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Gravity’s rainbow sections 26-29 summary
Hello there, here is my humble contribution to this great reading group. Thanks to everyone involved and especially to bloomsdayclock for overseeing the logistics involved in this hefty operation. I am a tad late because I had to fill in for somebody at work yesterday. Furthermore, any mistakes made I will blame on the fact that my laptop broke down and I have written this thing on my phone.
My plan of attack is very simple. I will summarize the sections in a - I hope - lucid manner and make some simple observations about the text as we go along. Here and there I will point to some passages that I think are beautiful, astute or important; simple enough right? I don’t think it will be as a complex or exhaustive exegesis as my worthy predecessors have provided, but I do hope it will provide enough fuel for the discussion below. Let’s get into it!
SECTION 26 (part 5 of part 2)
We are nearing march 23d 1945 as “Wernher von Braun, [...] prepares to celebrate his 33rd birthday”. We have just been provided with some of the yuckiest scenes in the book so our lord and saviour, Pynchon, moves away from the morbid proclivities of the White Visitation and provides us with some more comically induced and lighthearted scenes, before we get into THE ZONE.
Slothrop has become more aware of the plot that has been created to his detriment. Therefore we are provided with the first of the proverbs for paranoids: “You may never get to touch the master, but you can tickle his creatures.” Through some paranormal activity he has been conversing with, or receiving necessary information from, Roland Feldspath about systems of control, and whatnot before he goes to Germany. Feldspath reminisces on a periodical, “Paranoid Systems of History”, in Germany which asserted that the hyperinflation was purposefully created to show the failures of the adherents of the Cybernetic Tradition. This is bolstered with some ruminations on the nature of entropy (not explicity) and the problem of Maxwell’s demon. This is to provide for the fact that the way of thinking of the rocket’s was reduced to a too simplistic notion by the scientists that created them. These scientists would only realize in death the mistakes they made. A foreshadowing (sorta) of Slothrop’s own rite of passage through this book.
(I think it is clear I’m having some trouble with going over this bit; if anyone feels inclined to feel in the gaps and maybe explain Maxwell’s demon in layman’s terms, that would be much appreciated.)
We are now (really) back at the casino, where slothrop stumbles into Hilary Bounce (from Shell) - who is going to learn him about propulsion. There are some things Slothrop needs to learn before he goes into the zone, among them are: the mechanics of propulsion; dialects like plattdeutsch (which just means something like ‘normal’ German - as opposed to ‘proper’ German); and also English English. Slothrop is thinking about and discussing with Bounce the curious nature and endeavors of Shell on both sides of the war. We are hit with the second proverb: “The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the master”. Bounce shrugs Slothrop suspicions off by saying: “It’s only a “wild coincidence,” slothrop’”.
As part of Pointsman’s experiment Slothrop is learning about rockets via German blueprints. In such a blueprint a rather out of the ordinary insulation device catches his eye: Imipolex G. Rather than just plain out asking for more information, slothrop is a bit more slick. He gets one of his ladyfriends (Michele) to seduce bounce, so he can have Bounce’s teletype to ask about Imipolex G. This succeeds, Slothrop goes down to the same party where Bounce and Michele went to - and will read the info later.
SECTION 27 (Part 6 of 2)
This party is hosted by Raoul de la perlimpinpin who has been keeping this party going for a long while. Tonight instead of the usual spiking of the punch, the Hollandaise sauce has been flavored with some grass. Due to this people are asleep on the floor, and whoever is awake is eating everything they can get their hands onto. Slothrop receives “a kraft-paper envelope” to hold onto from swanky Blodget Waxwing - forgerist and arms dealer - to keep safe from Tamara(or Italo?). This he does for good reason as Tamara, for reasons très convoluté, shows up at the party in a Sherman Tank. Slothrop - in true hero fashion - saves the day. He receives a zoot suit and a nice keychain from Waxwing as was promised early.
I think this is a prime example of Pynchon’s visual (comedic) imagery! We get some more of this in the next sections (in the Raketwerke). I have read somewhere that this type of scene taps into cinema of this era, yet should not be viewed as Pynchon lauding popular movies, but it more so being a comment on this type of popular entertainment being not so necessarily good for our original thought. (It also exerts a certain amount of control by Them on Us, I guess?) Whilst this may be the case I think Pynchon also does it because he has a lot of fun doing this! It also shows how writers can use popular cinema to their advantage, by borrowing ‘cliché’ images and making them your own.
Of further interest is the fact that the loud noise did not cause an erection for Slothrop. Is this simply due to it being a tank and not a rocket? Or “because nobody was looking”, tapping into how an experiment can change when there is an observer vs. no observer? Furthermore, Waxwing says the tank scene did happen, but the scene with the octopus did not. This is because the octopus was planned? And therefore ‘artificial’? But the tank scene ‘natural’ and therefore ‘real’?
