Gravity's Rainbow Reading Group: #03

I'm not a native either but I read it in english. I had to google a lot of words, but it was worth it because Pynchon is an extreamly talented prose stylist, I don't care about what contrarians think.
It would have been great to read GR my first time with a reading group. I'm not re-reading because I want to read other stuff now but I still lurk this threads because they are cool.

/x/-tier stuff that actually exists and you should read and keep in mind:

>CIA remote viewing project
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project
>MK Ultra, of course
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
>Gateway experiment
soundcloud.com/mohammad-engashteh/the-gateway-experience-wave-i
>Operation Mockingbird, media control, brainwashing
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

you can read all the CIA documents on their site. Some spooky shit. Mars pyramids and whatnot. Also look into Nazi Occultism.

Thanks for this. I knew most of it but some of it caught me off guard

I love the links you guys post: it's very helpful to everyone and it makes the reading a bit more interesting

Brings the novel's epigraph about life continuing on from Werhner Von Braun a bit dreadful. He of course was integrated into a high position at NASA after the war, as a part of Operation Paperclip. Braun said he had no idea of the conditions in Mittelbau-Dora, and how prisoners were used as slave workers to construct the V2s at Nordhausen.... but ,as history proves, he knew full well what was going on.

Seems the USA has taken a lot of these Nazi ideas and integrated it into themselves.

>tfw the entire space age, all this tech, the computer I'm using to talk to you all, the satellites a part of the world network, all stems from the War Machine and Nazi tech
>tfw Pynchon observes Shell's strange dealings
>General Electric's strange dealings (selling Iron ?? to Germany during the war, an American corporation!)
>tfw maybe it's all a facade, a deal to pummel research and production with War Funds

THE MADMAN HAS DONE IT AGAIN

I hope you guys read this til the end. The ending was once of the most striking I've ever some across. The writing, the emotion, and tension in it.

I've spent my whole life dreading death, thinking about my last moments, hopefully on a bed, and the anxiety I'd experience, and this book's ending knocked the wind out of me. It was as close, as I can sense, to the experience of dying from any piece of literature I've read.

Yeah the last pages were intense, I didn't think about it back then because I losing my mind feeling how the book glued itself, it was complete madness. The last pages werealmost claustrophobic. I used to think "the ending is (not gonna spoil it) so it must be funny :)" but it actually felt really dark.

What exactly is Pointsmane doing right now?

Would someone help me by explaining what happened in the episode involving Katje, Osbie, the dodos, and the black men in the film? I finished up to this point today, and while I was reading my wife and daughter interrupted me and broke my concentration.

I'll try to keep pace with you guys. I fell a bit behind this weekend.

Some German out of the way:

>the Judenschnautze
As Weisenburger notes, Pynchon probably means "Judenschnauze" here, but the term is more likely to mean "Jewish snout" (or nose) than "Jewish jaw." The term reflects Leni’s antisemitic stereotyping. See note at 159.38. Schnauze is a word for a canine face, so it might mean "Jewish mug" as well. It also denotes a manner of speech, as in "Er hat eine berliner Schnauze" ("He speaks the Berlin dialect").

> It may have been a quota film.
With the great influx of films from the United States to Europe between the wars, several film-producing countries, including Germany, enacted decrees that a certain number of films shown had to be of national origin. These "quota" films were often quick and shoddy productions made only to satisfy government demands so that the more profitable American films could still be shown.

>kleinbürger
German: the lower middle class, translated from the French term petit bourgeoise, literally 'little citizen', noted for their small-minded conservative values.

>Biedermeier
Refers to the historical period between the years 1815 and 1848, particularly in Germany and Central Europe. It is often used to denote the artistic styles that flourished then and that marked a contrast with the Romantic era which preceded it; mainly in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design. However, it can also be used, as it is here, to imply a petit-bourgeois conformity.

Seconding this

>[Gen.]Stubblebine offended then-U.S. Army Chief of Staff General John Adams Wickham, Jr. by offering to perform a spoon-bending feat at a formal gala; Wickham associated such phenomena with Satanism.[9]

Man the truth is wilder than this novel

yeah, i mean, stubblebine is a crazier name than pirate prentice.

