Pynchon, Paranoia, and Literature Author(s): Leo Bersani Reviewed work(s): Source: Representations, No. 25 (Winter, 1989), pp.

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LEO

BERSANI

Pynchon, Paranoia, and Literature

Rainbowdoes is likelyto make the reader somewhatparanoid Pynchon'sGravity's mostcherishedword of about theveryfrequency itsuse. Not onlyis itthenarrator's to a new English verb: Tyrone Slothrop and concept (the word even gives birth work in "paranoids fromdoor to door" in a Nice hotel);' thecharacters Pynchon's also repeatedly referto themselvesas paranoid. There, of course, is the hitch: since when do paranoids label themselvesas paranoid? When theydo, theyare beforeit can be used using the label forthemselves of course speakingforothers, againstthem."You mustthinkI'm reallyparanoid about people's opinion of what I write"can be givento us as: "I'm reallyparanoid about people's opinion of what can onlycome fromothers. I write," but thejudgment of thatanxietyas paranoid joke of my These otherscan of course also existin me, and I can make a clinical own worries,but I would not have them if I were not also convinced of their rightness."I" can never be the subject of "I am paranoid" as an uncontested, undividedjudgment. complex medical, psychiatric, The word paranoia has had an extraordinarily I and psychoanalytic history. have been using it (as, in fact,Pynchonalso tends to likeunfounded suspicions withsomething use it) as ifitwere merelysynonymous about a hostileenvironment, but the fear of persecutionis only one aspect of a picturethat,at various momentsand as it has been drawn by symptomatological different thinkers,has included such thingsas delusions of grandeur, schizophrenic dissociation,and erotomania. The concept has been at the center of turbulence,especiallywithrespect to the question of considerable classificatory whetheror not it should be counted as one of the schizophrenicpsychoses.More than any other psychoanalytic term,paranoiahas been the focusof a nosological panic of paranoia itself.There is, in both disarraynot unlike the symptomatic distress.Freud explained paranoia as a defense against a cases, interpretative desired homosexual "attack,"a defense that depends to a great extent on the of The potentialbenefits interpretaeffort. success of a strenuousinterpretative by tivecontrolare dramatically illustrated the ease withwhichDr. Schreber,the subject of Freud's most celebrated analysisof paranoia, transcendshis paranoid into an epic of cosmic selfanxietyand even changes a plot of cosmic hostility centering.God's desire to use Schreber as a "wife"in order to engender a new race rewritescatastropheas apotheosis; the dreaded attackwill stilltake place, be but in itsidealized, divine formitcan finally recognizedas an object of desire.
Winter1989 ?

ANY NOVEL THAT USES THE WORDparanOiaasfrequentlyasThomas

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Schreber ends exactly where he began: in anticipatingthe pleasure of being destroyed as a result of takinga "passive" homosexual role. But he must first analyze thecomponentsof "I love him"in waysthatwillallowa homosexual desire to be satisfiedwithoutdanger. In the paranoid's case, "I love him" is equivalent as to "I love being attackedbyhim"; onlyifthisis reformulated somethinglike "I attacked by a hostile world" can a megalomaniacal defense against hate being persecutionbecome powerfulenough to make Schreberdesirable to God Himwere contagiousor perhaps even operated as self. It is as if a defensiveself-love appeal. The paraan argument that "convinced" God of Schreber'sirresistible noid stage of Schreber's illness allows the original masochisticwish to become as conscious by creatingthe conditionsin whichit can be reformulated a triumof phant narcissism.The original (and repressed) interpretation a "feminine" is-in a move that a biological realism perversely passivityas self-annihilation authorizes-reinterpreted as self-perpetuation. of to acuMore interesting us is Freud's recognition Schreber'sinterpretative similarity beity.At the end of his analysis of the case, Freud notes a striking about thosedelusions. The SenatstweenSchreber'sdelusions and Freud's theory prdsident's "raysof God," forexample, "whichare made up of a condensationof and thesun'srays,of nerve-fibers, of spermatozoa,are in reality nothingelse than and projectionoutwardof libidinalcathexes";theymay a concreterepresentation of be what Freud calls "endopsychicperceptions" the veryprocessesthathe himselfhas proposed in order to explain paranoia. With just a hintof paranoia about his thathe maybe accused of havinglifted theory paranoia from of the possibility in Schreber'sbook, Freud protests, advance of any such accusation,thathe can to "call a friendand fellow-specialist witnessthat[he] had developed [his] theory of paranoia before [he] became acquainted withthe contentsof Schreber'sbook. It remains for the future,"Freud concludes, "to decide whetherthere is more delusion in mytheorythatI should like to admit,or whetherthereis more truth in Schreber'sdelusion than other people are as yetprepared to believe."2 The delusion, however,may be inherent in the move that predicts some futuresortingout of truthfromdelusion in eitherSchreber'sfantasiesor Freud's of on theories.What else couldthe truth paranoia be thana replication, a different of the paranoid's delusions? Freud's concluding remarks discursive register, bizarrelysuggest thatthere is some orderingtruthof paranoia-of paranoia as and theoreticaldiscourse that in factconstitutes distinctfrom the classificatory it-differentfromboth paranoid ravingsand theoriesof paranoia. This is preit of ciselyhow Pynchondefinesparanoia itself: is the"reflex seekingotherorders in behind the visible"(219). The paranoid restlessness the theoryof paranoiathathe had the theory beforestudying case as the evidenced in Freud's insistence well as in his uneasy perceptionof the specular relationbetweenthe case and the of language of paranoia. The theory-is expressed as a mistrust the symptomatic distrusts theorizing the of theoretician activity paranoia-as ifthe "truth" paraof 100
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noia mightturn out to be thattheoryis alwaysa paranoid symptom.But Freud has perhaps already accepted thatconclusion in continuingto hope for a truth rescue by which the value of theorycan be measured, a truththatwould finally which,it is feared,maybe nothing discourse fromthe theorizing psychoanalytic distrustof of more than a manifestation paranoid behavior.The theoretician's is thatwhat theoryseeks to signify hidden somewherebehind theory-the sense of it-repeats the paranoid's distrust the visible. the alternative: to The Schrebercase also points,however, a whollydifferent embrace of theoryas final and the renunciationof any hope that "truth"will betweendelusions and distinction render theoryobsolete. The customary finally we replicatesthe illusionalstructures maywishto understand. truthtooaccurately in If nonparanoid theorizingis a contradiction terms,there may be-and Pynso mirror thatthetheory chon willhelp us withthis-a wayto crackthereplicative unrecognizableimage of paranoia. Knowlof paranoia willsend back a partially edge-but do we even need that word?-would then have to be redefined in termsof the inaccuracyof a replication.

