Am I the only one who found Pynchon's use of Entropy/The parabolic path of the rocket as metaphors for the rise and fall of human life as unbearably pretentious and without much legitimate philosophical substance?
>Am I the only one
no, but you're in the company of a bunch of plebs.
funny story, he has a short story about entropy in slow learner, it's reel gud.
>>7404846
No, you're not. Pynchon is the Family Guy of literature: throwing out references which having nothing to do with anything except his schizoid view of the world.
>>7404858
Excellent bait, friend. It's almost like you're sincere.
>>7404854
eh I kind of got the sense that Pynchon's "philosophy" in GR wasn't anything new, mind-blowing, or even truthful. It seemed more like a collection of random connections that he made when he was stoned. If I'm simply missing out on something that he was saying, then please let me know
>>7404886
the fact that you're looking for a concrete, soundbiteable 'philosophy' is going about it the wrong way.
although he was stoned.
>as metaphors for the rise and fall of human life
That's on you for taking away such a stupid reading
>>7404898
Yeah there's obviously a lot more to it and many more sides to what Pynchon was trying to say but that was the best way I could compress my thoughts in the broadest way possible
>>7404925
Wow, great, and your thoughts are dead wrong. Please point to one piece of textual evidence that makes you think the parabola was meant to be "the rise and fall of human life"
That's actually embarrassing how unrelated that is to anything in the book. It sounds like a first year College paper you wrote because you hadn't actually read the material
>>7404939
Ok what did you think Pynchon was trying to say with the path of the rocket then?
>>7404945
I don't think he was trying to say anything with it in such a cheap allegorical sense. It served as a point of fascination for many of the characters, it was new technology, a new threat, and a physical extension of larger nonphysical concepts like war, globalization, and cyclical violence. So the characters projected onto it like you did, but I don't know who the fuck you think you are calling Pynchon unbearably pretentious because you came up with a childish interpretation
there's way more motifs in there than just parabolas you fuck
>>7404971
>war is bad
>violence is bad
>globalization is probably bad
Scintillating.
Calm your tits faggot, your favorite meme author doesn't need you to defend him on the internet
>>7405321
Was this supposed to sound smart? You're taking the means by which characters derive an end from the rocket symbol as my personal insights. Why are you even posting?
>>7405335
Nope, as the authors insight, which is worse. There's no value in GR other than the admittedly red hot prose. The rest is pomo wank co-opted by a generation of dilettantes fresh out of high school who read GR because it's the cool meme thing to do
>>7405383
Silly. It's painfully clear that you haven't read (though perhaps you've picked up and flipped through) Gravity's Rainbow. I will never understand the impulsion to criticize something you haven't actually given the time of day.
>>7405321
gravity's rainbow isn't even about "war" you fucking idiot, my god, there are some truly plebeian pieces of shit on this board
>>7405453
Slow down there kid, I'd say it's pretty fucking interested in War. Not from any Historical or Political angle but War all the same. (Though I do agree it's possible this War could be considered a secondary interest to Technology and the desire for Immortality in a Godless world)
Care to backup your claim?
>>7405464
dude, the whole thing is about predestination vs. free will, the ww2 theme was just so plebs will buy it, nothing sells better than a book "about" nazi rocket scientists...
>>7405453
Mmm, I'm not so sure. I mean, there's obviously way more to it, but to me the book always felt like Pynchon's passionate lambaste of the military industrial complex and the way it uses and destroys good people.
>>7405472
oh please an anti-war harangue could never achieve the greatness of gravities rainbow
>>7405470
>predestination vs. free will
Literally where does the book have anything to do with this
>>7405476
are we still talking about gravity's rainbow? am i being trolled? or did you not comprehend a word of what you read?
>>7405475
But that's what every second page of it is...
How can a book be so overt and so misunderstood by so many people? it feels like I'm one of the few people who's actually read it sometimes
>>7405482
Could you please answer my question?
>>7405476
I'm not that anon, but bro literally it's all over the place. Pointsman vs. Roger Mexico. Tyrone's Puritan ancestors. Deterministic flight path vs. random hit distribution. These are just off the top of my head and I haven't read the book in years.