>tfw Maud gf

Seconding this. I remember Katje and Osbie pretty well, that was pretty obvious, but the significance of the dodo-genocide went completely over my head. I enjoyed reading it and thinking about it, I thought it felt like some weird feverdream or a fantasy you would have if you were high. Especially the part where he lies waiting with his gun pointed to the egg, ready to extinguish life at the very first second it peaks at the sun. But man, did that passage leave me confused.

On another note: I just want to say that I like these threads so far. Been a pretty good balance of shitposting, whining, being a little pretentious and actual decent posting so far. Hell, some of you even posted pretty good insights. Some of the best insights imo even came from Dickensposter (because let's be honest, allthough I didn't neccesarily agree on everything he said, those were some of the most well written and considerate responses here). So yeah, thanks everyone for the responses here, it's nice. Keep up the good work, I hope y'all get to finish the book.
Now get back to reading faggots

>would I lose too much by reading a translation
Probably. The books contains great slabs of wonderful prose. Much depends on the translator.

I just finished the first part.

Thoughts?

Just ordered a used copy of GR together with some other books, thought it's a swedish translation.

I love how Swedish sounds like my Dutch dialect. Even if I hadn't known the last word was rainbow in advance, I would have guessed because of the way it sounds. I've had this for alot of different swedish words, even when hearing Sweden while I was there.

I'm afraid my post was slightly off topic though.

I'm Dutch, which dialect do you mean?

Btw, for the anons that asked during the last thread, i'm at home now so here's the other quote from CoL49 that i particularly liked:
>What voices overheard, flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained foliage, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the insatiable stuffing of a mattress that could keep vestiges of every nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, viciously, tearfully consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the lost?

Plat West-Vlaams lijkt vreemd genoeg redelijk hard op Zweeds. Tijdens een college over Oud-Nederlands zag ik wel dat kust-dialecten van Zeeland, Engeland en West-Vlaanderen terug gaan op Ingveoons of Noord-Zee Germaans, maar dat verklaard de link naar Zweeds nog niet echt. Ik denk dat West-Vlaams vaak dezelfde soort klanken maakt, waardoor bepaalde woorden 'herkenbaar' zijn.

>I thought it felt like some weird feverdream or a fantasy you would have if you were high.

Yeah she's actually tripping balls. She gets blasted by a massive dose of Amanita Muscaria when Osbie Feel opens the oven where he's drying tray after tray of stuff.

On p 108 in the blueprint version the bit after her brief interaction with Prentice, we get the line "Her old, intractable vice--she wants to cross the seas, to connect countries between whom there is no possible rate of exchange. Her ancestors sang, in middle dutch

ic heb u liever dan en everswîn
al waert van finen goude ghewacht "

Reminded of her ancestry she recalls her nation's history, and then the Dodo Sequence happens

Yeah, i got it's significance towards Katje, that it's part of her ancenstry and that she was on a trip. I'm the West-Flemish guy (also the quote above guy actually) so i understood the Dutch and i have pretty good grasp of Dutch history. The part i didn't understand however was why the guy suddenly got so determined to exterminate the dodo's and i lost my shit when he 'suddenly realized the religious meaning of their extermination', which i didnt get like.. at all.

Oh grappig ik was afgelopen zomer ook in Zweden en ik had een soortgelijke ervaring. Van de taal als geheel kon ik geen pasta maken maar hier en daar had je vaak wel woorden die heel bekend klonken. Ik vond het fonetisch ook een mooie taal om te horen dat Zweeds.

Wat vind je trouwens de beste Nederlandstalige schrijver?

What felt significant to me about the dodo's is that it is yet another genocide in the book. But why he went crazy, I don't know either. Wasn't it something to do with his religious fanaticism?

Wanna hear something fun and GR related?
I started reading GR about the same time as i started studying History in Uni. During a class about the Early Modern Era a professor just drops "Many modern day fortunes can be traced back to the days shortly after the 80 years war and the rise of the VOC, including for example the roots of a company like Shell, allthough they have seen a lot of different places over the years."
I felt like a fucking Pynchon character. I knew that some of what Pynchon was implying about Shell was probably rooted in reality, but someone just 'dropping' that information during a lecture felt weird.

