Enlightenments

early Foucault and Pynchon

pp. 75-100

in: Paul M. Eve, Pynchon and philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

As many critics have observed,¹ in Pynchon, the birth of modernity is depicted under the sign of Max Weber. It is an oppressive rationalisation that banishes and dominates all that would stand in its way: "[t]he death of magic" as Jeff Baker puts it.² Although such an appraisal of Weber lacks nuance, the insertion of this astrological foretelling into the very core of America's political system is no better expressed than in Gravity's Rainbow's "MOM SLOTHROP"S LETTER TO AMBASSADOR KENNEDY" (682–3). This letter — which depicts Slothrop's mother writing to Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr about her empathy for the senator's parental unease during JFK's Patrol Torpedo boat incident in 1943, her anxiety about the state of America and her sexual relations with the future president — echoes with the guilt-ridden foreboding style of Samuel Beckett's Eh Joe? This comparative effect is achieved not only through the structural motion from an optimistic inquiry, "[w]ell hi Joe how"ve ya been" (GR, 682), parallel to Beckett's "[y]ou"re all right now, eh?"³ before becoming "gloomy all so sudden", but also by the frequent comma-delimited firstname appellation to the ambassador: "[i]t's every parent's dream, Joe, that it is […] It isn't starting to break down, is it, Joe? […] You know, don't you? Golden clouds? Sometimes I think — ah, Joe, I think they"re pieces of the heavenly city falling down" (GR, 682).