Gravity’s Rainbow Analysis

With that sentence, Pynchon begins his infamous work Gravity’s Rainbow . . . one of the most controversial, most discussed, most debated, and most frequently started-and-then-put-down works of the twentieth century. It is hard to bring up Gravity’s Rainbow in literate company and not elicit some sort of a response. I have even found the mere mention of it to be like the punch line in some tacit academic joke: “oh, so you’re reading that, eh? heh heh heh. . . .” More so than any other work besides Finnegans Wake, Gravity’s Rainbow has — now say it quietly, so as not to alarm anyone — a reputation. Even the circumstances surrounding its creation read suspiciously like an hagiography: Saint Pynchon sequestered himself in a room, writing the novel out by hand, filling sheet after sheet of graph paper with the precise script of an Engineer. Perched atop this stack of papers was his small offering to the Muse, a totem of invocative magic: a rocket formed from “a pencil type eraser (the kind from which you peel off the corkscrew wrapper) with a needle in its nose, and a re-formed paper clip serving as a launching pad.” The working title of his draft was Mindless Pleasures, a phrase which occurs twice in the final novel, and when it was published in 1973, the trustees of the Pulitzer Prize overturned the judges’ decision to award it the coveted prize, and so no work of fiction received the Pulitzer Prize that year.

Oh, yes, and the critics?

With the exception “dull” and “cold,” I find this last description a reasonably good commentary on Gravity’s Rainbow, and one that no doubt has added to its unusual reputation: it is a modern Ulysses. It is profane, bloated, and muddled. It is a perfected work of inspired genius. It is a sprawling, impossible to read monstrosity that should be burned on a pyre made from bundled Updike novels. It is the Great American Novel come at last, a postmodern masterpiece. It is . . . all of these things. And none. It is a literary black hole, a star so dense that it’s surrounded by an ever-expanding accretion disk of mythology, a swirling of rumors, essays, papers, annotations and companions, tumbling in orbit, attempting to penetrate its interior . . . but it sheds no light on itself; it dares the reader to traverse its scholarly event horizon and plunge into its gravity well unaided by any assistance from within.

And I say: Amen. Climb aboard your Rocket and blast off. Open up the cover and begin.

So . . . still here?

Eh-heh. Well, I thought you might be — and so am I. I confess that I am possessed by the enthusiasm of the convert. I have been there and back again, and I wish to highlight the way for all my benighted brethren. So here I am, pen in monkish hand, finding myself guilty of adding yet another scrap of illumination to the holy text. But at least I am not alone in the scriptorium! To echo Mr. Wolff’s lament, there have been countless trees sacrificed on the altars of an industry — almost a religion — devoted to illuminating its mysteries. Several compendiums and correspondences, a Web hypertextual guide, countless articles, essays, and papers, a journal, and even online “group readings” — all are possible assistants awaiting to be conjured forth to assist the sorcerer attempting to master this troublesome literary demon.

So where shall I begin? Allow me to first state that Gravity’s Rainbow is one of my favorite novels. While it certainly requires an attentive reading, it is nowhere as “difficult” as its reputation suggests; indeed, it is one of the most pleasurable, witty, humorous, and touching books I have ever read. My discussion of the novel will be in four sections — advice for the first-time reader, comments on style, a discussion of major themes, and a fairly detailed structural analysis. I would also like to mention that since Pynchon has never offered any public criticism or commentary on his great book, all this is pure speculation. (Even Joyce had his Stuart Gilbert!) It is very likely that my view of some things may be radically different from another reader’s opinions. So treat my commentary in the spirit that it is offered — just one of many interpretations of the cast rune-stones, one more oracle offering its insights up for debate in the marketplace of reality. I would also like to thank Steven Weisenburger, whose A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion helped me understand the structural mechanics of the text as well as pointing out some of Pynchon’s sources; Joseph Campbell, for his work illuminating heroes from Luke Skywalker to HCE; and Dr. Laurence Daw, for his proofreading and commentaries. I also quote generously in the following sections from Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Thoth.

I would also like to add that I took the greatest care in writing this section so as not to spoil any surprises or reveal any pivotal points in the plot of Gravity’s Rainbow. Of course, it would be impossible not to disclose anything about the book — but I feel that a first-time reader will not have their enjoyment of the text spoiled by reading my commentaries.

First of all let me stress this immediately: you can pick up Gravity’s Rainbow and just start reading without companions, annotations, or prior knowledge of Pynchon required. Just do it. There is no reason in the world why you won’t understand the book and enjoy it thoroughly.

That said, let me explain my intentions in writing this essay. While you may certainly just pick up Gravity’s Rainbow and dive right in, there is no avoiding the fact that you may find it a lot more fulfilling if you prepare yourself a bit. The Prose:

To begin with, Pynchon’s writing is extremely convoluted and dense. This is quite evident in the first section — a fact that has caused many people to abandon the book in despair after the first hundred pages or so. Yes, Pynchon’s prose may be intimidating at first, but a wonderful adventure awaits those who are not immediately frightened away. His thoughts twist and turn and rarely conclude where you were expecting, and the sheer inventiveness with which he forces the text to express his ideas is marvelous. I would say this to the first-time reader: stick with him. Do not be afraid to read and re-read passages that strike you; and if his meaning still eludes you, by all means move on. Most people agree that it is impossible to comprehend the totality of a work like Gravity’s Rainbow the first time through — but a close reading with plenty of pauses for rereading and reflection will certainly be extremely rewarding.

