Motley Kamuka

p. 483 Juden heraus in english means Jews out.  p. 484 Croix mystique means mystical cross.  p. 486  Urheimat (German: ur- original, ancient; Heimat home, homeland) is a linguistic term meaning the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language. Since many peoples tend to wander and spread, there is no exact Urheimat, but there is an Indo-European Urheimat different from the Germanic or Romance Urheimat. Recent studies say the original home of Indo-Europeans was near the Armenian Highlands. p. 494 Moire means silk fabric that has been subjected to heat and pressure rollers after weaving to give it a rippled appearance. Links: 482-488 Wiki notes 488--491 Wiki notes Past posts about GR Gravity's Rainbow  notes p. 457-468, 468-472, 473-482 Gravity's Rainbow  Notes Franz Pokler P390 quote of  Gravity's Rainbow The Deliverer holy aardvark In The Zone Squalidozzi Wired Article About GR Un Perm' au Casino Herman Goering Recent thoughts on Gravity's ...

Wiki  457-468 Max Weber's Charisma : Comes from political structure.  Gesellschaft: generally translated as "community and society", are categories which were used by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies in order to categorize social relationships into two types. The Gesellschaft is associated with modern society and rational self-interest, which weakens the traditional bonds of family and local community that typify the Gemeinschaft. Max Weber, a founding figure in sociology, also wrote extensively about the relationship between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Weber wrote in direct response to Tönnies. Good Ship Lollipop ( YouTube ) by Shirley Temple. There are so many articles about Pynchon, but I found this one: “A Suspension Forever at the Hinge of Doubt”: The Reader-trap Of Bianca In Gravity’s Rainbow by Bernard Duyfhuizen ( source ). "The reader must engage the play of differance encoded in GR‘s textual signs to avoid falling into traps of prematu...

433-447 : The enemy is listening, Der Feind hoert zu. 33 more sections left, including this one. Tyrone Slothrop, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army toward the end of World War II. Stationed in England, he is sent on a strange mission to locate the staging area both for the V-2 rockets bombarding England and for the prototype of a new rocket, the A4. The A4 is even more destructive than the V-2. The Germans are preparing to launch it in a desperate effort to change the course of the war. Slothrop goes to the French Riviera, to Switzerland, and ultimately to the “Zone,” occupied Germany after the hostilities officially have ended. Slothrop is a naïve young man who is never fully aware of what he is doing. As an infant, he had been experimentally conditioned by a famous behaviorist, and the behaviorist psychologist Ned Pointsman tries to make use of that conditioning for his own purposes. Made aware on the Riviera that he is being manipulated, Slothrop escapes from the surveillance t...

From pp 397-433: Franz Pokler , a German rocket scientist. He is marginally associated with early attempts to develop rockets in the 1920's. During the war, Weissmann controls Pokler, giving him routine assignments and keeping him in line by allowing him yearly visits from a girl who he says is Pokler's daughter. The girl spends the rest of the year in a concentration camp, and Weissmann's implied threat is that she will be killed if Pokler fails to cooperate with Weissmann's scheme. Weissmann's purpose is to use Pokler to make one small part for the A4 rocket. In the end, having performed his task, Pokler is released; Slothrop meets him living quietly in the ruins of a children's village after the end of the war. His daughter also survives. Wiki notes on the Franz Pokler section 397-433 Abstract of "Franz Pökler's Anti-Story: Narrative and Self in Gravity's Rainbow" by Robert L. McLaughlin. (access the article  here  from  Pynchon Notes ) Gra...

