the Royal Academy,
while the Jacob and Frances Mossiker Trust funded his travel to Europe and to
American special collections libraries, without which we also would not have
gotten the book done.
At the University of Texas, librarians at the Harry Ransom Center assisted our
research in the Thomas Pynchon Collection and in their archived sixties-era
underground press materials. Sue Hodson, curator at the Huntington Library in
San Marino, California, assisted us during several visits for work with the
Stephen Michael Tomaske Collection of Pynchon-related materials; Luc, in
particular, is grateful for the Huntington fellowship that enabled his stay in April
2011. Staff at the University of California’s Bancroft Library assisted our
research in their archive of sixties-era small press and free speech movement
materials.
Portions of this book were adapted from previously published essays in Texas
Studies in Literature and Language (34.1, 1992), Pynchon Notes (34–35, 1994;
and 56–57, 2009); and Revista di Studi Anglo-Americani 8.10 (1994), and from
the commemorative collection Sans Everything (2004). Other portions were
field-tested before savvy audiences at the University of Antwerp and at
International Pynchon Week conferences, and we are grateful for their questions
and suggestions.
Editor Nancy Grayson of the University of Georgia Press helped get this book
under contract in 2009, then waited patiently until we delivered the manuscript
three years later—as she stood on the threshold of retirement. We owe Nancy
great thanks, and trust that her travels are going splendidly. For their expert peer
reviews of our manuscript, we are especially grateful to David Cowart and John
Krafft, who provided detailed suggestions and useful critiques. John, for decades
the dean of Pynchon studies, provided what may well be the greatest epic in the
history of readers’ reports—closely incisive and expansive in its corrections and
critique—and David, also a long-time Pynchon and contemporary literature
scholar, offered useful advice that helped us sharpen the book’s argument at key
points. Many thanks to both. We are also very grateful for the help of
photographer Debora Hunter, who assisted with several of our images.