Another thing that tends to scare away first time readers is the plot structure. The book begins with a clear enough narrative direction, but soon after the plot begions to fragment very rapidly. Flashbacks and meditations dislocate the plot from linear time, and a seemingly endless series of digressions seem to send it reeling through space as well. After a while, you may wonder if there even is a plot, then you’ll think you have it figured out, and then you’ll be wrong — repeat cycle as needed. You may also begin to wonder if the cast is as large as a Cecil B. DeMille picture — but again, don’t worry. You will find, surprisingly, that you’ll remember all the characters quite well enough when the time comes. But still, it wouldn’t hurt any to take a few notes — I found that sketching out the character’s relationships to each other came quite in handy. Eventually, however, things start coming together, and you will notice that all the threads of the plot are being skillfully woven back together again — but still, careful attention must be paid, for much of the ???

If you really want to tackle Gravity’s Rainbow with all guns loaded, a few weeks of preparation may prove to be quite valuable. I would recommend reading some earlier Pynchon, particularly the short stories “The Low-Lands,” and “The Secret Integration,” as well as his first novel, V. Although this not necessary, some of the characters used in Gravity’s Rainbow make their first appearances in these works. The irrepressible Pig Bodine appears in both “The Low-Lands” and V.; Slothrop’s father and brother Hogan appear in “The Secret Integration,” and Captain Blicero and Kurt Mondaugen show up in V. — which also features some of the plot elements that form the background for a few characters in Gravity’s Rainbow, such as the 1922 Herero uprising against the Germans. Other works of literature that may provide a useful foundation for a greater appreciation of Gravity’s Rainbow include Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, Goethe’s Faust Part I, Malcolm X and Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and the Argentine saga of Hernandez, Martín Fierro. (Of all these, the Rilke is by far the most important.) A little bit of history might be helpful as well, so it won’t hurt to brush up a bit on the end of WWII, the V-2 bombardment of London, the allied occupation of Germany, and the consequences of the V-2 Rocket program. The history of German industry plays some importance, and it always helps to be a little conversant with some elementary science. Random subjects that merit at least a trip to the Encyclopedia Britannica include Pavlovian psychology, the Kazakh people of the Russian steppes, coal tar derivatives, and some basic parapsychology. Some knowledge of the Qabalah and the Tarot will be extremely useful, as well as a little Teutonic mythology. The movie King Kong is referred to quite frequently, and I would advise renting some Fritz Lang movies to get a feel for prewar German film making. In the sphere of music, it may help to know a little bit about Beethoven, Rossini, and Webern, as well as having a passing familiarity with Wagner’s Tannhäuser opera. But before you feel suddenly exasperated, let me remind you that none of these things are by any means necessary; but a little reasearch will enhance your enjoyment of the novel considerably. Using a reader’s guide such as A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion or the HyperArts Guide makes finding all this information quite easy.

For those dedicated — and perhaps slightly deranged — readers who wish to go to some of the “original sources” consulted by Pynchon, the following list provides works he directly consulted for various plot devices and atmospheric touches. (Thanks to Weisenburger for these.)

V-2 by Walter Dornberger, The White Goddess by Robert Graves, Teutonic Mythology by Jacob Grimm, Ballistics of the Future by Kooy and Uytenbogaart, The Symbolism of the Tarot, by Peter Ouspensky, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism by Gershom Scholem, IG Farben by Richard Sasuly, and A.E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot.

Gravity’s Rainbow is often compared to Joyce’s Ulysses, and for some very good reasons. Both are often considered works of genius, both convey a sense of sprawling density, both juxtapose the vulgar and the sublime, both have been considered in turn travesties and masterpieces, and both adopt a “hidden” organizational structure. And both also share a certain playfulness and experimentation with the English language. It is this unique writing style that has the ability to both attract so many people and to confound them as well.

I believe that Gravity’s Rainbow is an “easier” book to read than Ulysses. While Pynchon’s style is certainly remarkable, it remains within less radical boundaries than the ingenious array of techniques used by Joyce. That said, however, it is still unusual enough to be a bit tricky until you get the hang of it. Pynchon freely adjusts his prose style to fit best whatever situation he is describing: soul-searching meditations are conveyed through a multi-layered chiaroscuro of light and shadow, and chase scenes are filled in with lightly humorous brush strokes. Passages of elaborate and complex prose will suddenly decay into slang-filled hilarity. Images of shocking degradation are allowed as much space as the beautiful visitations of angels. He uses a good bit of “stream of consciousness” technique, and occasionally the narrative undergoes a sudden shift in perspective — from one character to another, or even from one time and place to another — without any warning. This tendency may be disorienting at first, but after a while you find that these shifts obey an internal logic of their own, and you adjust to them quite readily.

