Thomas Pynchon Zitate

seite 2

Mason & Dixon

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Kontext: "You." A finger the size of a corncob, an inch from Slothrop's nose.
...
"Look," Slothrop's friend producing a kraft-paper envelope that even in the gloom Slothrop can tell is fat with American Army yellow-seal scrip, "I want you to hold this for me, till I ask for it back. It looks like Italo is going to get here before Tamara, and I'm not sure which one"
"At this rate, Tamara's gonna get here before tonight," Slothrop interjects in a Groucho Marx voice.
"Don't try to undermine my confidence in you," advises the Large One. "You're the man."

Quelle: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Chapter 6
Kontext: Who knew? Perhaps she'd be hounded someday as far as joining Tristero itself, if it existed, in its twilight, its aloofness, its waiting. The waiting above all; if not for another set of possibilities to replace those that had conditioned the land to accept any San Narciso among its most tender flesh without a reflex or cry, then at least, at very least, waiting for a symmetry of choices to break down, to go skew. She had heard all about excluded middles; they were bad shit, to be avoided; and how had it ever happened here, with the chances once so good for diversity? For it was now like walking among matrices of a great digital computer, the zeroes and ones twinned above, hanging like balanced mobiles right and left, ahead, thick, maybe endless. Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth. In the songs Miles, Dean, Serge and Leonard sang was either some fraction of the truth's numinous beauty (as Mucho now believed) or only a power spectrum. <!-- p. 150

The Rev^d Wicks Cherrycoke, Christ and History
Quelle: Mason & Dixon (1997), Ch. 35

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Kontext: This ascent will be betrayed to Gravity. But the Rocket engine, the deep cry of combustion that jars the soul, promises escape. The victim, in bondage to falling, rises on a promise, a prophecy, of Escape....
Moving now toward the kind of light where at last the apple is apple-colored. The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. Everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but certainly more present. So much has to be left behind now, so quickly.

Quelle: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Chapter 1
Kontext: There'd been no escape. What did she so desire to escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: and what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited upon her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disc jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?

Pynchon's response to Jules Siegel about the complexity of V, as quoted in "Who Is Thomas Pynchon... And Why Did He Take Off With My Wife?", Playboy (March 1977)

Quelle: Slow Learner: Early Stories

First lines
Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Quelle: Mason & Dixon

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: The Crying of Lot 49

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: Inherent Vice

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: Inherent Vice

Quelle: The Crying of Lot 49

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: The Crying of Lot 49

Quelle: Gravity's Rainbow

Quelle: The Crying of Lot 49

Quelle: V.

Quelle: Mason & Dixon

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Quelle: Slow Learner: Early Stories