on of perspective paranoia, the word,faithful For all the shifts interpretative to its etymology (paranoia is a Greek word designatinga distractedor deranged Rainbow. mind), has alwaysdesignated a mental disorder.At least until Gravity's All the paranoid thinkingin the novel is probablyjustified,and therefore-at least in the traditionalsense of the word-really not paranoid at all. I say "probhis ably" because Pynchonis less interestedin vindicating characters'suspicions of plots than in universalizingand, in a sense, depathologizing the paranoid that all the plots theyimagine structureof thought.Were he contentto certify are real plots,he would be makingmerelya politicalpoint,a point forwhichhe been credited and that undoubtedlyhelps to explain the popuhas frequently work. This is what we mightcall the sixtiesside larityof his immenselydifficult of Pynchon,Pynchon as defender of such lovable slobs as Slothrop and, in V., of Benny Profane the schlemiel against the impersonal efficiency information it's of Rainbow, true,lends and international cartels.The narrator Gravity's systems passes his authority his characters'paranoid suspicions;in fact,he frequently to thatjustifiestheirworstfears.Thus the wildestparanoid imagion information of nation would probablynot come up withthe incrediblebut true story IG Farben's surveillance of Slothrop rightback to his infancy.The Pavlovian Laszlo Jamf'sconditioningof babyTyrone'shard-ons(more on thislater) has to be seen in the lightof Jamf'scomplex business deals betweenthe two World Wars,busiperhaps involvedin efforts thatwere themselves supercartels ness deals involving to to ruin the mark as part of a strategy get Germanyout of payingitswar debts. Was Slothrop "sold to IG Farben like a side of beef," did theyfinanceJamf's experimentson him, has he been "under theirobservation-m-maybe since he and Paranoia, Literature Pynchon, 101

certain(except forJamf's was born? Yaahhh. . ." (333). None of thisis absolutely work withSlothrop'sinfanthard-on,whichhas been described much earlier in the novel as historicalfact),and the business deals and connectionselliptically But if IG referred to are mind-bogglingin theirintricateinterconnectedness. in Pynchon, Farben's sinisterinterest Slothrop is not unambiguouslyconfirmed, clearlydoes not expect us to findSlothrop'smost paranoid sceat the veryleast, narios implausible. Pynchon himselfcertainlyhas no problem with the cartelconspiracyideas. War, he writes,is just a cover-up,a "spectacle" or "diversion of fromthe real movements the War.""The truewar is a celebrationof markets," as its"real business . .. is buyingand selling,the murderingand the violence are and can be entrustedto non-professionals" like (122). An "outfit self-policing, no Shell" has "no real country, side in any war,no specificface or heritage: tapping instead out of that global stratum,most deeply laid, from which all the appearances of corporateownershipreallyspring"(283). seeks "otherorders behind the visible"; The paranoid reflex,we remember, speaking, in another passage, of the paranoia oftennoted under the hallucinatorydrug Oneirine, Pynchonwrites:"Like other sortsof paranoia, it is nothing [note: the "discovery," not less than the onset, the leading edge, or the discovery in theCreation"(820). And, is thateverything connected, everything the"suspicion"] as theJesuitFather Rapier preaches during some undefinedConventionin the Zone, "Once the technicalmeans of controlhave reached a certainsize, a certain degree of being connectedone to another,the chances for freedom are over for is, good" (627). The paranoid intuition then,one of an invisibleinterconnectedness. to linesamong necessary drawconnecting Technologycan collecttheinformation of those lines depends on what the most disparate data, and the verydrawing among those interestedin mightbe called a conspirationalinterconnectedness data collection.To put thingsinto relationwithone anotheris already a conspirational move, or at the veryleast a gesture of control.In Gravity's Rainbow, the discoveryof connectionsis identical to the discoveryof plots. The plottersget together-they "connect"-in order to plot the connectionsthatwill give them power over others. The "ordersbehind the visible"are not necessarily-are, perhaps, not essenfrom theyare the visiblerepeatedas structially-orders different the visible;rather, ture. Paranoid thinkinghesitatesbetween the suspicion that the truthis wholly sense thatthe truthmay be a obscured by the visible,and the equally disturbing invisibledesign in the visible.To have "a paranoid structure worthyof sinister, to "showsome interlock" among individuals, events, the name,"you have notonly or and companies you assumed were unrelated, but also to establishdifferent parallel lines of connectedness"(678). Paranoia repeats phenomena as design. What you thoughtwas a chance juxtaposition may turn out to be a deliberate inspirespanic, it is also desired. Would we ever want coupling. If thatpossibility a life withoutparanoid terror?"If there is somethingcomforting-religious,if
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where nothingis conyou want-about paranoia, thereis stillalso anti-paranoia, a nected to anything, conditionnot manyof us can bear forlong" (506). Not only that: to escape fromparanoia would be to escape fromthe movementthatis life. Slothrop,on the run in the Zone, thinkshow nice it would be "to lie still"for a while withthe heartbeatof the young woman who sheltershim one night;"Isn't (667). Only by that every paranoid's wish; to perfectmethods of immobility?" fromcoming togetherto freezingthingscan we preventthemfromconnecting, our knowing themwithout designsthatmayincludeus within formthoseinvisible it Rainbow, would be even scarier,Pynit. For all the paranoid scares in Gravitys chon suggests,if we began to stopsuspecting"hidden orders behind the visible." "Either theyhave put him here for a reason," Slothrop speculates during "the anti-paranoidpart of his cycle,""or he'sjust here. He isn'tsure thathe wouldn't, ratherhave thatreason"(506). actually, Not thatthere'smuch danger of runningshortof reasons-or, to put thisin of otherterms, imaginingthatour being anywherecan be a whollyplotlessevent. of Paranoia is a necessaryand desired structure thought.It is also a permanent new in the latestversionof one, which means thatthere is nothingsubstantially is Rainbow obsessed: withwhichGravity's it.To put thisin thecontemporaryjargon paranoia is a necessary product of all informationsystems.The Pynchonian opposition between They (IG Farben, etc.) and We (Slothrop, Roger Mexico, PiratePrentice, etc.)is a replayof theoppositionof Slothrop'sPuritanforefather's controlis the contemporary polarityof the Elect and the Preterite.Information version of God's eternal knowledge of each individual'sultimatedamnation or salvation,and both theologyand computer technologynaturallyproduce paraabout theconnectionsithas noid fearsabout how we are hooked intothe System, in store forus. Can we escape being manipulated-perhaps even destroyed-by such sysof tems?Familiartactics protestand subversioncreate local disturbancesthatare intact. perfectly and leave themostmenacingparanoid structures easilyforgotten thatGravitys We should be suspicious of some of the mostappealing alternatives espeto Rainbowoffers its own paranoicallyconceived apocalypses. I'm thinking ciallyof love, anarchy,and randomness,all of whichbringus back to Pynchon's Perhaps nothingis treated witha credentialsas a hero of the counter-culture. Rainbow than Roger Mexico's love forJessica more tenderseriousnessin Gravitys Swanlake. Simplyby existing,thatlove opposes the war ("They are in love. Fuck the war"; 47), but the opposition, as the parentheticalquote suggests,is more else. Their love is theidealized versionof Roger's rhetorical protestthananything around it in Mossmoon's pissingon the shinytable and on all the bigwigssitting of office(an act reminiscent such engaging anticsof the early seventiesas Jerry Rubin's "occupation" of the New York Stock Exchange). Pynchon'swork generassumptionsof Rubinesque subrecapitulatesthe saintly ously,and ambiguously, version: profound social change will not resultfromhead-on assaults (terroris Paranoia, Literature and Pynchon, 103

