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Gravity's Rainbow Lecture: The Counterforce (Part Four) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-30 20:48:23
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2026-06
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Content

Today we are discussing the final part of Gravity's Rainbow.

We're talking about Pynchonian puzzles, Slothrop's scattering, circularity, parabolas, endings as beginnings, transfiguration, myth-making, fools, rockets, self transcendence, comedy, tragedy, satire, the story of Byron the Bulb, and much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 on reader responses to this work
  • 2:00 how we read is who we are
  • 3:00 what makes a powerful ending?
  • 4:00 transfiguration & character scattering
  • 6:00 defying traditional narrative conventions
  • 7:00 Roger Mexico & Jessica Swanlake
  • 9:00 Slothrop as Pynchonian puzzle
  • 11:00 the classical allusion to Orpheus
  • 12:00 turning away from the quest
  • 14:00 on the avatar of the fool
  • 16:00 foolishness, wisdom & rockets
  • 19:00 the ten thousand selves of Slothrop
  • 21:00 lamentation for our destruction
  • 22:00 how to make our own mythology
  • 24:00 comedy as reaction to tragedy
  • 25:00 Pynchon’s anti-war messaging
  • 30:00 the story of Byron the Bulb
  • 32:00 on the curse of immortality
  • 33:00 Pynchon’s satirical commentary
  • 34:00 pathos & wisdom in Byron’s story
  • 35:00 blessing of death as transformation
  • 37:00 ‘he is condemned to go on forever’
  • 40:00 the Herero rocket mythology
  • 42:00 Blicero’s legendary rocket launch
  • 44:00 reading as experience of war
  • 45:00 Captain Blicero vs Judge Holden
  • 46:00 Counterforce doomed to failure
  • 47:00 the Man’s branch office in our brains
  • 48:00 Blicero’s sacrifice of Gottfried
  • 49:00 ‘I have infected you with my dying’
  • 51:00 Orpheus Theatre in the 1970
  • 54:00 how is the ending connected?
  • 55:00 the father you will never kill
  • 56:00 on the ending of the novel
  • 59:00 circularity or parabola?
  • 53:00 thinking about film adaptations
  • 54:00 appreciating the end together
  • 59:00 ‘a screaming comes across the sky’
  • 1:00:00 the value of challenging literature
  • 1:05:00 congratulations on reading this novel

Our Next Masterpiece:

Congratulations on reading Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Our next great novel for the beginning of 2024 will be John Steinbeck's East of Eden. We will have videos discussing our approach in the new year. So make sure you have secured your copy and are ready for our next adventure through great literature.

Questions to Consider:

1) What will you remember most from your journey through Gravity's Rainbow?

2) What did you make of the ending of the novel?

3) Did Gravity's Rainbow live up to its difficult reputation?

4) How would you persuade another to read Gravity's Rainbow? What advice would you give to facilitate a meaningful reading experience?

And please do share with us your insights and favourite passage from the end of this novel.

Congratulations on reading Gravity's Rainbow!

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Comments

Tatiana

Regarding my previous post about the scatology in GR, while it is generically correct the particular scene I was referencing was coprophagia. Pynchon brings out the nerd in me. I have just started V. Dearly loved the blessedly short The Crying of Lot 49.