A few weeks later in a lecture about Historical Critique a prof is telling us about the fact that the Allies knew about the existence of concentration camps and would have been able to hinder the Holocaust by '43, but that instead of acting on it, they did nothing, as they just refused to believe (which is something that might as well have been in GR). He showed us air photo's taken by British Intelligence that were revealed a couple of years ago when an archive was opened to the public. On the picture you could cleary see a large prison camp, people walking in long lines and smoke from ovens (allthough they might not have realized what was producing that smoke). Now get this: in the text underneath the picture the words IG Farben jumped just jumped out for me.

I was amazed at how many of the elements of GR i thought were fiction are based in reality and it was particularly nice to find out about them in this fashion, bit by bit almost accidentally exposed. Ofcourse once i find out about these kind of little facts i can just google them or go to the library and i don't have to go on a mad chase through the Zone, but still, a nice experience for me.
Yeah, allthough they have some phonetics we (In West-Vlaanderen) don't have, i feel like the language is closely phonetically related, which might even be part coïncidence. Concercing Dutch writers: it's a tie between Louis Paul Boon or Harry Mulish. Dimitri Verhulst is certainly the most fun one by a long shot. Favorite poet would probably be Toon Tellegen, i love "Er ligt een appel op een schaal" and i have very fond childhood memories of "Misschien wisten zij alles'' and the other stories with the Squirrel and the Ant. How about you?
And yeah, it was another genocide and had something with religious fanaticism, which you guys were pretty good at in those days ;) But i still feel like i'm missing it.

I like LPB a lot too but I have yet too read one of his big works. I'm curious about Claus but I've only read one of his later works and the Metsiers (which I thought was shit).
I don't like Mulisch that much, he's good, but only up to a point. No disrespect. De Ontdekking van de Hemel was a ton of fun but it didn't SAY anything important. It doesn't feel like a timeless classic. But I'm also biased against him I fear en smaken verschillen. Twee vrouwen is objectively shit though.
The best dutch author for me would be Hermans. If you haven't yet, read Nooit Meer Slapen. His prose is crafted and honed and he made fun of verzetsstrijders back when everyone treated them as saints. He's the cynical uncle you never had.

Also a shoutout to Wolkers. People don't take him seriously because he's 'le hippy sex guy'. But he's very funny and colourful. His best work is Terug Naar Oestgeest.

/day off/ sub thread:
Seeing as our day off has already begun here in the Southern Hemisphere, I though I would ask what everybody is going to be reading on our days break from Gravity's Rainbow? I am currently reading The Templars: History and Myth by Michael Haag and am planning on going through Kings 1 and 2 from The Bible and The Time Machine by HG Wells.

M8, nice. I totally understand what you're saying about Mullish, maybe it's just nostalgia goggles, but Ontdekking van de Hemel just felt so fresh when i first read it, so unlike anything i had read in Dutch before. I'm talking a few years back here though. I haven't read much by Claus besides Het verdriet van België (fun fact: one of my favorite bars is named after this book) and een zachte vernieling, both of which i liked. I read a thesis about Claus and the guy was doing subtle shit in his work..

Sinterklaas brought me De donkere kamer van Damocles! I was talking with a Dutch guy about literature and he said that it looked like I like cynical lit, so he recommended Hermans. However, Sinterklaas and de Kerstman have also brought Blood Meridian, Hunger by Hamsun, War and War by krazsnahorkai, Dream of fair to middling women by Beckett and the Castle by Kafka. I finished two already, finishing up War and War now and will be reading Hermans next. I've finished GR in october, so i'll be posting here but i won't be reading along.
By the way: the non-fiction work of HerTmans is amazing as well. The silence of Tragedy/Het zwijgen van de Tragedie, was one of the best works about the significance of Greek Tragedy i've ever read.
I'll check out Wolkers, thanks for the rec. I forgot mentioning Peter Verhelst, he's Flemish and i don't think he's well known, but he wrote a really short work called Medea and Moby Dick which is probably my all time favorite work in Dutch, even allthough it's only 50 pages.

Nice meeting you Dutch-user, now we should probably give the GR thread back to GR.