in is and ineffective unacceptable,revolution unthinkable theWest,and even revto regimeshave shown themselves be changes of personnel unaccomolutionary of panied bychanges in assumptionsabout thelegitimacy power),but ratherfrom with seductivesubversionof theseriousness whichnetworks a kind of aggressively of power conduct theirbusiness. But, as we shall see, oppressiveseriousnesscan be corrupted only if it is recognized that paranoid thoughtitselfis inherently oppositionto the plotsof power.The unserious,and not byviolentornonviolent styleof the sixtiescan provide nothingmore than the (always counter-culture appealing) historicalinspirationfor more complex models of nonoppositional resistance.Roger and Jessica'slove is both venerated and discreditedin Gravitys Rainbow.The love is a kind of "secession" fromwar, "the beginningsof gentle it's snuggled in, than back out withdrawal... both know,clearly, bettertogether, khaki,steelof the Home Front.That, indeed, the Home Front in the paper, fires, to and lie, designed, not too subtly, draw themapart, to is somethingof a fiction required pain, bitterdeath" (47). On subvertlove in favorof work,abstraction, is (with the contrary:their"snuggled" state,their"gentlewithdrawal" the fiction itssentimental apotheosis on the eveningtheirheartsare "buoyed" as theylisten to Christmassongs in a church somewherein Kent; 151), a marginal,harmless fiction thatJessicawilldrop in order to returnto her husband and the securities death." required pain, bitter of "work,abstraction, route of escape? Power depends on the conIs randomness a more effective on trolof information, the orderingof data; what happens when data resistthe in seductivepossibility Gravorderingprocess? This is presentedas a particularly itys Rainbow(as in anarchy,the politicalcorollaryof unprogrammedeventsand acts),althoughPynchonalso presentstherandomas nothingmore thana momenof tary malfunctioning the cyberneticmachine, one that the machine is fully equipped to take account of. Thus the fucked-uppinball machines sent by ChiPrinceton St.Louis Country Club,moving to '06, cago gangsters "one AlfonsoTracy, into petrochemicals in a big way" and stored in a giganticMasonic Hall in "the green littlerivertownof Mouthorgan,Missouri" (678-79): has it happened "at as real random, preservingat least our faithin Malfunctioning stillsomething beyond theirgrasp,"or is theresomewhere"in the wood filecabinets. .. a set of real blueprintstellingexactlyhow all these pinball machines were rewired-a simulated?"(683). The controlof randomnesshas been randomnessdeliberately "is Rocket-City set up delibermentionedbefore,and not merelyas a possibility. Allow Complexity,Introduce Terror (from the ately To Avoid Symmetry, Preamble to the Articlesof Immachination)-but touristshave to connect the look of itback to thingstheyrememberfromtheirtimesand planet-back to the wine bottlesmashed in the basin, the bristleconepines outracingDeath for millennia,concreteroads abandoned yearsago, hairdosof thelate 1930s" (346). The random itselfcan easilybe programmed. but perhaps There is, however,somethingelse-something more sinister, 104
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also more promising-in the passage just quoted. As partof an "immachinating" outside Their control.The They duplicate mnemonicimages originally strategy, eerie replications.Lyle novel is full of referencesto enigmaticand frequently voyagesthroughspace and time"raving Bland comes back fromhis "transmural" about the presences he has found out there, members of an astral IG, whose are out there" (187). Or: people who get hitbylightning carried offbybareback Between but dwarvesto places thatlook like the worldtheyleft," it'llbe different. congruent and identical there seems to be another class of look-alikethat only findsthe lightningheads. Another world laid down on the previous one and to know,all right!" Ha-ha! But the lightning-struck all appearances no different. (774). Slothrop, walking with Katje on the esplanade along the beach at Nice, theirlightfromthe real whitecapscan'tbe getting suddenlyfeelsthatthebrilliant Other World-is he "Here it is again, that identical-looking sky above them. gonna have thisto worryabout, now? What th'-lookit those trees-each long each soperin againstthe sky, frondhanging,stung,dizzying, laborious drypoint placed" (262). Finally,the entireZone may be a spectraldouble of the real fectly scenes fromall over the universe: world,a collectionof images simulating
In the Zone, in these days,thereis endless simulation-standing waves in the water,large so as drone-birds, well-known to have nicknamesamong the operators,waywardballoons, cases stenciledfor Fortflotsamfrom other theatresof war (Brazilian oildrums,whisky Lammy), observers from other galaxies, episodes of smoke, momentsof high albedoyour real targetsare hard to come by.(570) mission . . . is past secular good and evil: distinctions like that are meaningless

How are we to understand all these referencesto simulationsand to doubling?The hidden double can inspirethe mostpanickyparanoid suspicions.Am I being given the real thing,or an ontologicallook-alike?Thus doubling would Rainbowthat seem to be merelyone aspect of the patternof events in Gravity's gives rise to the paranoid compulsion or "reflexof seeking other orders behind the visible."But we should look at thatreflexmore closelyin order to determine Enzian, ifitis an appropriateresponse to phenomena of doublingand simulation. Africannativestransplanted theGermanstoEurope by theleader oftheSouthwest secretand site,comes to wonderifhe's pursuing and now in pursuitof therocket's the wrong object. Are the Herreros "supposed to be the Kabbalistsout here . . . of the scholar-magicians the Zone, withsomewherein it a Text, to be picked to pieces, annotated,explicated,and masturbatedtillit'sall squeezed limp of itslast drop"? They had of course assumed that the Rocket was "thisholy Text," their its of Torah. "What else? Its symmetries, latencies,the cuteness it enchanted and seduced us while the real Text persisted,somewhere else, in its darkness, our darkness"(606). Is the rocketthe real Text? This question is an urgentone not only for Pynchon's characters but also for us. What if, as Enzian suggests,the rocket-text Paranoia, Literature and Pynchon, 105

