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#85: History Is the Editing-Room Floor (GR, pt. 5) (Patreon)

Published:
2018-06-25 06:18:54
Imported:
2026-06

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  • 85_GR_5.mp3

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Content

After famously dying of the gas at Ypres, MJ gets back into Gravity's Rainbow (for real, this time) and multitrack history, the ’40s as a scrying disk in which to see the ’60s, why Woodstock documentaries should be illegal, and more.

Files

Comments

Jonathan Schultz

I don't have anything clever or insightful to say, so I will just leave it at, "wow."

Tom Kern

I think it's misleading to refer to Pynchon as a recluse. He just doesn't like to be photographed or give interviews. J.D. Salinger WAS a recluse. it's well known who Pynchon's wife and son are and that he lives on the upper West Side of NYC. He leaves his apt and goes shopping, showed up to his son's PTA meetings when he was a child etc. if a dopey CNN crew can find him, pretty sure the F.B.I can as well so I have a hard time buying the theory that he is in hiding from the law etc.

stephen tucker

really great episode. it's apparently a common criticism of Pynchon that he doesn't humanize his characters enough, and so the narration comes off as cold or distant or something. on the surface I understand where this comes from but I can't help but see it as anything but the "scourge of relatability" because everything about Gottfried's launch and the ending stretch of this book tears me to fucking pieces in a way that nothing else ever has. I had been thinking that the final page was both London and LA, but the idea that we have to choose makes it that much more fucked. Because in a way there's no difference because either way you're dead. You don't hear the screaming and you don't even get to scream yourself, although Pynchon mercifully freezes time so we can hold hands and sing along. At the end of Twin Peaks: The Return we also don't know what year it is, but by bringing Euridice back from the underworld the only thing we accomplish is a restaging of the trauma that brought her there in the first place. The afterlife you've described last ep sounds a lot like Mulholland Drive but also reminds me of Jacob's Ladder which I saw recently. That one's pretty bleak in the sense that it defines hell as the part of you that wants to survive, but it also throws us a bone saying that if you fight just hard enough, you'll somehow be able to psychically determine which experimental military project in particular is the one that killed you. A passage that strikes me a lot is when Jessica asks Roger: "what about the girls?" This quote might be a good example of how I can see Slothrop functioning both as a representative of a typical male counterculture archetype and as a representative of American foreign policy. He fucks girls all over London but he never sticks around to clean up his mess, they end up annihilated and otherwise erased from history. He manages to have a hell of a time in the zone, which has potential for a love free of Their influence but also has the potential for abuse by men/adults in general: we can see this on the Anubis when Bianca's spanking starts an orgy and then Slothrop has sex with Bianca who (he thinks, at least) is a 12 year old child. Superhero references get linked to the counterculture, but inevitably also are tools of imperialism. I mean, Rocketman was basically manufactured entirely to be a drug runner. Do you have any more thoughts on Pointsman's role in particular? I guess you might get into that in future episodes. I keep thinking about his line where he says that Slothrop is, historically and physiologically, a monster. I think I "understand" this, but also, I "really" don't! All it makes me think of right now is more comic book bullshit: Tetsuo from Akira (whose body/identity collapses in a similar fashion, "The Iron Man", "The Man With the Industrial Dick", etc), and then there's Plasticman, who Frank Miller (designer of the B&W 2006 cover of GR) once drew as an omnicidal maniac: <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/f/f1/Plastic_Man_Earth-31_001.png/revision/latest?cb=20111218110859" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/f/f1/Plastic_Man_Earth-31_001.png/revision/latest?cb=20111218110859</a>

JP Jackson

Held Gravity's Rainbow in my hands yesterday MJ and thought of you. Shit, I will make the time.

James Wood

Great photo from Withnail and I.

Kamil Prusakowski

I've found out about your podcast yesterday (fellow Pynchon and Joyce enjoyer from Europe) and couldn't stop listening till 4AM, too good

ryan

Where are episodes 1-4? A little late to the party, I know...

Colin Helpio

Wait was Michael S. Judge trying to get in touch with Uncle Ted? Hehe