>Reminded of her ancestry she recalls her nation's history, and then the Dodo Sequence happens
>to connect countries between whom there is no possible rate of exchange.
maybe a relation between the two perspectives of wanting to connect everything (like religious missionaries traveling to other countries), and a darwinian survival of the fittest, and maybe the guy religious guy thought do do bird was a mistake of Gods, because it is a pretty purposeless pointless entity, wanting to act on behalf of God to make Creation better and more appropriate, two contradictory interpretations of religiosity?

Maybe even relating, her vision of her ancestor, part of her motive of connecting is because of her ancestors traveling to foreign lands and killing the exotic wildlife/people?

>ic heb u liever dan en everswîn
>al waert van finen goude ghewacht
whats this translate to?

You might be on to something. I feel like i don't completely get the phrase "rate of exchange'', sure the countries were entirely different, but is that what he means? Or does this have anything to do with the East India Companies?

About the religious thing: anyone here with more than basic insights into Calvinism got anything to add?

If i'm not mistaking it's Dutch for
'I like you more than a boar, even if you were made of finest gold'.
But then it would have to be ghemacht, i remember reading it like this and kekking at the old Dutch. Does it actually say 'ghewacht' in the book?

This phrase is in Middle-Dutch, which is pretty hard to read now but also wouldn't be what the guy going to the islands to kill dodo's would have been speaking. Middle-Dutch gave way to Modern Dutch in the 1500's, the Dutch didn't go to East India on large scale till at least in the 1600's. But those are details.

As someone who's 500p in; what's with the recurrence of Shirley Temple?

Wouldn't it be
>Even if it were made of gold
?

Yeah, it would, sorry, my bad.
Waert comes from ware het = if it were.
So
Even if it were made of gold.

Since you guys are discussing the chapter with the dodo genocide, there was a part that confused me a bit right after that too when it returns to Pirate and Osbie on the roof.

>"He's haunting you," Osbie puffing on an Amanita cigarette.
>"Yes," Pirate ranging the edges of the roof-garden, irritable in the sunset, "but it's the last thing I want to believe. The other's been bad enough...."

At first I thought Pirate was perhaps just having Katje's fantasy about the dodoes and Frans van der Groov for her but I really wasn't sure. It's probably not important, I suppose, but still.

I read it as
Al ware het van fijn goud gemaakt
Ghewacht really doesnt make any sense if it means waiting or being on guard.

indigenous people and african tribes, who maybe didnt have much use for trading their seashell necklaces for gold

Yeah, that's what i thought as well.
Well, there indian ocean trading network was in place before the Dutch (and before the Portugese) they just took it over.

Let's be honest, you guys are ITT just because you don't want to read the book, right?

I think it's Slothrop and he doesn't want to believe what it up with him.
That or really just one of the fantasies he's living in his head that hurts him.

On a limp i might say it might be refering to Blicero or 'the face in the clouds' but it's really to long ago.

>tfw no amanita cigarette's to be found here..

apparently it is:
“ic heb u liever dan ên everswîn, al waert van finen goude ghewracht”
Ghewarcht means something like worked into like gewrochten?

Gewrochten still means something like gemaakt.
Zoals ik wrocht voor u deze schone post. I think the word shows up in the dutch translation of Lotr.

I know.
Just pointing out that ghewracht instead of ghewacht clears things up.

Yeah that makes sense. I guess I wasn't sure if Pirate was aware of Slothrop at this point, since I remember he didn't really know of the contents of the film he was delivering to Roger, but I suppose there's no real reason to think he's in the dark about Slothrop's "ability" considering who he's working with.

I'm vaguely familiar with Calvinism mostly due to this book so I may be able to help. Do you have any specific questions or are you asking just about the whole dodo bird thing?

The whole dodo thing. All of it.
But this book alone isn't gonna cut it. I'm a little more than vaguely familiar with Calvinism, but i didn't get it.

As I said my kneejerk interpretation is, the paradox of loving God and Gods creation, but then taking it upon yourself to attempt to eliminate an aspect of creation you believe shouldn't exist; in effect acting on behalf of God and suggesting God made a mistake.

The dodo's eradication is in the Lord's plan no less than their creation.