seduced us and blinded us to an even more important text, something thework in that it is even more necessaryto read correctly than the rocket,somethingthat would be the realkey itssense? Indeed, as we have seen, Pynchonteases us with to this possibility more than one way.The rocketand the war for which it was in builtare just "cover-ups," "spectacle"or "diversion"from"the truewar,"which a is "a celebrationof markets"and whose "real business ... is buyingand selling." But ifsomethinglike international cartelsis the real textthatthe paranoid imagination should be reading, then we, like Enzian, are being deceived by all the prime timeand space being given to the rocket.We can'tresolvethe issue simply bysayingthatPynchon's"real" subjectis how his characters victimized that are by deception, and that in order to read thattext the reader has to be set straight about the true centerof historical power.For in factthe presumed real historical textis as obscure to us as it is to Enzian. Pynchonoutlinessome of the extraordinarilycomplex moves of international "buyingand selling,"the durable financial connectednessamong nationsfromwhichwarswould merely"divert" but us, he also raises the possibility a plotforwhich"thecartelizedstate"itself merely of is a screen.The use of war to establish"neitherRed communismnor an unhindered in Right,but a rational structure whichbusiness would be the true,the rightful authority" would, in comparisonwiththat plot,be nothingmore than "a damned parlor game," stuff that "even the masses believe."Arecartelsthe ultimateplotters?Internationalbusinessinterests maybe providingjustanotherfront, behind which lie still"other orders,"orders that mightinvolve ("if one were paranoid enough" to believethis)a collaborationbetweenthelivingand thedead, "between both sides of the Wall,matterand spirit"(192-93). But is it even necessaryto go that far,to evoke, as Lyle Bland does afterhis "transmural"voyage, "an astral IG"? What, exactly, are the earthlyShell and IG Farben? How are we to underof stand the historical referentiality those names when,in the novel,theyreferto cartels obsessed with the predictivepower of Slothrop'serections?Is there an actual place-on earthor in space, in lifeor in death-where paranoid suspicion can finally satisfied, be put to rest? If such a place exists,the reader of Gravity's Rainbow certainly will neverenjoy for its comforts.Compared to Pynchon's novel, James Joyce's Ulysses, all the arduous work it requires, is play for a child-detective. Certainly, Joycewants us The puzzles of Ulysses are but to suffer, therewillalso be a termto our suffering. like Stationsof the Cross; theyare ritualagonies throughwhichwe mustpass in to order, finally, be at one, far above the consciousnessof any characterin the cohesiveculturalconsciousness.Ulysses novel,with Joyce'sremarkably promisesa elucidationof itssense, the day when all the connections criticalUtopia: the final will have been discovered and collected in a criticalBook thatwould objectively repeat Ulysses, which,in being the exegeticaldouble of itssource, would express of the quidditas Joyce'snovel,would be, finally, Ulysses replayedas the whole truth could be more different from Gravity's Rainbow.Far from of Ulysses. Nothing 106
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to holding out the promise of a postexegeticalsuperiority the world thatit repinfects withthe paranoid anxietiesof its us resents,Pynchon'sworkpermanently Justkeeping trackof all the plots-and theirincredibleinterconnectcharacters. The most importantfactsabout the rocket,and edness-is a near impossibility. the technologythat made it impossible,are either shrouded in impenetrable secrecy or simplyignored. What exactlyis the Schwarzgerat?Were the infant Tyrone's hard-ons conditioned by the smell of Imipolex G (even though the experimentstook place yearsbeforeJamfdeveloped thatplasticforIG Farben), overLondon? themselves a smellthatsomehowprecedes thearrivalof therockets what does thiscasualness mean? Is it or isn'tit importantto More importantly, straight? get all the information Such questions can generate the most extremeanxieties,and yet the inforwithlittle Tyroneexperiments mationwe do get-such as theaccountofJamf's Rainbow is ontologby provoked Gravity's majoranxiety do littleto allay them.Forthe worryabout The thanepistemological. charactersthemselvesfrequently ical rather don't know,but theytoo,as we have seen in Slothrop'suneaswhattheyknowand iness about the scene on the esplanade at Nice, can begin to wonder about their Is world'sidentity. the Zone a partof Europe, and ifnotwhatis it?For the reader, the charactersthemselvesbecome part of the question. We have enough information about Slothrop to say who he is, but as the novel progresses,especiallyas queshe begins "to thin"and to scatterinto the Zone, the much more disturbing more or less realisticpassages are tion is raised of what he is. More generally, casually juxtaposed with such surrealist tidbitsas Slothrop's excursion into, among other things,a kind of homosexual Westernwhen he followshis mouthharp down a toilet,and the by now celebratedadventuresof Byron the Bulb. Is Are thecategoriesof serious and nonserRainbowserious about history? Gravity's Rainbow? is ious even relevantto it? What Gravity's And whose side is Pynchonon? Could he be one of Them? To theextentthat to such questions are justified,theytestify Pynchon'ssuccess in makingus move accepts, the same fieldof paranoid anxietyas his characters.Pynchonwillingly on withthe plots thattorturehis unavoidable complicity and accentuates,a writer's thatpotential is characters.If literature to have a potentialforpoliticalresistance, it verycollaborationwiththe systems willhave to be disengaged fromliterature's would oppose. In making literaturecontinuouswithboth the creation and susas picion of orders in otherareas of life-in "systems" diverseas Puritantheology, Captain Marvel comics, internationalcartels,and computer technology-Pynon its and chon both denies literature statusas a privilegedform-maker insists its and strategies activities withthe mostsinister plot-making inescapable complicity of control. By tauntingus withthe secretsof its own hidden (or inexistent... ) fromSlothRainbowplaces us in a predicamentnot too different orders,Gravity's image of rop's. To say this is to see how far we are fromthe more comforting Pynchonthe good guy (a sortof authorialversionof Roger Mexico), anxious to and Pynchon, Paranoia, Literature 107