I'm ambivalent about Thomas Pynchon, I find him quite complicated. I've struggled so much to read GR, I'm on p. 402 of 760. I have read V, Vineland, Inherent Vice, The Calling of Lot 49, Bleeding Edge. I still have to finish GR, Slow Learner, Mason & Dixon, Against The Day. Inherent Vice is my favorite. He's 87 and most people pooh poohed any more novels, but it's looking like The novel, “Shadow Ticket,” is due out on Oct. 7 from Penguin Press! That puts a deadline on me finishing GR, I can push to get it read by the time this new novel comes out. I'm not exactly done with everything so it's not as urgent as perhaps other thirsty fans. R/ThomasPynchon is going wild. I gave a gift article of the Times report on Bluesky . I did the math, if I read 2 pages a day from now until October 7th, I'll be done with Gravity's Rainbow and ready to read the new novel Shadow Ticket when it comes out. 

“It's sad, though. Tchitcherine likes Slothrop. He feels that, in any normal period of history, they could easily be friends. People who dress up in bizarre costumes have a savoir-vivre—not to mention the sort of personality disorder—that he admires. When he was a little boy, back in Leningrad, Tchitcherine's mother sewed by hand a costume for him to wear in a school entertainment. Tchitcherine was the wolf. The minute he put on the head, in front of the mirror by the ikon, he knew himself. He was the wolf.” Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

I try to focus on one book and push my way through it. I have side books when one book becomes tedious. I also read soccer and Buddhism and poetry, I guess I would call them category books for when I want soccer, Buddhism or poetry. Today I have a day off and I thought to read all the books I'm reading in my bedside pile, and write about them. The Great White Bard by Farah Karim-Cooper: Race and Shakespeare is a much needed topic. I wrote a review of the beginning of the book on my Shakespeare blog . I find the idea that racism doesn't exist quite offensive. I've learned about the slave trade by Englishmen who got knighthoods during Shakespeare's life. I found out that Kant cited Hume in favor of white supremacy. It's a personal book as well, and she discusses being a Pakistani heritage woman, grew up in America, went to college in England, and trying to get into English academic world was not easy. Kukai: Major Works  translated by Toshito S. Hakeda. This professo...

"Did you ever, in the street, see a man that you knew, in the instant, must be Jesus Christ not hoped he was, or caught some resemblance -but knew. The Deliverer, returned and walking among the people, just the way the old stories promised . . . as you approached you grew more and more certain--you could see nothing at all to contradict that first amazement . . . you drew near and passed, terrified that he would speak to you . your eyes grappled . . . it was confirmed. And most terrible of all, he knew. He saw into your soul: all your make-believe ceased to matter. . .” P.325 GR Later he goes on to talk about the routinization of charisma, a Max Weber concept. I'd like to read more into that.  Past GR Links: holy aardvark In The Zone Squalidozzi Wired Article About GR Un Perm' au Casino Herman Goering Recent thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow Recent thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow Recent Gravity Rainbow thoughts Gravity’s Rainbow Start Thomas Pynchon From the graphic nove...

“But as you swung away, who was the woman alone in the earth, planted up to her shoulders in the aardvark hole, a gazing head rooted to the desert plane, with an upsweep of mountains far behind her, darkly folded, far away in the evening? She can feel the incredible pressure, miles of horizontal sand and clay, against her belly. Down the trail wait the luminous ghosts of her four stillborn children, fat worms lying with no chances of comfort among the wild onions, one by one, crying for milk more sacred than what is tasted and blessed in the village calabashes. In preterite line they have pointed her here, to be in touch with Earth's gift for genesis. The woman feels power flood in through every gate: a river between her thighs, light leaping at the ends of fingers and toes. It is sure and nourishing as sleep. It is a warmth. The more the daylight fades, the further she submits to the dark, to the descent of water from the air. She is a seed in the Earth. The holy aardvark has dug ...

Section 3 of Gravity's Rainbow is called In The Zone . P. 279-616, the biggest section of the 4. There are a million and one references I have to look up to grok the book, but I just list the ones I enjoyed learning.  Jungians will like this German word: Schattensaft: shadow juice. This is supposedly Pynchon behind the door. Badger game: an extortion racket in which a man is lured by a woman into a compromising position and is then confronted with and blackmailed by the woman's accomplice posing as her husband or brother. (p. 292) Links on recent articles: Pynchon’s Prophecy by Gus Mitchell: "Gravity’s Rainbow is a visionary work, as prophetic in its own way as Dante or Blake. However far Blake or Dante saw, however, they still speak to us from times before the secular apocalypse bearing down on us. Pynchon was the first great writer to see it, and to see it completely, in all its manifestations. He knew that the impulse toward control, toward totalizing systems—the impu...