SECTION 28 (1) part 7 of part 2
Slothrop is reading about Imipolex G and we get some information on this plastic, but als on the scientific history of plastics in general and this one in particular. Of importance is the fact that: “Chemists were no longer to be at the mercy of Nature.” One of these chemists is Laslo Jamf who created Imipolex G for IG Farben ( IG = Interessegemeimschaft = syndicate/ cartel and farben = dyes) . Jamf was originally working Psychochemie AG (previously known as the Grossli Chemical corporation). Grössli was a spinoff from the Sandoz corporation. When the Germans (under the cover of IG Chemie) did business in Switzerland they bought a large chunk of Grössli stock the company was named Psychochemie AG. So both IG Farben and Psychochemie got access to the patent for Imipolex AG. Shell oil has info on Imipolex because of an agreement with Imperial chemicals (which is also partly owned by IG Farben) which stipulates they can sell it in the commonwealth. Psychochemie AG is still alive and kicking in their “old adress in the Schokoladestrasse in that Zürich, Switzerland.” Furthermore, the rockets that are falling on top of London “with the help of a transmitter on the roof of the headquarters of Dutch Shell”, share an “uncanny resemblance to one developed by British Shell at around the same time”. This information is being gathered by Mr. Duncan Sandys at the Shell mex house. A lovely bit of shady corporate dealings fuelled by malice and greed.
On the shell mex house, Slothrop stages a hypothetical raid with Waxwing. Wherein they find no signs of Evil but only “a rather dull room”. This prompts a rumination on Duncan Sandy’s role in this supposed plot who is just “a name only a function”, it is unclear where the plot ends and begins: this is due to Them who have made the organization charts (so what is the use in even asking this kind of question. Which leads into the third proverb (and my favorite): “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”
During slothrop’s rereading of the blue parts list which made him aware of imipolex G in the first place he finds a very special type of rocket: “‘S-Gerät, 11/000000.’” This is unusual because there he has come across an I- or J-Gerät but no S-. Furthermore he has not seen a rocket with so many zeroes before.
In the Casino Restaurant slothrop finds out (through a newspaper) about the death of his old pal Tantivy Mucker-Mafick. It is unclear whether this happened, if it happened who did it and why. What is clear is that Slothrop is getting increasingly paranoid.
He goes to Nice and tries to shake his tail by giving Claude the assistant chef his clothes and stealing a citroen with the keys in it (we find out later that They were still onto him in Nice though, but it’s a nice try!). Slothrop enters a hotel and on the top floor meets a mysterious “old motherly femme de chambre” (chamber maid). He shows her Waxwing’s card and she points him upstairs, where, there is a “kind of penthouse in the middle” here he finds three boys and girls smoking a thin cigarette of ambigious odor (might it be a cigarette dipped in acid? or is it just weed?). He shows them Waxwing’s card; he is not there, but Slothrop will get an id card the day after and a place to sleep.
After a rather unpleasant night of sleep filled with visits by various ghosts of the past: Murray Smile, Jenny, Katje and Tantivy. He is woken up by the noise of some American MPs and for the first time feels the threat their voices might hold for any non-American. His papers are brought up to his room. His new guise is Ian Scufflin, English war correspondent (hey that English English you have been learning might do you some good after all). With these new papers he’s off to Zurich!
SECTION 28 (2) Part 7 of part 2
After a long train ride he arrives in Zurich. During this ride he noticed the following in the landscape: “The war has been reconfiguring time and space into its own image. The track runs in different networks now. What appears to be destruction is really the shaping of railroad space to other purposes, intentions he can only riding through it for the first time begin to feel the leading edges of…” This is an important description of what the war has been doing and how it will affect the zone later on.
He checks into Hotel Nimbus and later makes its way to find the local Waxwing representative: a russian named Semyavin. They talk about information being/ becoming the currency of the world. “Is it any wonder the world’s gone insane with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?” (In the previous discussions Pynchon’s prescience has been a talking point; I find it to be especially strong in this small conversation between Slothrop and semyavin.) Semyavin provides Slothrop with three Zurich cafés that somebody with an interest in industrial espionage should check out. He begins loitering at these places, but is having trouble with sorting the corporate spies from the LOONIES ON LEAVE (from their “fancy asylums”).
He is accosted by a chorus of crazies and their keepers. In their song there is talk of entropy management, perpetual motion which has to do with Maxwell’s demon as well. This ties into the help Slothrop has been getting while giving nothing. Not realizing that he, himself is the information by which he is ‘paying’ for the help he’s been getting - as is similar to the way the problem of Maxwell’s demon was solved.
