A Gravity's Rainbow Companion

Steven Weisenburger

Description

Adding some 20 percent to the original content, this is a completely updated edition of Steven Weisenburger's indispensable guide to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Weisenburger takes the reader page by page, often line by line, through the welter of historical references, scientific data, cultural fragments, anthropological research, jokes, and puns around which Pynchon wove his story. Weisenburger fully annotates Pynchon's use of languages ranging from Russian and Hebrew to such subdialects of English as 1940s street talk, drug lingo, and military slang as well as the more obscure terminology of black magic, Rosicrucianism, and Pavlovian psychology. The Companion also reveals the underlying organization of Gravity's Rainbow—how the book's myriad references form patterns of meaning and structure that have eluded both admirers and critics of the novel.

The Companion is keyed to the pages of the principal American editions of Gravity's Rainbow: Viking/Penguin (1973), Bantam (1974), and the special, repaginated Penguin paperback (2000) honoring the novel as one of twenty "Great Books of the Twentieth Century."

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• América
• Reference
• General officer
• General
• American

Informations

• Publié par: University of Georgia Press
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780820337647
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion

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A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion

Sources and

Contexts for Pynchon’s Novel Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by Steven C. Weisenburger

The University of Georgia Press

Athens and London

© 2006 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

All rights reserved

Set in Trump Medieval by The Composing Room

of Michigan, Inc.

Printed and bound by Maple-Vail

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for

permanence and durability of the Committee on

Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the

Council on Library Resources.

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weisenburger, Steven.

A Gravity’s rainbow companion : sources and

contexts for Pynchon’s novel / by Steven C. Weisenburger. — 2nd ed., rev. and expanded. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-8203-2811-9 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10 0-8203-2811-1 (alk. paper)

ISBN-13 978-0-8203-2807-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10 0-8203-2807-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s rainbow. I. Title. PS3566.Y55 G7395 2006 813.54 — dc22 2006011956

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Contents

Acknowledgments (1988) / vii

And More Acknowledgments (2006) / ix

Introduction / 1

Part 1 Beyond the Zero/ 13

Part 2 Un Perm’ au Casino Hermann Goering/ 121

Part 3 In the Zone/ 175

Part 4 The Counterforce/ 319

Bibliography / 385

Index / 397

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Acknowledgments (1988)

nmany ways doing this book was fun. It meant readings in American pop ju I st a few fields I wandered into. A new discovery each week, at the peak of and material culture, the occult, varieties of pseudoscience, real science, vernacular geography, and forty-year-old news periodicals—to mention my research, sometimes tedious but always-enjoyable work because of friends and colleagues who took an interest. I am grateful to all who helped it along. Roger Sale, for two reasons: for showing that one could enjoy these serendipitous paths of scholarship and for sharing his reading ofGravity’s Rainbowwhen the novel was first published. Malcolm Griffith, for sug- gesting (in 1978) that I should write this book. I put the idea aside for four years, but once the project was under way it was helped by a number of friends and colleagues. Staff members at the M. I. King Library at the Uni- versity of Kentucky provided invaluable assistance, and I especially want to thank Roxanna Jones and Barbara Wight of interlibrary loan, as well as Rob Aken, Dan Barkley, Brad Grissom, and Laura Rein of King Library’s reference department. Steven Moore, fresh from a similar project on Gaddis’sThe Recognitions, made wise suggestions as I prepared the first draft. Molly Hite gave suggestions and encouragement. To all of Pynchon’s scholarly readers, acknowledged in the notes and listed in the bibliography, I owe innumerable debts. Colleagues at the University of Kentucky answered what must have seemed the oddest possible salmagundi of queries and requests. For their help and encouragement I am especially grateful to Tom Adler, Gerald Alvey, Roger Anderson, Tom Blues, Joe Bryant, John Cawelti, Guy Daven- port, Joe Gardner, and John Shawcross. Thanks to Bob Hemenway for sup- porting the work while he was chairman and, in particular, for helping me find funds and time off from my departmental responsibilities at a crucial time. The research and preparation of the book were assisted by grants from the University of Kentucky Research Foundation. To complete the final draft, I also managed to steal time from another project that was being as- sisted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Janis Bolster did an epic job of copyediting, down to the last line-number refer- ence. And at the University of Georgia Press, Debra Winter has guided this project with care for all the details that matter. Again, thanks to all. Finally, to Susan, still my best friend, who knows this project as an oral history: this book’s for you.

Lexington, Kentucky

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And More Acknowledgments (2006)

incethis book first appeared Pynchon has published two novels, Vineland(1990) and the long-awaitedMason & Dixon(1997). He’s less the invisible writer. He wrote (for example) the liner notes for a disk of Spike Jones classics (Spiked!,1994), contributed aNew York Timesessay on sloth to a quirky series on the seven deadly sins and a fine introduction to the Centennial Edition of George Orwell’s1984(2003). He was written up on (but said nothing publicly about) winning a 1988 McArthur “Genius Award.” We heard that he married, became a father. One day while walking with his son Jackson he was photographed publicly for the first time in decades. In 2003 he made a television voice-over appearance on an episode of The Simpsons—a cool move, given his satires of The Tube inThe Crying of Lot 49andVineland.Gravity’s Rainbowitself had a cameo on “The John Laro- quette Show” in 1993. More significantly, Penguin published a special paper- back edition ofGravity’s Rainbowhonoring it—in company with novels like Heart of Darkness,Swann’s Way, The Age of Innocence, The Grapes of Wrath, On the Road,andBeloved—as one of twenty “Great Books of the Twentieth Century.” Thirty years after its release his novel stands as a classic. New readers keep coming to the book, old ones keep turning back to it, and occasionally I hear from one such person. Weeks after thisCompanion was published in 1988 I began receiving and have periodically found in my campus mailbox various cards, e-mails, letters, even packages from readers wishing to correct and/or add to these annotations. Gracious, kind, and uniquely cultured, every one of these good people has contributed to this re- vised second edition. I thank each and all for their earnest care over detail and meanings. In many instances these correspondents were providing in- formation others had previously submitted (my errors were that apparent). In some instances, they supplied—at last!—long sought answers to enig- matic references inGravity’s Rainbow.A number glossed quite technical matters in electronics or mathematics, others heard Pynchon riffing on song lyrics or movie dialogue that I—child of the next generation after Pynchon— wouldn’t have caught. Receiving these submissions over the past eighteen years has been a delight. Here I get the space to name these correspondents along with others who variously contributed to this book. So at last I send my gratitude and bless-