to work out, for and withthe reader, some humane alternative the impersonal and dehumanizing technique of controlmade available to the unscrupulous few by modern technology.Such alternativescan be nothing more than fantasy restingpointswithinparanoid trainsof thought.And it is not onlybecause Pynchon is a plot-makingnovelistthat we are bound to suspect that he is working againstus. While it is obviouslynot a question of Pynchonbeing "on the side of" withtheirambitions,he is on their the oppressors in the sense of sympathizing side in a sense thatis true for all of us. We cannot,thatis, help but be an object is of suspicionforothers.To inspireinterest to be guaranteeda paranoid reading, we be just as we mustinevitably suspiciousof theinterpretations inspire.Paranoia doubling of presence. is an inescapable interpretative If, then, there is no escape fromthe paranoid structureof thought,there may also be no escape fromthe murderous opposition generated by that strucand is Rainbow a paranoid polarity, of ture.The polarity We and They in Gravity's in They are all the more threatening thatWe can "know"themonlythroughour suspicions about them. And, as I have suggested, that polaritymay even be us repeated in the relationbetween the reader and the text.The lattermystifies it not so much because of the information may be hiding,but above all because of the success withwhichit hides itsown nature. It is as ifwe could knoweveryRainbowis. It would not thing and still not know what kind of a text Gravity's but ratherof the text's"real" nature exactlybe a question of somethingmissing, novelwould double of thetextwe read. Pynchon's as a kindof superiorintelligible without,however,lettingus move beyond the opaque nothingbut itself, signify narrative itself.And that opacity would constitute surface of the signifying Thomas Pynchonas the reader's They; he is the enemytext. of be There may,however, anotherway to thinkabout this.It is a peculiarity the paranoid structureto combine opposition withdoubling; the formeris, in fact,a functionof the latter.The paranoid sees the visibleas a simulateddouble of the real; it deceptivelyrepeats the real. Or, more accurately,it deceitfully repeats the real: as ifsuch doubleness would not occur iftherewere not an intention to deceive. Otherwise,so paranoia reasons, we would have the Real Text. Thus the paranoid imaginationoperates on preciselythatassumptionwhich its existed-wouldwish it to operate on: the assumptionthatsimuenemies-if they lationsbelong to the otherside, thatdoubles have no reason to appear or to exist suspicions of except to preventus fromseeing the original.The self-protective lose out to the already a defeat. The paranoid We must paranoia are, therefore, enemy They, and thisbyvirtueof the factthatit authorizes,or creates,the confoundingfaithin the unicityof of dition of possibility They-nessby a primary, all or the Real. On the basis of thatfaith, conviction, appearances riskbeing seen as treacheroussimulationsand other people have merelyto fillthe slot,or take 108
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They, in order to have us, at once, in a the structural positionof a dissimulating suspicions and permanentsubordinaposition characterizedby anxiety-ridden of of function the enemyis to providea definition tion. In paranoia, the primary the real that makes paranoia necessary.We must thereforebegin to suspect the as paranoid structure itself a device bywhichconsciousnessmaintainsthe polarity In the of selfand nonself,thus preserving conceptof identity. paranoia, twoReal Texts confrontone another: subjectivebeing and a world of monolithicother(if ness. This oppositioncan be brokendown onlyifwe renounce the comforting can thesimulated also dangerous) faithin locatable identities.Onlythen, perhaps, that the doubles paranoidvision appeartosupport. of destroy very oppositions they itself-and not in some extraIt is, then,only withinthe paranoid structure paranoid mythsuch as love or anarchicrandomness-that we can begin to resist authorizes. the persecutions which paranoia both imagines and, more subtly, Paranoid doubles dissimulatetheirsource; could theyalso be thoughtof as elimLet's consider the mysteriousrelation inatingoriginsby disseminating targets? to between Slothrop's hard-ons and the V-2. Slothrop's penile sensitivity the and scientific interest.His erectionsseem to rocketis an object of both military thathappens rocketattack,a "response,"however, be a response to an imminent from two to ten days before its presumed stimulus. That this is a stimulusresponse relation between the penis and the rocket is stronglysuggested to between the Pointsmanthe Pavlovianand his colleagues by the amazing identity on patterns the map of London thatSlothropuses to mark(and to date) his sexual on conquests and those thatrecord rocketstrikes Roger Mexico's map of the city. respondingto a stimulusbefore But how is thispossible? Slothropis, apparently, it is presented. Furthermore,the normal order of the stimuli themselvesis the reversedwiththe V-2 rocket,whichhitsbefore sound of itscoming in can be conditionedtiny heard. PointsmanspeculatesthatLaszloJamforiginally Tyrone's hard-onsto occur in response to a loud noise. Having failed to extinguishSlothJamfguaranteed the survival rop's hard-on reflexat the end of the experiment, of the reflexrightup to the present.There wouldn'tbe any problemif Slothrop were reactingto the V-I rocket,whose sound precedes itsstrike:then,Pointsman reasons, him to the Anydoodlecloseenoughtomakehim jump ought be giving an erection: sound of the motor thenthecutoff silence, and suspensebuilding razzinglouderand louder, But instead only getserections up-then theexplosion. Boinga hardon. oh,no. Slothrop whenthissequencehappensin reverse. thenthesoundof theapproach: first, Explosion theV-2.(99) In otherwords,Slothrop'shard-onis separated fromits(presumed) stimulus by an event thathas not yettaken place at the momentof the hard-on,which,so to speak, makes his hard-on a logical impossibility. Unless, Pointsmanwonders, or Slothrop has his predictiveerectionsin what Pavlovcalled a "transmarginal" Pynchon, Paranoia, Literature and 109

"ultraparadoxical"phase, that is, a phase in which the idea of the opposite has been radically weakened. A dog in the ultraparadoxical phase, for example, responds to a food stimuluswhen it is not there,just, perhaps, as Slothrop no longer recognizesthe binaryoppositionbetweenthe presenceand the absence of thus makingpossible the apparent reversalof normalcausehis hard-on stimuli, Pointsman sequence. But, withwhatmaybe less thanideal consistency, and-effect Pavlovian theoryof cause and also holds on to a modifiedversion of a strictly "the truemechanicalexplanation"thatPavlovbelieved to be "theideal, the effect, end we all struggletoward in science" (102). Slothrop is perhaps responding to to.' " 'a sensorycue wejust aren'tpayingattention Somethingthat'sbeen thereall we along, something could be lookingat butno one is"(56). Everyonehas a theory for Slothrop's penile anomalies (Roger thinks it's "a statisticaloddity,"Rollo and theFreudian Edwin Treacle calls Slothrop'sgift Groastcalls it"precognition," a the he makes rocketsfallwhere theydo, thussatisfying subcon"psychokinesis": scious need "'to abolish all traceof the sexual Other"'; 98), but in a waythe most one remainstheorthodoxPavlovianreading,whichthenarratorreforintriguing terms: mulatesin the following some rocket's wraith, some precursor must the rocket, be somehow, But the stimulus, being cycles on of in for doublepresent Slothrop thepercentage smiles a bus,menstrual doxiesdo it forfree? makethelittle way-whatdoes operatedupon in somemysterious tying perhaps or in in fluctuations thesexualmarket, pornography prostitutes, Arethere Does about? nothing lot that itself, weclean-living know Exchange on intoprices theStock directly does desiregrow thighs, pretty their the affect itchbetween the newsfrom front of in cue,right front our as or inversely therealchanceof suddendeath-damn it,what to of the that haven't subtlety heart see?(99) we eyes, By the time we get to these speculations,we may be prepared to findthem raving. rather plausible; we have been made ready for a state of interpretative way The crazy storyofJamf'sexperimenthas been told in such a matter-of-fact of Slothrop'scurrent underpinning thatwe are inclinedto accept itas therealistic penile behavior.The problemcan thenseem to be to figureout wherethe stimuli are to whichhe is responding: rocketpreparationsacross the channel may affect to menstrualcyclesin a way thatincreases women's sexual receptivity Slothrop, . death is imminent .. All or just beforeeach rocketstrike, desire maygrowwhen thisis notjustajoke, but itwould be ajoke on us ifwe read itsseriousnessin terms sequences thatPointsmanhesitatesto give up. Let's tryto of the cause-and-effect define that "seriousness" (withoutknowingwhat this word will now mean) in or narrativity, withthe termsthathave nothingat all to do withcause-and-effect thatsuch narrativelines tend to produce. realisticprobabilities We can take our cue fromthe phrase "some rocket'sdouble." What Slothrop itselfin different responds to is a climate of being, a rocketnessthat manifests timein Germanyand in London. And Slothrop'sresponse ways,at about thesame his is a furthermanifestation: erectionsare replicativemutationsof the rocket. 110
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(Katje, phallicsignificance Gravity's Rainbow can be veryexplicitabout the rocket's for example, "has understood the great airless arc [followedby the rocket]as a clear allusion to certainsecretluststhatdrive the planet and herself,and Those who use her-over its peak and down, plunging, burning,toward a terminal orgasm"; 260), but I don't thinkthat the rocket is meant merely to symbolize repressed sexuality.The "secretlusts that drive the planet" can't be reduced to No single psychologicallusts, although theycan certainlyrecuras psychology. as reoccurrence,however,should be given priority the founder of the series. phallic lusts,and we mustremember of Rocketsare not firedbecause unsatisfied thatif the rocketis a double of the phallus, it also doubles-and is doubled bythe rainbow. On the day Slothrop becomes a crossroad in the Zone, he "sees a verythickrainbow here, a stout rainbowcock driven down out of pubic clouds may into Earth, green wet valleyedEarth" (729). The seriesrocket-cock-rainbow riseand fall,the line fromthe mainlyin graphicterms:the rocket's be intelligible base of the erectcock to the place on the ground where itssemen mightfall,and be the curve of the rainbowall trace a parabola, a figurethatcan itself taken to The chart a kind of erotic relation of resistanceand abandonment to gravity. rocket'smurderous power is, then,somewhatdeemphasized by the way it repliare cates itselfinaccurately(but the onlyaccurate replications fantasy-denials of and a visual thatconstitute real) as exuberantphallicsexuality the the simulations spectacle of radiant calm in nature. This is not to say thatthe novel denies, or is RainbowPynchon rather,in Gravitys indifferent the rocket'sdestructiveness; to, subordinatespoliticaland historicalseriousnessto certaindeploymentsof being and conceiveour resistances the thatcan in turnaffect waywe thinkabout history to power. and itsviolencecan take manyforms, Rocketpower is everywhere, including the appeased violence of the rainbow'sstilledparabolic curve. Slothrop,withhis replicativehard-ons and his vision of a "rainbowcock" (afterwhich he "stands not crying, a thingin his head, just feelingnatural"; 729), is the principalcarrier Rainbow. he of thiscracked ontologicalmirrorin Gravitys Consequently, is thereforealso the principalthreatto a projectedThey-nessthatwould reserverockets fordestruction allow us to analyze them,withincurablemelancholy, merely or as substitutive versionsof an equally destructive phallicdrive.Slothropmustbe purback" bydisappearing into roles thatare themselvessimsued, and he will"fight and folkloric heroes. He wandersthroughthe ulationsof comic-bookstereotypes Zone as Rocketmanand in the suitof Plechazunga the Pig-Hero "who,sometime routed a Vikinginvasion,appearing suddenlyout of a back in the 10thcentury, and chasinga score of screamingNorsemenback intothe sea" (661). thunderbolt he Slothrop loses his "personal density," begins "to thin,to scatter"(593), thus But becoming unfindable. at the same timethe rocketitselfloses some of itsawein some prestigebyvirtueof itsdebilitating repetition Slothropas bothhiscomical intothe rocket's hominess and his metamorphosis legend. I of course don't mean and Paranoia, Literature Pynchon, 111