The dodos are a red herring, part of the 93 millionmile roar, the only options we have to recognize the whispers is at the discretion of the soundless eclipse. This is evidenced by the Brocken spectres, how occluded our eyes are by the sun, how willing we are to be overwhelmed.

I suggest you recall the dogs, being trained beyond zero. what does that mean for you, reading the book?

Echoes Lolita
Hints at some unusual practices of Hollywood, even so far back as then...

youtube.com/watch?v=rrjvifKXQy4

Also to anyone wondering about the math in GR
Here's PDF download for a paper on it, giving a good grasp of the jist
pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/articles/abstract/10.16995/pn.94/

>The part i didn't understand however was why the guy suddenly got so determined to exterminate the dodo's and i lost my shit when he 'suddenly realized the religious meaning of their extermination', which i didnt get like.. at all
>But why he went crazy, I don't know either. Wasn't it something to do with his religious fanaticism?

I was just hypothesizing answers to that posters wonderings.

An interesting relation, maybe, is that 'dodo' is a term used to call someone a dumby (though all maybe know what I meant, didnt want to write, dummy, so as to not be confused...but then again).

>I suggest you recall the dogs, being trained beyond zero. what does that mean for you,
I don't know, what does it mean to you?

How far into the book are you anons?
Does someone have the meme yellow/orange edition?

no, it was a rhetorical question. for me it will inevitably mean something different. I interpret it as yet another aspect of paranoia. Probably at its greatest strength. I I recall correctly, the idea was that when one trains out pavlovian response to a certain extent, it eventually passes into a pre-reaction to that specific stimulus. so, the dog drools just before the bell rings, rather than after, or at random intervals, or not at all. For me, this is a clue later on amplified by the dark spot and the shadows, that perhaps we all could have been trained beyond the zero in the 93 millionmile roar that envelops us, has enveloped us for generations, to predict the silence with fear, with paranoia. to associate that silence, perhaps, wih death. that dark spot lurking round every corner, a dooming laser, becomes a general and overwhelming sense of fear that holds us all.

i see that i ruined the thread again.

these are slow threads, everyone is working, living, eating, sleeping, reading, avoiding reading

bah! Bah! BAH!

I think you're referring to when the dogs go transmarginal, which isn't from deconditioning (I don't think) but rather subjection to extreme conditions and basically being driven insane (at which point you become confused about opposites).

Pointsman basically wants to send Slothrop into the paradoxical phase and see what he does, right? Wouldn't that just mean a hardon except for when he's in a place where a rocket will strike? Am I just dumb and asking too many questions?

Asking questions isn't wrong. I think that we disagree on the dogs, though it has been long enough for my memory of the details to have diminished. Also, I may have misunderstood from the beginning. But I am inclined to believe otherwise as I think slothrop was already in that state, and the meddling with katje ruined his condition. Slothrop initially caused the war to continue, I feel, and the timeline of his condition matched with the war's end.

i do think that Slothrop definitely had been already pushed beyond the zero. I am also currently intoxicated, so my explanations are probably getting less and less comprehensible. How far are you into the book?

basically what i meant was the timing of the response to the stimuli is what changes after being pushed beyond the zero, instead of occurring after the stimulus, it occurs before, which was the interesting aspect of slothrop's sexual escapades. that they seemed to predict the bomb's locations. pointsman wants to force a scenario in which the bomb falls, but in doing so, he ruins the delicacy of slothrop's condition. hopefully that makes more sense.

I'm only barely to the end of part 1, and it's my first reading. I've basically just had this passage in mind, but I'm still just trying to figure things out because the more I think about it the more I realize I probably don't get it:

>We’re working right now with a dog . . . he’s been through the ‘equivalent’ phase, where any stimulus, strong or weak, calls up exactly the same number of saliva drops . . . and on through the ‘paradoxical’ phase—strong stimuli getting weak responses and vice versa. Yesterday we got him to go ultraparadoxical. Beyond. When we turn on the metronome that used to stand for food—that once made Dog Vanya drool like a fountain—now he turns away. When we shut off the metronome, oh then he’ll turn to it, sniff, try to lick it, bite it—seek, in the silence, for the stimulus that is not there. Pavlov thought that all the diseases of the mind could be explained, eventually, by the ultraparadoxical phase, the pathologically inert points on the cortex, the confusion of ideas of the opposite. He died at the very threshold of putting these things on an experimental basis. But I live. I have the funding, and the time, and the will. Slothrop is a strong imperturbable. It won’t be easy to send him into any of the three phases. We may finally have to starve, terrorize, I don’t know . . . it needn’t come to that. But I will find his spots of inertia, I will find what they are if I have to open up his damned skull, and how they are isolated, and perhaps solve the mystery of why the rockets are falling as they do—though I admit that was more of a sop to get your support.

