Table Of ContentPYNCHON
CREATIVE PARANOIA
•
In
GRA VITY'S RAINBOW
MARK RICHARD SIEGEL
National Unw.sity Publications
II
KENNIKAT PRESS 1978
II
Port Washington, N. Y. London
Kennlkat Press
National University Publications
Literary Criticism Series
General Editor
John E. Becker
F.lrltl/fh Dickinson Unlvenlty
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Inc.; T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding,"
Four
QUQrt~ts.
From Tile Crying ofL ot 49 by Thomas pynchon. Copyright © 1966,
1965 by Thomas Pynchon. Reprinted by permission of J. B.
Lippincott Company.
Duino Elegies by Rainer Mnria Rilke. Translated from the German
by J. B. Leishman nnd Stephen Spender. Copyright © 1939 by
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright renewed 1967 by
Stephen Spender and J. B. Leishman. Quotations used with the
permission of the publisher. W. W. Nonon & Company, Inc., New
York, New York. 10036.
I and 71,ou by Martin Buber. Translated by Walter Kaufman. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970.
Crltiqll~. for permission 10 reprint parts of my own article 'I('reative
Paranoia" and a number of brief excerpts from various other articles.
Copyright © 1978 by Kennikat Press Corp. All rights reserved. No
part of this publication may be reproduced. stored in a retrieval
system, or IrlUlsmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise. without the
prior written permission of the publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Published b)'
Kennikat Press Corp.
Port Washington, N.Y./ London
Libruy of Congress Cataloging in PubUcation Data
Siegel, Mark Richard
Pynchon.
(National univenity publications) (literuy criticism
series)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Pynchon. Thomas. Gravity's rainbow. 2. Paranoia
in literature.
PS3S66.YSSG738 813'.5'4 78.8512
ISBN 0.s046-9213-0
CONTENTS
PREFACE 00
VII
1. INTRODUCTION 3
2. NARRATIVE POINT OF VIEW 20
3. CHARACTERIZATION AND PERSONAL SALVATION 44
4. SOCIO-CUL TURAl METAPHORS 73
5. PARODY AND PARANOIA THROUGH 104
NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
6. COSMIC GOSSIP-THE FUTURE 122
NOTES 126
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 130
INDEX 134
PREFACE
I set out to write this study because of the great number and variety
of people I met who told me, "I was just reading Gravity's Rainbow.
It's great, but I get the feeling I don't really understand what's going
OD. I mean, this guy just dissolves . ... I met these people on playgroWld
n
basketball courts, hitching rides, sitting on barely shaded park benches in
Tucson, Arizona. Usually I told them that they really were getting at least
part of the message: the world is a wondrous place, and people who are
truly open to experience-and you have to be open to read Grtnlity
~
Rainbow-will probably always get the feeling that they don't quite
understand exactly what's going on. We can't know much for sure. We
have to perceive open-mindedly and interpret life creatively; perhaps
at times conditions will make usa little paranoid-or will make us think
we're paranoid when we're not-but we'll try to keep our balance, try
to understand; we will hope for mercy, and we'U pray for a chance to be
kind to others. We'll do these things, perhaps unconsciously, because
something inside of us has felt the fear of dissolution by the force of the
winds, has seen the horror of a friend turned to stone by his fear.
This is not to say that we can't know anything; we are living in the
age of the Educated Guess. The critic's role is not to restrict the varied
responses of readers, but to organize them and to suggest new responses.
However, this critic-reader relationship is paradoxical, since many readings
of a novel may, in fact, restrict the possibilities for meanings which the
novel offers and may prevent the comprehension of the author's work.
My first aim in writing this study of Gravity's Rainbow is to open the
floodgates of meaning for the reader, while at the same time offering a
rubber raft \0 prevent him from being overwhelmed and swept away.
vii
viii I PREFACE
I will point out some sights and try to deftne the currents of the novel.
However I am well aware that when the critic casts his net (woven, as it
t
must be, by creative paranoia) into the depths of such a work. he is
likely to haul up an old shoe or two along with his other squirming
treasures.
My second aim, to show the importance of Thomas Pynchon as a
novelist, will be accomplished almost incidentally. The reader will see
that Pynchon has opened up new areas for anistic examination. The
changes he has wrought in the novel's reader-author relationship will,
I believe, have far-reaching cffects in American literature. A reader's
perception of the relationship be,tween character and narrative and reality
should be changed for good by this novcl. This artistic innovation is not
an idiosyncrasy or a limitation of Pynchon's, but reflects concurrent
innovations in science and philosophy which have altered contemporary
man's conception of his world. Pynchon's influence already seems to be
apparent in the work of new writers of considerable talent such as Tom
Robbins.
I want to thank Art Kay John Hollowell, and Ardner Cheshire for
t
their technical assistance on this manuscript. I need to thank my wife
Carole for all her love.
ft.lark Siegel
CREATIVE PARANOIA IN
GRA VITY'S RAINBOW
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Richard Siegel teaches English literature at Arizona Slate Uni
versity. He has authored several articles on Pynchon and one on film and
comedy.
INTRODUCTION
.'
Gravity's Rainbow has been the subject of controversy, of opinions
ranging from fascination to revulsion, since its publication in 1973. This
controversy was exemplified by the Pulitzer Prize Committee's final
rejection of the novel as obscure and obscene after its unanimous election
as the best novel of the year by the committee's own literary advisers.
W. T. Lhamon announced that Gravity's Rainbo"' would "change the
shape of fiction,'" and other reviewers claimed that it could only be
measured against Moby-Dick and U{l'sseS. The negative criticisms that
appeared, while conceding the technical virtues and the creative imagina
tion which the novel displays, generally condemned it commit ted to
3S
the "easy truth of apocalyptic nihilism.1 This controversy is not
n
surprising, since important novels almost always offend the sensibilities
of some readers and create problems of comprehension for others.
The critical attention created by this explosion of commentaries has
not provided sufficient help for readers who look to criticism for aid in
deciphering this complex novel. Gravity's Roillbo,v provides a wealth of
materials which, when extracted from the context of the novel as a whole,
can be used to support diametrically opposite interpretations of its mean
ing. TIlerefore, while scholars such Edward Mendelson, Joseph Slade,
3S
and Lance Ozier have shed some light on Pynchon's sources, on the
precision and magnitude of the cultural landscape which Pynchon has
created. and on specific but discontinuous aspects of the novel, the
absence of any full-length study of the work as an organic whole has
perpetuated the critical dissonance in the interpretation of even solne of
the most basic features of Gral'ity 's Rainbow.
I hope to pr?vide such a full-length study here. one which goes beyond
3