time.But thatsuch replicationspreventreal rocketsfrombeing firedin historical kind of Rainbow,as we should now realize, takes place in a different Gravitys "time," a nonhistoricaltime in which the rockets and the murderous forces behind them are denied the ontological privilegesthat make them possible. to is, Slothrop as a novelisticpersonality we mightsay,sacrificed thisoperation, poignancyof his robustyetmenaced presence in Gravity's and the extraordinary Rainbow is the premonitorysign that he is condemned to be lost. Through that Slothrop we mourn the loss of personal presence, of a mythof personality has taught us to think may,after all, be the only way in which our civilization mustbe sustainedifwe about ourselves (to thinkour selves),a loss that,however, of are also to disappear as targets,and thereforeas conditions of possibility, rocketsand cartels.3

In Gravitys Rainbow,the paranoid double-the Real Text behind the visible and subversively orders-is inaccurately replicatedas serialdoubles thatruin the of a verynotionof Real Texts. The story Slothropnarrativizes more general process of replicativepositioningthroughoutthe novel. If we have such trouble Rainbow, is perhaps less because of it keeping trackof what'sgoing on in Gravity's the multiplicity charactersand eventsthan because so much of what happens of has almost happened already. When Thanatz is quizzed by Herreros about the is fearfulanticipation, much earlier Schwarzgerat, it the realizationof Ndrrisch's willbe interrogated about the S-Geratby the Russians? Psyin the novel, thathe are chological and dramatic particularities blurred by parallelisms.Pokler loses Ilse. Thamatz loses Gottfriedand then Bianca, and Slothrop loses Bianca. The thematicdepth thatsuch repetitions mightcreate-say, an obsessionwiththe loss thattheyhave effect thinning of a younggirl-is forestalled thepsychologically by in Gravity's Rainbow.For the repetitionworkshere not to open up depths,but to of cast doubt on the singularity character.Thanatz comes to realize that"the two children, Gottfriedand Bianca, are thesame" (783). And Slothrop, having lost to Bianca, understands,while listening Pokler,that"Ilse, fatheredon Greta Erdof mann'ssilverand passive image, Bianca, conceivedduringthe filming the very scene thatwas in his thoughtsas Poklerpumped in the fatalchargeof sperm [into Leni]-how could theynot be the same child?" (672). And even before Slothrop to he begins to "thin"and "scatter," is already difficult locate. Who, or what, is Pirate Prentice,withhis talent "for gettinginside the fantasiesof others: being them" (13)-a talentthatwill to able, actually, take over the burden of managing be made nothingof in the novel,except as an anticipatory double, an annunciation of Slothrop and his special divining talent? Finally,Slothrop learns that Roosevelt died when he, Slothrop,"was livingon the Riviera,or in Switzerland someplace, only half aware of being extinguishedhimself."After he gets the news,"the wide necropolis"of Berlin "beginsnow to draw inward,to neck down
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into a Corridor,one known to Slothrop though not by name, a and stretchout disease." In deformationof space thatlurksinside his life,latentas a hereditary that space, Roosevelt'sdoctors move towardthe man who-if indeed theywere the the same-in his black cape at Yalta, "conveyedbeautifully sense of Death's a being They assemwings"and prepared a nation "forthe passing of Roosevelt, if bled, a being They would dismantle"(435). But whatis Slothrophimself not an at assembled and then dismantledbeing, "extinguished" the same instantas the Presidentwhose last momentshe relivesin thatstrangeCorridoroutside historical space and time?Is Slothrop FDR? interour Rainbow, mostimportant No matterhow much we workon Gravity's analysis-that is, being brokendown into willbe thatit resists pretativediscovery unitsof meaning. To talkabout Bianca is to talkabout Ilse and Gottfried; distinct timesand places that to describe the Zone is to enumerateall the images of other are repeated there. Pynchon'snovel is a dazzling argumentforshared or collecnatureofbeing.Singureplicative for tive being-or, more precisely, theoriginally has is larity inconceivable;the "original"of a personality to be counted among its not simulations.Being in Pynchonis therefore a questionof substancebut rather as and collection.Slothropis consecrated(and sacrificed) a collecof distribution tible of sense the day he becomes a crossroads. "At last, lying one afternoon spread-eagled at his ease in the sun, at the edge of one of the ancient Plague where the townshe becomes a cross himself,a crossroads,a livingintersection for a common criminalwho is to be hanged judges have come to set up a gibbet at noon" (728). Before the hanging,Slothrop takes the criminal'splace, is "executed" forhim,or rathermerelybeforeand withhim,since thereis no redempRainbow that might become the Ultimate Sacrifice tive sacrifice in Gravity's exemptingthe rest of us froma similarfate. Slothrop is immolatedto his own to lack of originality, his "thinning"or "scattered" nature, to his being, for execution. replayof a common criminal's example, an anticipatory is is And nothing originalhere. The veryscene in whichthe sacrifice enacted is itselfa serial element: the cross thathis spread-eagled body makes is also the whichin turnrepeats crossmade byall the churcheshe passes on his wanderings, to four sides like rocketfinsguiding the the shape of the A4 rocket("apses out streamlinedspires")-to which we must also add "other fourfoldexpressions" FFFF in a circlesymmetrically upside down symbols gymnastic such as "swastikas, and backward,FrischFromm FrohlichFrei over neat doorwaysin quiet streets, the and crossroads,"and, finally, mandala shape of Herrero villagesin Sudwest. All these images "speak to" Slothrop,as do the heterogeneousimages fromhis own American past that also seem to cross his mind-to make him by crossing throughhim-now thathe had been "consecrated"as a crossroads: He's not how Zone-mandalas, can they speakto Slothrop? satin Saure swastikas, Crosses, in and souprecipes finding reading with moires, the Bummer's kitchen, airstreaming kif namesof wheel. of bone and cabbageleaf paraphrases himself .. newsflashes, every and Paranoia, Literature Pynchon, 113