>The dodo's eradication is in the Lord's plan no less than their creation.
where is there evidence Katjes ancestor was told by the lord the seek to it the dodos became extinct?

That's just what he believed, as he felt them an affront to nature.

that's them furthering the ultraparadoxical state, but the more interesting concept that's not stated is the one slothrop experiences, the creation of the stimulus via his response. it turns cause and effect on its head. the reason pointsman doesn't understand this is because he's such a rigid scientist that the idea of cause and effect being fluid is nonsense. hell, it doesn't even cross his mind. i hadn't realized that pointsman didn't even notice, I had assumed that was the reason for the experimentation. i think he was just on the wrong track. anyhow, i have only read the work once myself, and fairly recently. i could be completely wrong, but i don't think so. i couldn't point you to specific excerpts because i'm not a diligent reader whomtakes his notes like a good boy, or i would definitely provide you with some of them. i just go by gut when i read. don't use my thoughts as a lodestone.

no, you misunderstand. god provides the path of every man. we all follow his guiding light, all of our sins and follies are those he has foretold and known for eternity. if the dodos get extinguished, then god willed it. his will does not stop extending beyond creation, it is his engine, and its parts and their motions are likewise his design. to believe otherwise would be to defy his omniscience.

I think you're both more or less right about Slothrop, though the Pavlov is a bit off - I think the first poster is correct in that stimulus before response is transmarginal.

I like to wonder at what point Pointsman began to condition Slothrop, and I think about that scene of him in the bar with, I think, Tantivy(?) - one of his friends anyway - when he lights a cigarette and begins to smoke it, then begins to light another, and another, to the protest of his friend, all while talking about rockets. Is it too much of a stretch to consider this(the lighting of the cigarettes) some kind of a response to some unknown stimuli? That scene has always stood out to me.

that and the nose scene.

but i must say, the best scene in the entire book, and the only one to make me laugh, was slothrop attacking his fat tire, "take that, a-and that!"

and you're right, i was mixing the dog's condition with slothrop's, theynare similar, but not nearly the same. i feel that slothrop's related condition was definitely a purposeful project that achieved its aim, but the clumsiness of pointsman boggled it.

for those who have already read the book,

did you understand the significance of the guy wih the out of body exoeriences? it really felt out of place, like he jimmied in a short story as another red herring, to the point that my memory makes it seem like it wasn't even from the same book. what conclusions did you draw from that bit and how did you connect them to the rest of the work?

Oh okay, I kind of see where you're coming from now. I'm just thinking about Pointsman's motivations and what he thinks is happening with Slothrop, and he's clearly taking Pavlovian ideas to a farcical extreme. But yes, I think you're right that Pointsman is limited by his rigid insistence on cause and effect (he argued with Mexico about this at one point, I recall, with Mexico suggesting that people need to reconsider what they think about causality). Now I'm interested to see what Pointsman does with the octopus Grigori in upcoming chapters and what exactly is up with this film that's been made for him. Thanks for putting up with (what is probably just) my overthinking things. I suppose if I want to be able to draw conclusions I should probably just keep reading.

so your *opinion* is absolute pure determinism, which absolves man of responsibility for his actions, aye? "No, your honor...I did not rape and murder that woman...God did it... God made me do it...it was his will, and it was perfect"

>i feel that slothrop's related condition was definitely a purposeful project that achieved its aim
what do you think the purposeful project and aim was?