Thomas Davidson

Another enlightening lecture, Ben--as always. And I've very much enjoyed reading the comments here from our club and the various angles our community has offered on the novel. I found Gravity's Rainbow to be a remarkable reading experience. My approach to this book was to go slowly, use Weisenburger's companion after going through episodes on my own, and to re-read any sections that both interested and mystified me (a frequent event!). It may be sound advice not to jump down all the rabbit holes on offer, but I leapt into most of them gleefully, often separately researching topics I knew nothing about. Fortunately, I came to the novel with prior knowledge about images and themes Pynchon used in the book: Pavlovian conditioning, psychological testing, psychodynamic concepts, German expressionist film, and pop cultural references. It probably also helped that I was 20 years old when the book was published and remember the spirit of those times. I abandoned the book when it first came out. I simply wasn't experienced enough with *anything* in life to be able to process it. I think one of the things that helped me to process it this time is how I approached it. By the midway point I had sufficient grasp of the main themes that I didn't struggle with Pynchon's technique. There were so many "What the..." moments (such as the Adenoid early on) that I was trying to force into what I thought ought to be a coherent narrative. Now that, for this book, guarantees dissatisfaction. I learned to accept the regular eruptions of hallucinatory digression that were at times only tenuously connected to the events or thoughts that triggered them. I regarded them as being like the burgeoning, elaborately detailed, distracting images people experience in cannabis-addled discussions where no one can quite recall how the conversation actually started. Pychon even gives us one in the kif fueled converation when he meets Saure. As Pychon put it in discussing "mantic archetypes" and Oneirine "hauntings": "Whereas other sorts of hallucinations tend to flow by, related in deep ways that aren't accessible to the casual dopefiend, these Oneirine hauntings show a definite narrative continuity". Exactly. Best to accept them and simply go with the flow, keeping an eye out for the continuities. As Kait Jackson pointed out, there's reason to consider all the discussion of "Them" as being less about cartels and cabals and more about the consequences of such "systems". Powerful individuals may have the motive to manipulate and control the masses and entice them toward death, but these individuals are not immortal, and will pass. The system here, it seems, is immortal and self-sustaining, regardless of whose individual mortal hands are on the levers of power. The powerful themselves are under the control of the system. It is the "invisible hand" that governs processes and outcomes--as Pynchon refers to in the text. The system serves and maintains and perpetuates itself. Regardless of any stated policies or "party line", the impersonal system will identify any dissent and transgression, any "counterforce", and defeat it. Despite all this, as Ben has pointed out, there is the possibility of transformation, even in the most dire of circumstances. When Gottfried is placed in the 00000 rocket, the Imoplex plastic he is wrapped in is both death shroud and embryonic sac. As the rocket ascends, his head is forced down by Mach pressures to touch his knee, curling him into the pre-birth natal position. He is being propelled toward both death and rebirth. There is no much more that can be said about this book and also much that will remain hidden within it.

Tatiana
>>126279045

Great post, Thomas. What all did you read related to the counterculture back in the day? Were you drafted?

Tadhg Collins

I finally finished GR the day before yesterday and I’m still processing it, it’s definitely going onto the reread pile for me, there was so much to get at in there and I thoroughly enjoyed digging into it

Jared

I just finished it. I haven’t listened to the lecture because I need to sit with it for a minute. I posted my “review” on social media: Finished this morning. I honestly don’t even know how to explain this book. Stylistically and thematically the closest thing I can think of is that it’s like a mashup of Hunter S. Thompson and Monty Python and Freud by way of Hustler Magazine and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It’s the most difficult book I’ve ever read. It’s postmodern confusion. It’s post-war, plastic-wrapped, corporate-deist, nuclear paranoia. It careens between profound and grotesque and beautiful and inscrutable and sometimes all of them at once. It was drudgery sometimes. I had days I loved it and days I wanted to throw it in the trash. It made me laugh out loud. It made me physically gag on one occasion. Would I recommend it? I don’t think I would dare for fear the person I recommended it to would never speak to me again.

Colin ellesmere

I finished GR a week ago and I am still processing. However, one thought has arisen. It is argued that there is only one story. Good against evil. Faust, PL, and East of Eden explore this tension openly and explicitly. But GR? Are there characters who struggle to overcome evil? Blicero at the end wants it to all end, seemingly to end his suffering, but his response is to sacrifice Gotffried. Slothrop gives up his goal and ends up scattered, perhaps ending up as some kind of modern day troubadour. These are not struggles over good and evil that are very recognisable. So it seems GR, though it does highlight evil, has the main theme as free will. Is it possible even amidst the control of entities and forces that are so hidden, and so difficult to unravel that they may or may not even exist, to have choice? Nothing seems certain. The end of the book, and I believe it is found throughout, suggests Pynchon sides with man possessing free will. At the last delta t we can still reach across and hold someones hand, or true to Pynchon, we can grab our gentitals. But GR does not come over as a struggle between good and evil overtly or even perhaps tennuously. In Faust Gretchen's delta t moment comes when she is offered a prison like freedom from the guillotine, but wisely chooses the higher freedom by accepting her fate with genuine repentance. She saves her soul. But no such absolution seems to be presented to any character in GR, but they can step off the stage onto another one.

Wes Morgenthaler

I finished GR yesterday. This was my second time. The first was 30 years ago. I didn’t remember much. Thanks very much for your four talks about each part. It was helpful to have themes and symbols in mind as I moved through the book. Something to hold onto. Though some passages were deeply disturbing, it did convey an unsettling feeling that sticks with you. Glad to have this group to read through this again. Thanks Benjamin!

