Pynchon in Public Podcast

04.34: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we start out trying to cover chapter six of The Counterforce section of Gravity’s Rainbow…but only end up getting through half of it. This is the first chapter of the books that’s broken up into sub-sections. We’ll continue with the second half in two weeks!

Alan thinks that there might be a book called The Radiant Hour, a phrase that comes up in this chapter of the book. While he’s right, the book was published in 2000. The author may have taken the title from Gravity’s Rainbow, rather than vice versa.

Again in relation to the Radiant Hour, Liam recalls a line from a poem by William Blake called Milton. Here is the line reproduced:

There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find This Moment & it multiply. & when it once is found It renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed[.]

(Milton, Plate 35:42-3 )

Here’s the source from Bo’s discussion on the phrase ass-backwards, from The Oxford English Dictionary Online.

Lastly, Liam mentions a documentary called A Journey into the Mind of . It is available on YouTube. You can watch it here.

04.33: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we continue examining Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at chapters four and five of Book Four.

04.32: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we finally discuss the long-awaited story of Byron the Bulb, as featured in chapter 3 of Book Four of Gravity’s Rainbow.

To hear Pavarotti sing “La Dona e Mobile,” here it is on YouTube.

Chris mentions this rather famous picture of a Buddhist monk self-immolating in protest.

Chris also mentions a song by Pere Ubu called “Mister Wheeler.” You can check that out on their Bandcamp page.

04.31: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which be begin the final section of Gravity’s Rainbow – The Counterforce! This episode covers the first two chapters of Book Four.

Alan offers an explanation of the musical concept called the tone row here’s the Wikipedia article. If you would like a little more detail, .

If you want to listen to Joni Mitchell’s “Cactus Tree,” lines from which were in the original Gravity’s Rainbow galleys as the epigraph for The Counterforce, you can do that here.

4.30: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we take a look back over all of Book Three, “In the Zone,” of Gravity’s Rainbow.

We’re going to take a little break before we return with The Counterforce. Keep an eye our Facebook and Twitter pages for updates announcing our return.

If you want to hear Das Racsit’s “You Oughta Know,” you can find it here.

You can have a look at Nietzsche’s The Gay Science over at Google Books.

The outro song is “Whatever I Want (Fuck Who’s Watching)” by Death Grips from their album Government Plates. Here’s the full song on YouTube.

04.29: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at the final two episodes of Book Three.

Alan mentions “Esther Williams set pieces.” Here’s a pretty good example from The Million Dollar Mermaid (1952).

Bo mentions a similar scene from Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part 1 (1981). You can find it here. Fast forward to about the four-minute mark to get the swim section of the song.

Here’s an interesting bit on Wikipedia about the ace of spades as used in WWII. And here’s a little write-up about why the ace of spades is called the death card.

Bo mentions Puzti Hanfstaengl as an unlikely origin for the name of the bar in episode 31. You can hear about him here.

04.28: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we have a look at chapters 28, 29 and 30 of Book Three of Gravity’s Rainbow.

04.27: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we continue looking at Gravity’s Rainbow with a discussion of chapters 26 and 27 of Book Three.

For the curious, you can have a look at the lyrics to “San Antonio Rose”, Major Marvy’s favorite song.

Alan mentions the inter-racial affair of staunchly segregationist U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond. You can find some information about it here at The Washington Post.

And here’s some information on mandalas.

04.27: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at chapters 23, 24 and 25 of Book Three.

Errata: For a while during this episode, Bo had a bad set-up that caused some extra noise in the recording. We apologize profusely for this.

Notes:

The myth of Tantalus is mentioned. You can read about him here.

You can view Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights in all its wonderfully demented glory here.

The song that Chris tries to remember is “By Torpedo or Crohn’s” by the band Why? on their album Alopecia. The lyrics he wanted to recall are:

I’ll be okay

Cool as a rail

If they just let us have health food in hell.

As always, thank you for listening.

04.26: Gravity’s Rainbow

In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at chapters 20 and 21 of Book Three.

Note: We intended to cover three chapters, as you’ll hear in the intro, but we only got to two due to time.