I'm reading the flipping novel, and it's brilliant and confusing. I look things up all the time, and then I go down the rabbit hole of the internet, and I'm not reading the novel any more. I'm reading it slowly too, so I'm going very slow. There's a lot of poetry, and it's endlessly referential and encyclopedic. I'm on page 232 right now and I started on 12/17/22. I take breaks from reading it.  Spoiler? I mean this is just disgusting, revolting, and I'm not sure if smacking into it without a warning is going to be the worst thing in the world. Then I read the getting pissed on, drinking it, and eating shit section on p. 234-236. Yikes.  When I read that the Buddha at cow shit, and his own shit as part of his mortification phase, which he doesn't see as the path, part of his trying everything out to find the way, I wasn't so grossed out, because I wasn't imagining into the the scene.  The next day, tomorrow, Dark Side of the Moon turns 50...

“with its missiles and death camps and atomic bombs that sealed humanity’s suicidal covenant with technology—was civilization’s Brennschluss, and we have been in free fall ever since.” - Wired I picked out that word to get into. With this and other articles that come out regularly, I got to thinking about how Shakespeare as the knighted playwright of England, has people shift the purposes and misuse quotes because he is so revered. Is Pynchon America's version. I mean the writing is so obscure it's hard to imagine that possible, but with the regularly produced articles, it seems possible. "Pynchon teases out a hefty head trip of plots and subplots, introduces hundreds of characters, and riffs on rocket science, cinema, Germanic runology, Pavlovian behaviorism, probability theory, witchcraft, futurism, zoot-suit couture, psychedelic chemistry, and the annihilation of the dodo. But there is, amid the novel’s encyclopedic remit, something like a story." "Some Marxi...

This section of Gravity's Rainbow is 97 pages, the shortest section.  Un Perm' au Casino Hermann Goering means A furlough at the Hermann Göring Casino. However, since the French noun permission, of which perm is an abbreviated form, is feminine, it should be une perm. Zak Smith's p. 181 Erotic Clausewitz (P.182): Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz (1780–1831) was a Prussian soldier, military historian and expert military theorist. He is most notable for his treatise Vom Kriege, translated into English as On War. The scene where an octopus almost drags a woman into the water is part of the scenes I imagine in a movie. That and the topless woman in a convertible and the banana greenhouse. Fascinating article about Pynchon: Hanging with Pynchon by Bill Pearlman Previous Posts: Recent thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow Recent thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow Recent Gravity Rainbow thoughts Pirate Prentice Gravity’s Rainbow Start Thomas Pynchon

I'm reading from page 145. There are so many references in Gravity's Rainbow, I'm constantly looking things up, even heliotrope . I know it's a flower, but what kind? They're purple, small flowers.  Philodendron have weird flowers called inflorescence that look like penises.  Pynchon mentions the canals of Mars . They thought there were some for a while. Mars has always been a projection of our thoughts and wishes.  Two Guys One Book is two guys struggling to comprehend Gravity’s Rainbow. The spin off on their ideology or politics, and I don’t really agree with them but it’s fun to watch them struggle with their terms and ways of understanding. It’s good to get listen to others struggling to understand. They say Pynchon as using a tangential style that suggest there is no larger meaning or order in the world. They had a patriotic angle about America, saying that every country does huge atrocities, but in America you can protest about them.  Pynchon mentions Ro...

