Gravity's Rainbow: Part X

About five hundred pages into this monster, the parts began to come together so I could stop asking, "Why was all of that stuff about Pirate Prentice necessary?!" Not that I'm any clearer on what his big secret mission delivered by the Rocket was supposed to be. But I am learning about the people who delivered that message and how it's tied to Slothrop's quest to find the plastic, probably the secret to Slothrop's hardons, in which the message was contained.

But that's getting about 450 pages ahead of myself! Currently, I'm at a part of the book where I haven't registered that Slothrop is important at all. He's just a guy who keeps a poster of his sexual conquests that some psychic nutjobs and Pavlovians think is important.

This section finds Jessica smoking alone in the dark of her and Roger Mexico's squat located in an abandoned village she can't name and thinking about the imposition of War. She would like the life she and Roger Mexico are living to be less of an imaginary thing wherein they hide from the realities of the War and more, well, you know, reality. The War is too big to conceive, too much to visualize as a whole. And it will not bother them, except maybe by A4 Rocket, and then, well, they wouldn't even know, right?

Jessica thinks about a conversation she had with Roger Mexico about the Poisson distribution of the Rocket strikes. I've never had too much trouble with higher math or science (okay, Physics in my senior year of high school gave me some trouble but half of that was my attitude as a soon-to-be-high-school graduate who just couldn't be bothered with all this learning crap) but a college course in statistics was my first real indication that maybe I wasn't as smart as my mother kept insisting I was (although like my Physics course, it's possible that the situation surrounding my enrollment in this particular Statistics class and my apathetic attitude toward the material had more to do with why I didn't understand it). But with this following passage, Pynchon has me believing that my lifelong belief that Statistics is a language that very few have the capacity to learn was correct (not that I need much proof to acknowledge a belief which tends toward my own self interest).

"Roger has tried to explain to her the V-bomb statistics: the difference between distribution, in angel's-eye view, over the map of England, and their own chances, as seen from down here. She's almost got it: nearly understands the Poisson equation, yet can't quite put the two together—put her own enforced calm day-to-day alongside the pure numbers, and keep them both in sight. Pieces keep slipping in and out.
    "Why is your equation only for angels, Roger? Why can't we do something, down here? Couldn't there be an equation for us too, something to help us find a safer place?"
    "Why am I surrounded," his usual understanding of self today, "by statistical illiterates? There's no way, love, not as long as the mean density strikes is constant. Pointsman doesn't even understand that."
    The rockets are distributing about London just as Poisson's equation in the textbooks predicts. As the data keep coming in, Roger looks more and more like a prophet. Psi Section people stare after him in the hallways. It's not precognition, he wants to make an announcement in the cafeteria or something . . . have I ever pretended to be anything I'm not? all I'm doing is plugging numbers into a well-known equation, you can look it up in the book and do it yourself. . . ."

See?! In Pynchon's description of Roger's statistical life, even the psychics can't get their heads around Statistics! It's mystical hoodoo!

This section is a good example of why Gravity's Rainbow can be such a confusing read at times. This section begins from Jessica's perspective as she looks for a smoke in her and Mexico's squat. It then moves to a remembered conversation between Jessica and Roger. But then, during this remembrance, the scene shifts to a morning in Roger's life at The White Visitation seen from Pointsman's perspective. It's easy to lose oneself in these shifts of time and perspective, and to forget where the scene began if and when Pynchon decides to return to what had seemed like a linear bit of story telling.

In the now shifted scene, Pointsman feels compelled to drop in on Mexico every morning to try to get a handle on the whole statistics thing. Pointsman's problem, as a Pavlovian, is that he only seems to understand binary results. Does a stimulus cause a reaction or not? (Yes, I've simplified this because I don't know much (or anything at all) about "summation," "transition," "irradiation," "concentration," or "reciprocal induction.") But Roger deals in seemingly random possibilities. What does a 0.37 chance even mean when you get right down to it?! To Pointsman, it simply means you don't know anything at all, really. If the numbers Mexico comes up with don't indicate how to avoid being hit by an A4, what fucking good are they then?!

Pointsman's observation of what Mexico's ability to live comfortably with seemingly random probability evokes in me echoes of Douglas Coupland's Generation X (and not just because the word "generation" is italicized in the text!).

"How can Mexico play, so at his ease, with these symbols of randomness and fright? Innocent as a child, perhaps unaware—perhaps—that in his play he wrecks the elegant rooms of history, threatens the idea of cause and effect itself. What if Mexico's whole generation have turned out like this? Will Postwar be nothing but "events," newly created one moment to the next? No links? Is it the end of history?"

I mean, it's like Coupland's pitch for the book! Probably!

Immediately after the bit I just transcribed, the scene shifts again to a night Roger was having a drunken discussion with the Reverend Dr. Paul de la Nuit about Mexico's statistics. In this brief remembrance, the Reverend asks Mexico a simple question through an analogy of a bit of trivia about the Romans: What fucking good is your chart of A4 Rocket strikes? It's a fair fucking question, really.

And then we're back to Jessica's remembered conversation. Almost all the way back to the present narrative! Jessica pointing out that it isn't fair that his statistics don't tell them how to be safer; Roger once again being forced to repeat to yet another dullard that it's just an equation.

Ignoring the whole discussion of statistics for a second, I'd also like to point out that the linear narrative (you know, the easy parts of the book!) is clever and enticing and beautifully written. This book isn't becoming my favorite book simply because it's smart and difficult to read and postmodern. It's because of moments like this:

    "Well, it isn't fair."
    "It's eminently fair," Roger now cynical, looking very young, she thinks. "Everyone's equal. Same chances of getting hit. Equal in the eyes of the rocket."
    To which she gives him her Fay Wray look, eyes round as can be, red mouth about to open in a scream, till he has to laugh. "Oh, stop."
    "Sometimes . . ." but what does she want to say? That he must always be lovable, in need of her and never, as now, the hovering statistical cherub who's never quite been to hell but speaks as if he's one of the most fallen. . . .

The scene, once again, shifts to The White Visitation in a memory where Jessica and Pirate Prentice are talking while they watch Roger off in the distance playing in the snow. Pirate deems Roger's attitude toward the "rocket being fair" "Cheap nihilism." And later, when Jessica tells him about the exchange, he admits it. Sure. Cheap. Of course! But why should his reality, his fears, his way of coping with those fears, be less because of what others have truly suffered?

Roger Mexico is just as frightened of death as anybody else who doesn't believe in something more, something after. And yet he works at The White Visitation where they all believe in more. So why shouldn't he fear death more than they do? All he has are his statistics and, in the end, they might offer an illusion of control but they offer no solace, no hope, no eternal reward. There's just the end and now, with the marvels of technology, you don't even get any warning about that.

The section ends with both Jessica and Roger thinking about Pre-War life and how everything seemed silly and unnecessary and inconsequential. And as a reminder of the life one used to be able to lead without thinking about death constantly, a rocket hits nearby.