Gravity's. Rainbow. Natural laws and beauty. The molecular reassembly of nature into entropy-avoiding systems. Global cartelization replacing the nation state paradigm. The transformation of human life into technological components-- standing reserve. Why? GR is about the questions that arise in Heidegger's writing, notably the essay 'The Question Concerning Technology.
>>7405518
But is that Free Will and Determinism? Or is that the clash of sciences?
Pointsman is the Cause and Effect-man clinging to old methods of human logic and traditional theory, Roger is The Statistician working in abstraction with numbers.
The Purtian conception of things 'happening for a meaning' and the Deterministic hit pattern VS Random tie into this in my mind. Not so much an examination of free will and determinism as meaning human vs abstracted. The Puritans, and Pointsman in thinking there must be a driving force behind the V2's needs, like his Cause and Effect science, clear answers to his questions but finds himself in a world with obscured meanings.
But perhaps this is exactly what you meant and I've only misinterpreted what you mean by "Free Will" and "Determinism"?
>>7405553
I don't really understand you. Simply put, Pointsman and Weissman are examples of the scientific-determinist, Von Braun type who are driving history in the WWII period. They build systems that escape the entropy of "lovable but scatterbrained mother nature". They are characterized as 'the elect' in Puritan terms, turning out to be the mad sexual deviants and the hidden planners of the world.
Slothrop is able to evade control, by what seems at first like random luck but gradually appears calculated, as he changes identity and his 'personal bandwidth' reduces to zero. He is the expression of something like free will. Mexico's statistic math is an alternative to the Pavolovian system, taking Godel into account, only generating probabilities rather than direct binary outcomes. The leveled Zone, the Counterforce, indicate the hope of some escape from a world of scientific determinism. They are the preterite, the passed over in the modern world.
My opinion: Pynchon, like most intelligent people, does not consider free will ontologically. He only considers it epistemologically, as in an unscientific way of life, as in the Counterforce.
>>7405553
To better answer your question, I think a clash of sciences is part of it because it so happens that Pointsman's science is deterministic and Mexico's allows for randomness of events (thus potentially free will). But Pinecone's exploration of the topic goes way beyond these characters as I tried to indicate^^
>>7405605
>>7405639
Okay, I don't disagree with this, but I don't think this makes the book 'about' free will vs determinism and I think this is only an element of the book's overarching interest in War
BUT I am going to sleep now, so if you'd like to continue this conversation it'll have to be tomorrow
tommy makes the war seem like a lot of fun. bananas, casinoes, s&m. what is 'bad' about war? death? death is no tthe end, my friend :^)
>>7404846
Seeking philosophy in fiction is misguided. If you want philosophy, read philosophers. Fiction is storytelling, and GR was a shit story.
>>7404846
All these CIA spooks, with their spook theory
>>>/his/spook
You reading python and trying to derive mewning from a bundle of muscles is what is pretentious
>>>/his/phil
>>7404971
>cyclical violence
stopt reading
>>7405475
Lol you sound so meme'd
Put down lolita, close your r/books tab, and join the rest of us at the big boy table. Muh meme author
>>7406281
>Dubya dubya too
>not Euro-trash balance of power/fight for the colonies part 3 redux with a vengeance
THE PATTERNS ARE MERELY FIRINGS ALONG YOUR CORTICAL SYNAPSES
>pynchon indices austic rage
>it must be a great book
>>7405687
Sort of agree with the first part, disagree with the second. I think we should extrapolate philosophies from fiction, but not insofar as their being the "point" of reading. For me it's more about the characters and the language. Any writer who builds great characters with great language is a great writer.
Basically, I think GR is pretty rad. If you don't agree, it's whatever floats your boat, man. Different people look for different things in fiction.
>>7404846
If you want philosophical substance you shouldn't be reading fiction.
It's an interesting way of exploring the subject, the philosophy wasn't the point in my mind, more the expression.
>>7404846
Metaphors aren't real
>>7404846
He actually said himself somewhere something like "people seem to underestimate the shallowness of my understanding of entropy at the time... I really only had a superficial understanding of it"
Can't be bothered to look up the actual quote. He probably said it in Slow Learner though I guess now that I think about it.