I liked the section about the Dodo bird. And I liked the section about English candy. And a madcap drive where Jessica is topless in the car. I could see those three as movie scenes.  On 129 there are 3 musicians mentioned and I listened to the choral music all morning: Thomas Tallus  (1505–1585) was an English composer of High Renaissance music. His compositions are primarily vocal, and he occupies a primary place in anthologies of English choral music. Tallis is considered one of England's greatest composers, and is honoured for his original voice in English musicianship. Tallis served at court as a composer and performer for Henry VIII,[8] Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. ( Spotify ) Henry Purcell (1659–1695) Purcell's style of Baroque music was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest English opera composers, Purcell is often linked with John Dunstaple and William Byrd as England's mo...

P.12 “…a strange talent for—well, for getting inside the fantasies of others: being able, actually, to take over the burden of managing them…” “…Pirate’s career as a fantasist-surrogate, and go back to when he was carrying, everywhere he went, the mark of Youthful Folly growing in an unmistakable Mongoloid points, right out of the middle of his head.” Johnny Doughboy found a rose in Ireland ( Spotify : Freddy Martin and His Orchestra) (Bing Crosby on YouTube ) There are quite a few versions. Listened to a podcast , and it wasn't about this, but they mention that there aren't really any female characters, and much of the novel has sort of juvenile male attitudes towards women. He probably didn't get the Pulitzer because of his childish male viewpoint. They decided just to not give one that year. They say what is good is the relationship to technology and perhaps it's a cyberpunk novel.  I'm not sure what the issue is with male sexuality. It might not be high literatu...

12/17/22 I started the book. I will update this record of my reading. I read about half of it in the 90’s. I’m going to try again. This is a collection of references, I'll try writing essay later. It starts: “Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transfor-mation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. -Werner von Braun” I'm going to read Steven C. Weisenburger's companion : "In many ways doing this book was fun. It meant readings in American pop and material culture, the occult, varieties of pseudoscience, real science, vernacular geography, and forty-year-old news periodicals—to mention just a few fields I wandered into." Robert Crayola's Handbook: "“Gravity's Rainbow, however you approach it, is a difficult book. Widely regarded as a classic, new readers may read fifty or a hundred pages with feelings of confusion and disgust, wonder why t...

Jim Ruland in Alta writes: "“For the old guard,” Carswell explained, “Pynchon was validation for literary criticism because you can’t read it by yourself.”" I guess with the internet you can glean enough background, the reading groups on r/ThomasPynchon was very helpful. Also being older helps. Also, "Justin St. Clair, associate professor of English at the University of South Alabama, takes the argument one step further: “This may be heresy,” he says, “but I think I like the movie better than the book.”" Also, "For Reilly, it ignores the most important aspect of the book: the many and varied references to the Manson Family. Set in the period between the Tate-LaBianca murders and the Manson trial, the novel captures the moment when Californians lost faith in the counterculture." I really need to watch Once Upon A Time In Hollywood . I recently watched Under The Silver Lake , and found it interesting. Had lots of naked women prancing around the screen, and ...

Cover to the European edition I was so blown away by Inherent Vice , that I have to read V. now. This book came out in 1963. It was his first novel, and I think goes well with Gravity's Rainbow. I plan to read both this summer. Wikipedia summarizes the novel thus: It describes the exploits of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane, his reconnection in New York with a group of pseudo-bohemian artists and hangers-on known as the Whole Sick Crew, and the quest of an aging traveler named Herbert Stencil to identify and locate the mysterious entity he knows only as "V." Pynchon Wiki has a section of supportive notes for the novel. Reading group guide from Publisher. Reddit reading group. New Yorker Mack Hayden 7 known photos of Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon is heady, hard to follow dreamscapes of various existential, historical self journeys alive to culture: military to jazz, opera to debauchery. It’s got a whiff of Ulysses, and a million other books the reader can im...

What's inherent vice? California? America? Capitalism? I asked Reddit two questions. I'll see if they were good questions. It's a good artist that has you thinking about him when you're watching Mets highlights in LA. The aesthetic, the shapes of the advertisements. Thinking how they evicted the hispanics to build the stadium, read that in Inherent Vice .