Furthermore there is this line where Slothrop is having trouble “telling Nuts from Keepers”. Which to me feels to be about a lot of things amongst which, the question of: who is in control vs. who is being controlled? And also about the maybe-not-so-rigid-difference between a nutcase and a genius. Which ties into Slothrop’s paranoia. Because in everyday use paranoia is seeing a connection between things that are not there, yet in this book it does not seem to be that negative (as Slothrop’s paranoia is by no means uncalled for). So are scientists who have their moment of eureka not paranoid crazies who are right and vice versa? Is a paranoid anything less than a genius who has not been able to prove the connection he sees? Or maybe I’m reading into these lines a bit much… Carrying on!
After the crazies have left him alone and some time flies by, Slothrop is chomping down on a bratwurst in Stragelli (one of the three cafés) and meets Mario Schweitar. Schweitar is from Sandoz a member of the swiss chemical cartel from the early 20’s remember? Which evolved into Psychochemie Ag (the German cover company). Slothrop sez: “I’d like anything they got on L. Jamf, a-and on that Imipolex G.’” Slothrop hears that getting this information will be difficult and also that Jamf is dead. For the info he wants, slothrop will need to raise 500 swiss Francs.
Semyavin advises him to pawn his zoot. He is not too keen on parting with it. Later he sees a car who is, ostensibly, checking him out, so we receive proverb 4: “You hide they seek”. In another attempt of hiding from them he calls his to his hotel from a restaurant asking: “‘can you possibly tell me if the British chap who’s been waiting in the foyer is still there, know…”’, this backfires, as a variety of people were watching him: they know know he knows.
As he’s killing time in the famous Cafe Odeon, he meets Fransisco Squalidozzi. They get friendly and Squalidozzi starts telling him about his heist of a German submarine and of his “plan to seek political asylum in Germany, as soon as the War’s over there…”, Slothrop does not get it as Germany’s a “mess”, Squalidozzi enlightens Slothrop with his perfectly logical reasoning. There is talk of the centralization of Argentina. The need to reign from Buenos Aires (entropy, control all that stuff). There is talk of Labyrinths. Labyrinths and Argentina? Ah there he is: “look at Borges.” Slothrop calls this centralizing progress. Squalidozzi waves slothrops (conservative Western) ideas away for mild insanity instead of rudeness. Squalidozzi further states that the war is changing something inherently: this gives him hope and is why he plans to settle there.
There are swiss people who want to assist squalidozzi in his anarchism-in-exile, he needs to get a message to Geneva. Slothrop can help him for some money. Anon, he flies there in a “battered DC-3”. He delivers the message with slickness that would make James Bond jealous. He goes back to Zurich by train, but gets off at a stop earlier at Schlieren in an attempt to lose his tail (which was succesful?). The next day he meets Schweitar to give him half his money in advance. They agree to close the deal (for info on Jamf and Imipolex G) in the mountains by Jamf’s grave. Slothrop is unable to find Squalidozzi though - so he can’t deliver his message to him…
Slothrop goes camping by Jamf’s grave and we get treated to this wonderful description of Zurich: “The city below him, bathed now in a partial light is a necropolis of church spires and weathercocks, white castle-keep towers, broad buildings with mansard roofs and windows glimmering by thousands. This forenoon the mountains are as translucent as ice. The lake is mirror-smooth but mountains and houses reflected down there remain strangely blurred with edges fine and combed as raind: a dream of Atlantis, of the Suggenthal. Toy villages, desolate city of painted alabaster…” Schweitar’s delivery boy comes along and gives him the goods. And we switch to Pointsman.
See you again in the zone Slothrop!
SECTION 29 part 8 of part 2
The white visitation has a small gathering at Whitsun by the sea. We find out they're in a bit of a crisis. They have lost Slothrop in Zurich or at least the secret service did. We recap to a duo called harvey speed and floyd perdoo who were/are investigating Slothrop’s sexual endeavors in London. They don’t do much though aside from eating and bickering with each other.
Pointsman is wondering when he is going to see it. He is worrying about data sets and of what can be perceived as truth/ trustworthy (evidentially vs. clinically). Slothrop being missing also causes worries at the Shell mex house, because Slothrop knows about some sensitive rocket stuff. Hehas information that Russians and Americans would be keen to have. Pointsman is also worrying about his team. So he organized a party to up the atmosphere a bit.
Pointsman, Mexico, Jessica, Dennis Joint and Katje are present. Mexico is having trouble with Jessica. Dennis Joint is eyeballing Katje who does not seem interested and Pointsman is losing his mind (what a fun get-together!). We also find out that Pirate Prentice has been asking about Katje at PISCES’ new brand office… for reasons unclear (for love or something else?). Pointsman starts up a conversation with Mexico that seems odd even for his standard. Then we find out in accordance with Murphy’s law or Gödels Theorem that there are actual Schwarzkommando’s in Germany (the hereros who will be explained thoroughly in the next sections). We go back to Pointsman losing control the party, the situation, his work, of Katje and of himself. And on this lovely note we end this section and part 2 of Gravity’s Rainbow!