you think that because we are predestined to sin we are not to be held responsible for them? i disagree. in your argument, you are dealing in human absolutes, in our world, our crimes are held to the same standards as any other, and should be punished accordingly despite god's plans being enacted. i liken it to different tiers of justice. there is god's justice, and there is man's justice. god's justice is unknowable, and his judgements of our paths though seemingly unfair due to our being destined to do so, is once more part of his plan. man's justice will punish accordingly. he will do what he thinks is right. there is no way for you or i to propose what god's sense of morality is.

oh no! it's not a bother, i feel bad for jumping in and invading your experience of the book, i probably should have waited to talk with everyone about it during the later stages of your readthrough. besides, my conclusions are often flawed due to the fact that i'm a lazy reader who tends to have flawed memories of what exactly happened. those possibly mismatched conclusions typically color the way i see a book until i read it once more with them in mind. anyway, don't stop overthinking things, there's no way that's bad with a book like this.

to make a weapon? i dunno. i'm sure it was an achieved goal since it seems the members of the project didn't seem like the types to just give up before it reaches fruition, and i presume the aim is discovery, for war's sake or just curiosity's sake.
now that i think of it, i wonder if slothrop really is the only one who has undergone these experiments, and whether or not the reversal of cause and effect really haven't been played with further after the results determined by slothrop. i will admit that i probably shouldn't be so confident that there was an aim and a purposeful project, so i'll chalk it up to paranoia and filling in the blanks myself.

>you think that because we are predestined to sin we are not to be held responsible for them? i disagree
if God made a rape-bot would he have any right in getting mad at it, punishing it for carrying at the exact unavoidable path God paved for it to follow second by second? I dont think God did, because I think man has free will, which is the basis of our disagreement, which is not worth continuing, and wasting posts in this thread over, you simply made some outrageous, bold, unsubstantiated claims, I am certain I rightly disagree with.

What page chapter are you guys on? I wanted to start with you but I completely forgot.

think what you will, but i find that my experience with god has taught me not to make the assumption that he will punish me or anyone else in the same way that a man might. i have no idea if god would be mad at this rape-bot. i do think, however, if god is omniscient, then we do not have free will. which leads me to believe that his understanding of these situations is not my own. i understand what you're saying completely, though. it seems very unfair. but who says it must be? who says it isn't fair except you or i, who really just don't know?

you're taking this very personally. although, how can you not, i suppose, it must be annoying to have someone tell you that you have no free will. i get it. i just disagree with you. no reason to be such a whiny bitch about all of it, though.

See the schedule Finished Part One today. Taking a day off before digging into the next part.

more than anything I despise being confronted with wrongness/incorrectness/falseness/ignorance, its not worth wasting the space in this thread to explain to you why your comprehension and voracity and vigor and rigor of thought is lacking.

I don't think Pynchon would be very glad knowing this was his legacy.

I am aware of all the angles and slants and topics and arguments on the subject from every side, all the ones you are aware of, and all the ones you are unaware of: quote this if you want to respond so I can delete this post

delete your post, its worthless, pointless, and does nothing for anyone. I will delete this one after you see it

>more than anything I despise being confronted with wrongness/incorrectness/falseness/ignorance, its not worth wasting the space in this thread to explain to you why your comprehension and voracity and vigor and rigor of thought is lacking.
>I am aware of all the angles and slants and topics and arguments on the subject from every side, all the ones you are aware of, and all the ones you are unaware of: quote this if you want to respond so I can delete this post

okay. now you're just being melodramatic. you're quite a silly person.

It's not wrong though?

Paradox with quasi-ironic psychosis posting is you oust yourself as having no access to your own brain. It doesn't make sense to try and split atoms to create molecules.

what did that poster presume 'his legacy' was? hundreds of thousands of people (or more) into a book he published 40 years ago; and 10s or 20s of them for a few weeks or months reading and discussing it online? Is that the extremely profound and poignant thought that poster manifest destinly had to bless us with?
yay, youre contributing, yay, you did something.

Welcome to Calvinism.
Also
What this user said, Calvinists believe that even if you're predestined to sin, you're still acountable for it.

so i'm a calvinist? i had no idea. thanks. i'll have to do some research. is that related in any way to Gaddis' The Recognitions? I began to believe after reading it, so I think I based my religion in some way on the themes of that work.

What page are you guys on? Ive had a fever this whole year and haven't started yet. I hope I can catch up once Im better