at for getaway .... He used to pickand shovel the horsesthatwillpayhimoff a certain they calledit, he's 81 Aprilafternoons lost,"Chapter work," spring roadsof Berkshire, the itswhite necrocrystal attack-from-within, thatclearsthewinter's following scraper seed, Kleenex yellow withpreterite up polizing... picking rustedbeer cans,rubbers broken glass, snot, preterite tears, newspapers, waddedto brainshapeshiding preterite and he dayswhenin superstition fright couldmakeit allfit,seeing piecesof automobile, in in a his his ... clearly each an entry a record, history: own,his winter's, country's in of deeperthan canexplain, he havebeenfaces instructing dunceand drifter, ways him, in street somewhere, someother children thetrain out windows, barsofdancemusic two of against night needlesand branches a pine treeshakenclearand luminous at night, in out out sheaf, laughter yellowing diagram of hundreds a smudged clouds,one circuit in to the of ofa cornfield theearly as morning he waswalking school, idling a motorcycle . in in hour atone dusk-heavy ofthesummer .. andnow, theZone,later thedayhebecame after heavy a rainhe doesn't sees thick rainbow here,a recall, Slothrop a very a crossroad, downoutofpubiccloudsintoEarth, Earth, stout rainbow cockdriven greenwetvalleyed in not natural. (729) just feeling and hischest and he stands fills crying, a thing hishead, condensationof the scatterednature of sense. Slothrop is, then,a sacrificial And nothingis strangerthan that feelingof naturalnessat the verymomentof pose make him a mere his own disappearance. Not onlydoes Slothrop'ssacrificial is replicationof numerous othercrosses; his mostpersonal history a collectionof made by the human and natural landscape scenes fromthe outside, of imprints of his New England home. Slothrop is so gluttedwithotherness as to render superfluousthe verynotion of otherness.Slothropis no one; he is a certainposibetweenhimtionon-to use anotherfavorite Pynchonianterm-the "interface" self and the world ("Could Outsider and Insider be part of the same field?" Pointsman wonders; 168), or between his individual existence and his doubles (betweenhis erectionsand the V-2, betweenhis cross[road]stateand "otherfourfold expressions").Or rather,Slothrop movesin that"space" between inside and whichdefeatspolarities.Seen from outside,betweenone simulationand another, even blurred theinterface, loci of oppositionshave become vaguelydelimited, the marginalareas; theycan no longer organize relations.Thus the veryreplications that characterizeparanoid doubling in Gravity' Rainbow attackthe binaryparaof noid structure We opposed to They. There is no escape fromthatdoubling, no alternativesthat would put to rest once and for all our paranoid suspicion of of of invisiblerepetitions whatwe see. But thereis, so to speak, a horizontalizing a displacementof the hidden double fromits privileged the replicativeprocess, behind thedeceptiveappearance to serialpositions positionas the originalreality along phenomenal "lines"thathave neitherterminalpointsnor pointsof departure. Rather than Real Texts imperfectly designated by ontologicallyinferior signs,we have a replicativeseriesof underived simulacra. for Resistance must thereforebe thoughtof as an inaccuratesynonym conNot only is paranoid terrordefeated by replicativeprocesses that both formity. and yeteliminatethe They and the We thatgive conformto paranoid structures
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rise to terror; the very excessivenesswith which images are appropriated and of duplicated mayalso workto defeat networks power.Paranoid terrorasks: how whichThey could define-and concan we escape incorporatingthe images by apparatuses of control trol-us? A paranoid resistance,far from confronting of withthe impenetrablefortress a unique selfhood,opens the subjectup, makes of of the subjecta helplessly passiverecipient alien images.And in thisapparently of formsof information which by docile doubling or reflection the multitudinous a self mightbe programmed,the subject can perhaps also disappear as a target of the program. of The most striking aspect of Slothrop'sapotheosis as an intersection idenof titiesis the reappearance of the random as an effect (and not in oppositionto) but an his having been so massivelyprogrammed. Slothrop is now everything wads of a interiority: swastika,the finsof a rocket,a Herrero village,snot-filled Kleenex, a pine tree luminous against nightclouds, the idling of a motorcycle, variationson Franz van der Groov's cosmic windmill... But, to articulatestill another inaccurate replication:just as the effectsof Jamf's experiments far exceed the purpose of his originalworkwithtinyTyrone'shard-ons,Slothrop is reconstituted perhaps, a freeifunlocatablesubjectbythe incommensurability as, of the images stored withinhim withany controlling designs. If modern techforhuman beings to be bombarded withmore types nologyhas made it possible and if thismeans thatwe than ever before in the world'shistory, of information not as privateselvesbut as collectionsof alien images and are mainlyconstituted conditioned beyond useswhich any such discourses, it is also true that we are thereby be conditioning might made to serve.In his absolute-indeed mythic-otherness, the nature of his mas(and not merelyreflective) Slothrop manifests constitutive sive absorptions.By the veryextravaganceof his acquiescence in the plots that his surround him,the paranoid is thussaved-at least intermittently-from conviction that his interpretative suspicions about the real merely correspond to of designsalreadythere.In the paranoid's reenactment givenplots,he constitutes a kind of shallow subjectivity thatexceeds them. This peculiar,self-lessfreedomdepends on both the richnessand the triteness of plots in the modern world. Pynchonis especiallysensitiveto the media that vehicle such plots: comic books, the encapsulated romances on billboard workI know,Gravitys posters,and above all, movies.More thanany otherliterary Rainbowreceivesand somewhatironically cornyplots of replicatesthe alluringly popular culture. Unlike the orders of high culture,the comic-bookand movie worklovingly quotes can neverseduce us intoacceptingthem plotsthatPynchon's as reflections our Real Nature. The veryaspectof popular culturethatperhaps of most offendsits detractors-its superficial and frivolous images of human character-allow for mobile self-identifications perhaps too slipperyto be coerced intoany fixedpsychological moral positions.More exactly, plotsof popular or the cultureare overwhelmingly coercivewithout anything more definite constituting Paranoia, Literature and Pynchon, 115