Karen Beard

I am finally .... finished ....! I am exhausted as if I have completed a marathon. You have mentioned some of the passages that resonated for me in part 4 especially Byron the Bulb. My very broad initial impression of this saga is of a flavor of antiwar and antiestablishment. I also had the feeling of living inside Thomas Pynchon's brain. This experimental style of writing is I guess stream of consciousness on steroids. Frankly, the references are so plentiful, historical, popular culture (ranging from early 20th century to 1970's as well as the Teutonic and early Christian mythology), that I had difficulty managing everything that was being thrown at me. I grasped what was familiar and held on for dear life. The comedy kept me going, although some of his writing is so striking that I just kept going for sheer pleasure of the prose, though my comprehension lagged. I had trouble keeping track of the characters, but I really loved Roger and Jessica. He conveyed their love story so beautifully. Tyrone Slothrop, for me, was everyman, just trying to do his job, to the best of his ability the way he was told. But life gets in the way...

Linda Collins

Wow just wow!! I’m definitely in the small group that would love to just re read this from beginning to end right now. This book reads poetically with dream like labyrinth that has infected my dreams. I finished Ben’s lecture on “The Interpretation of Dreams” by Freud before starting this and have started a dream journal. It’s a struggle to actually turn on a light , grab that journal on the night stand and write but challenges are good and on that note GR is an absolute genius of a poem which is a”Challenge” with a capital “C”. On this first read I felt like I was on a roller coaster of Pynchon’s frontal lobes…swirling and flowing through his brain and can I say like a rocket. This reading sparked memories of so many books I have read. I felt like every turn of the page was reminiscent of other authors like meeting old friends. There was a Joycean quality to the overall story “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”. Other writers came into my mind as I read such McCarthy’s “The Road” upon thinking of the Elect and the Preferict as well as “Child of God” when we think of how society can create a monster such a Blicero. The character Pokler touched my heart the most as he was a rocket scientist given his toys and trinkets not realizing the death machine he was to create which reminds of the Oppenheimer film. My thoughts are still flowing from this so I will conclude with a passage from another book: Somewhere it is being prepared.Somewhere deep in the heart of Germany the shell is being made.Some German girl is polishing it right now polishing it and cleaning it and fitting the charge into it. It glistens in the factory light and it has a number and the number is mine. I have a date with the shell. We shall meet soon. Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

Samuel Thompson

I’ve got to say this was one of the most powerful reading experiences I’ve ever had, and thank goodness for this community or I’d be completely lost haha! I loved this book for its power and difficulty and its “overarching” message. I can’t wait to come back to this book in The future❤️

Jonathon Glover

I found the last section was able to bring the narrative threads together and finish it in a way that somewhat made the preceding 3 parts make a little more sense. Each character was returned to, and had a satisfying conclusion to their character arc, even if most were anticlimactic - but I am OK with that. For example, I found the ending to Enzian and Tchicherib story to be rather beautiful, in a thoughtful and understated way (not something I associate with this novel). And I found the scattering of Slothrop to also be an interesting end to his story. I particularly liked the comment below that suggested that They/Them were on the Heroe’s journey, and Slothrop’s ultimate failure is a slight sign of hope for the future. After finishing the book, it is clear to see Pynchon’s genius. I particularly liked the use of vignettes in Part 4. But I also have to wonder if anyone tried to, or could, edit this beast. In particular, I found the narrative voice to be inconsistent. Perhaps that was the point? But other times, it just felt like a lack of control - maybe a drug fuelled mania. In the end, I appreciate the social commentary and criticism of post war politics in the west. I think it is easy to overlook that the ideas here weren’t as prevalent as they are today (heck, even 10-20 years ago) and that there is a prophetic understanding of history in Pynchon. Finally, reading the first 10 chapters of Lonesome Dove feels like a leisurely stroll in comparison to reading Part 4 of GR. Resistance training for the bean lol

Brian P
>>199388583

Based on your comment about finishing this beast in the current reading thread, it has spiked my interest in coming back to it with the comments and lectures available in the club. Don't think I want to combine it with Proust in the same calendar year, but might be one I get back to in 2027, Watching the How To tonight and remembering some of the highlights.