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Can someone explain to me in plain english what this excerpt from Thomas Pynchon's “Gravity's rainbow” is trying to convey to me about Pirate Prentice's "strange gift"?
I have some theories which may be more or less crocks of shit but i'm curious if others pull similar conclusions.
"Just hum the nitwit little tune they taught you, and try not to fuck up:
"Yes—I’m—the—
Fellow that’s hav-ing other peop-le’s fan-tasies,
Suffering what they ought to be themselves—
No matter if Girly’s on my knee—
If Kruppingham-Jones is late to tea,
I don’t even get to ask for whom the bell’s . . .
[Now over a lotta tubas and close-harmony trombones]
It never does seem to mat-ter if there’s daaaanger,
For Danger’s a roof I fell from long ago —
I’ll be out-one-day and never come back,
Forget the bitter you owe me, Jack,
Just piss on m’ grave and car-ry on the show!
He will then actually skip to and fro, with his knees high and twirling a walking stick with W. C. Fields‘ head, nose, top hat, and all, for its knob, and surely capable of magic, while the band plays a second chorus. Accompanying will be a phantasmagoria, a real one, rushing toward the screen, in over the heads of the audiences, on little tracks of an elegant Victorian cross section resembling the profile of a chess knight conceived fancifully but not vulgarly so—then rushing back[…]”
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I'm thinking it's some kind of meta-thing.
Like referring to the performance of the song dance number a writer does in creating the cathartic fantasies such as the one youre engaged in. It's a helpless never-ending game (thus the chess-knight) rushing back and forth before our eyes as we await unknowable tragic dmise.
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>>9944679
Just continue reading it
It's just Pirate's gift to be burdened by other people's fantasies
Also the book is full of songs
And thanks for quoting this passage because it talks about something (the chess knight) which appears later on and is linked to an important character
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Bumperino bumparoo
Monitoring for gr's clues
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>>9944679
Hey anon try to search about it on Weisenburger guide or Crayola
(I'll do it later if I have time and report)
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bump
i checked weisenbereger. there's nothing.
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>>9944685
Can you explain this anon?
Sorry but English is not mi first language
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I'm also interested in this and would love to have a better idea of what the whole Pirate thing is about. Pynchon obviously chose to start the book with him and his fantasy surrogate situation but I don't really get why.
We are experiencing Pynchon's fantasy I guess so I get it on that level - but it feels like there is something more.
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throughout Gravity's Rainbow there are plenty of sections where characters randomly break out into song and pynchon will sometimes even give stage directions like "He will then actually skip to and fro, with his knees high and twirling a walking stick with W. C. Fields‘ head, nose, top hat, and all, for its knob".
As for the actual meaning of this section, it's just a little insight into how Pirate feels about the powers that be using him for his ability to enter the dreams of others. In the plot, Pirate "has the dreams" of various upper-level management in the military so that these upper-level management can go on with their duties without being plagued/bothered by their dreams and fantasies. (the guy with the dreams of the giant adenoid is an example of this).
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>>9944679
not analysis but i love how the song lyrics in GR work so well
they instantly have perfectly fitting tunes the very first time i read them
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>>9946698
when you read "the mittelwerke express", do you hear ukuleles?
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>>9946677
/thread
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