than a readiness to be seduced by other plots. Comic books and movies provide Rainbow'sseriousness,which is the mode of ontological the mode of Gravitys comedy. is to The novel'sungraspability both a resistanceto our attempts take possesRainbow sion of it and a model of freedom thatit invitesus to emulate. Gravity's action on human and natural moves us from a world of measurably effective environments-a world thatwe recognize,and thatis perhaps made possible,by of relatively stableidentifications itsactors-to a worldof ontologicalplay.It allea gorizes a substratumin personal and historicalnarratives, substratumwhere the human and the nonhuman are no longer related as subject and object, but "unity"of inaccuratereplications.If and non-narrative ratherin the mysterious it is both natural and inevitablethatwe should centeran idea (and an ideal) of human rationalityin the narrativesthat organize the real for us, Pynchon's work-while occasionally paying nostalgic tributeto such ideas and idealsand the natural restructures relationbetween human beings,theirartifacts, the world in which theylive in termsof doubles, parallelisms,and simulacra. The in a formsof being constitute planetarycommunity whichrocketsare parallelsof erections and rainbows. From this perspective, the privilege of the human than itsperceptionor consciousnessof a relationalmode that extends no further of The contribution popular culprivilegesof humanity. ignores the hierarchical ture to this perspectiveis its preciouslyreductiveview of the human; as Rocketman, Slothrop has the paradoxical freedomof a cardboard being, a being no singlenessof a richand unique selfhood. longer constrainedbythe targetlike that I not exaggeratethesebenefits. have been suggesting We must,however, does not merelyreferto such thingsas the heroes of comic-book Rainbow Gravity's adventure, but that its own nature cannot help but be affectedby the cultural formsthatit incorporates.At the same time,Pynchon'snovel signalsits distance withparanoid suspicions about the from those formsby its worried complicity Real Text. Not only that: literature,far from saving us from the controlling designs served by informationsystems,is itself an informationsystem that threatensits readers' freedom by the veryelusivenessof the demands which it thatis the sign of the novel'sescape fromthe makes on them.The unreadability and victims They and We) cannot readable oppositionsof plotters (of excessively an help-however perversely-but reconstitute oppositionbetweenPynchonthe Literatureis never merelyan agent of resistance plotterand his reader-victims. it networksof power-serving knowledge; rather, is one of thatnetwork's against It most seductivemanifestations. can never stand outside the oppressive manipulations of social realityand negate those manipulationsby a willed alienation Literatureis on a continuumwiththoseforcesbywhichithas habitfromhistory. ually proclaimed itselfto be menaced. as If thereis a menace, itis not to literature a guardian of culturaland ethical has Social history probas plot-maker. values but ratherto literature a preeminent 116
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ably alwaysbeen made by forcesthat,if theytook the trouble,could easilydemonstrate how little they need literature.Encyclopedism has frequentlybeen literature's defense againstitsexclusionfrom(or itsmarginalplace in) the infornetworksof power; and mation systems;the political,economic, and scientific orders bywhicha societydefinesitself. Thus, the encyclopedic even the symbolic of first all, thateven in a culture workin the modern period would demonstrate, knowledge,art can reassertits claim to be thoughtof as saturatedwithscientific the privilegedmedium thatprocesses and "humanizes"thatknowledge-that is, discourseswhere,fromthe beginningsof whichintegratesit into those symbolic history, human beings have ordered and sought to mastertheirexperience. At the same time,in a technologicalworld whose ordering capacities seem to owe even less to art than (at least in our possiblypastoral fantasies)did prescientific central cultures,a world in which the workof art is no longer epistemologically but merelythe occasion for epistemologicalleisure, art can aspire toward what an dismissiveencyclopedism, annihilativeabsorpwe mightcall a redemptively mostambitiousprojectsintothe superior"atmosphere"of art. tionof itsculture's intact(thus even more radiSuch redemptiveintentionsnaturallyleave history cally marginalizingart), while art itselfbecomes the sublime We in paranoid opposition to a dehumanizing They, denyingits own perennial if largelyunnoticed participationin the excitinguses of knowledge for purposes of mastery. whichparticipates-even exufromPynchon'sfiction, Nothingcould be further thatis also the objectof plotting berantly participates-in an insanelyindustrious his characters'anxious-and probablyjustified-suspicions. The exuberance is perhaps the sign of thatparticipation-as ifwe could not help but be thrilledby our interpretative howeverlittletheymay correspond to thatwhich ingenuities, existsoutside of them and in spite of the violence withwhich theyreinventthe livesof others. Rainbowand Slothrop,who is both the centralagent of suspicionin Gravity's the major victim itsplots,followsa course curiouslysimilarto thatof Oedipus. of Like Sophocles' hero, he learns withastonishment all the connectionsin his of in past, and that his life has, since infancy, all likelihoodbeen plotted by those modern agents of inexorableand malevolentfate,Shell and IG Farben. Also like Oedipus, he assumes the plots he has been in terrorof living,although,unlike his ancient counterpart,Pynchon never offersus a cathartically maneuvered exemption fromhis hero's fate as an awesome scapegoat for the crimes of our paranoid imagination.Slothropassumes his fatebydisappearing into a pop version of the (already pop) role created forhim,and his annunciatory virtuewith regard to the rocketis erased by his veryassumptionof his Rocketmanidentity, similitudein whichthe cause-and-effect planning logic of military by a sacrificial is inoperative.No wonder Shell is furiouswhen Slothropgivesthemthe slip and (as gets lost in the Zone. Far fromcoercinghim into self-knowledge Oedipus is coerced byhis inexorable fate),Their designsallow Slothropto slip into an idenand Pynchon, Paranoia, Literature 117

clear as to be unreadable. But he is of course on the run from tity parodistically so and babbling that he sets offand never satisfies us too, from the interpretative we thatis so hard to stop. But whyshould we stop? In our paranoid criticism will, if afterall, be runningparallel to Slothrop,thusproviding, we are luckyenough, a a another model of unreadability, convincingfailureof self-knowledge, defiant act of SlothropianOedipalism.

Notes
1. Thomas Pynchon,Gravity' Rainbow(New York, 1973), 295. All referencesto Gravity's Rainbowwillbe to thisedition,and page numbersare givenin the text. 2. "Psycho-analyticNotes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia 24 mund Freud,ed. James Strachey, vols. (London, 1953-74), 12:78-79. and to the presumed obligationof the novelist"to to 3. Pynchon'sattachment thatmyth, he develop plot and characters,"is evident in the astonishingintroduction wrote for SlowLearner(New York, 1984), xxviii. the recentpublicationof his earlyshortstories,
of PsychologicalWorks Sig(Dementia Paranoides)," in The Standard Edition of theComplete

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