Though the metaphor may be a bit weary from overuse, I think the best way to describe the narrative is to compare it to a river, surging through the pages of Gravity’s Rainbow as it builds an unstoppable momentum. At times this river may be torrential and unpredictable, and it requires a sense of adventure to ride the white water rapids. At other places the pace is slow and majestic, a host of strange and wonderful ideas alive below its surface like fish slipping through the subterranean depths. The narrative also begins to take on unique characteristics depending on which character it is currently focused through. Each character has the occasion to accept the stream of narrative, and the internal structures of their personalities shape and redirect this flow like the walls of a cavern bend the course of a river flowing through them. Often a sudden shift will channel the narrative smoothly from one character’s point of view to another’s, where it will rejoin the original course seamlessly several pages downstream. In a way, the characters are like tangible presences which act to temporarily harness — and even personalize — the playfully sentient narrative. This “playfully sentient” river also has a tendency to spin off side streams into centrifugal eddies, swirling into surreal whirlpools of pure fantasy — and only occasionally are these moments contained in the consciousness of a character; often it seems that the narrative has a life of its own, a desire to suddenly cut itself loose and run free, mischievously investing inanimate objects with stories of their own, for example, or slipping out of “novel” form and suddenly recasting the action into the form of a play; or perhaps sketching little graffiti-like symbols on the white pages that try desperately to contain it. Occasionally the narrative is interrupted — at times the whole cast, including inanimate objects, may break out into a production number, complete with songs and stage directions — but it always manages to reform and continue its progress, always adapting to the needs of the author rather than to any preset and conventional form. All are welcome, now everybody —

Throughout this torrent, however, a few recurring techniques may be seen at work. Pynchon favors the creative use of a structure of cyclic motifs, and there are quite a few breathtaking examples of a sort of “ring within a ring” structure to an episode, where the narrative cycles through different characters and times, passing from one locus to another at pivotal focal points. Often Pynchon employs the analepsis as a technique for controlling the flow of the narrative. In an analepsis, the narrative is refracted back through a character to a previous event. These retrograde epicycles are the cause of many of his interlocking prose loops. (Character A is ruminating about Character B. Suddenly the narrative shifts to B, and travels via an analepsis back in time to her life with Character C. Character C takes up the narrative and analeptically shifts the focus back in time farther to an event that shaped his life; then the focus returns to C’s “present.” The prose is then recycled back to its starting point with Character A, currently inhabiting the reader’s “present.”) Another technique that may be worth mentioning is Pynchon’s extensive use of the hysteron proteron — a literary trope involving retrograde motion, regression, or a reversal of cause and effect. At many times in the story events are described in reverse order, a literary slight-of-hand that works to pry our linear concept of Time a wee bit from its stubborn entrenchment. Journeys are imagined moving in reverse, objects are mentally disassembled, and films occasionally run backward. This tendency for reversal reaches its greatest manifestation in the fall of the Rocket itself — the fact that the sound of its descent comes after its faster-than-sound impact is an idea that stimulates an interesting variety of emotional responses in many of the novel’s protagonists.

Gravity’s Rainbow is a large and ambitious book. Accordingly, a vast number of themes, topics, and ideas are explored in the novel — it’s a wonderful example of an “open text,” and Pynchon’s silence provides an ample vacuum in which to project the constellations of our own imagination. Every reader will sort through a wide range of motifs and ideas and focus on the ones which are most important to him; as the book says, “Each will have his own personal Rocket.” I shall endeavor to discuss a few that I personally find the most important.

Perhaps one of the most thoroughly developed themes, and certainly one that Pynchon has explored before, is that of the struggle between the “preterite” and the “elect,” or the traditional dichotomy between the “common” classes and the “anointed” classes. (The terms come from his family’s Puritan background.) As Pynchon himself puts it, the preterite, while “in theory capable of idiocy, are much more apt to display competence, courage, humanity, wisdom, and other virtues associated, by the educated classes, with themselves.” This class distinction acts as a tangible dehumanizing force, permitting us to see each other as objects to be hated, feared, scorned, demonized, exploited, or manipulated. And it’s not just his characters who embody these roles — the whole novel seems to be impregnated with a sinister force, a Presence that hovers between the two classes like a malignant angel (or a malevolent version of Maxwell’s Demon?) carefully at work maintaining the illusionary divisions between one human and another. This sense of sentient division is not just reserved for the traditional targets (organized religion, the military, corporate entities, intelligence and security agencies, various racist groups, u.s.w.) but, through the hypnotic power of Pynchon’s prose, is extended to include speculations that our whole material world is somehow involved in the conspiracy. Falling rockets, the growth patterns of cities, and even the forces that govern the terms of molecular bonding are all subjected to the manipulations of this force. Linked with the actions and inactions of the characters — each with their own personal agendas, delusions of control, and secret networks — this pervasive sense of paranoia gives rise very quickly to a clear distinction between Us and Them. “Us,” or “We,” are the preterite, the common, the vulgar: possessed with a certain Foolishness, for sure, but also endowed with the ability — if We want to — to see through Their systems of death and decay, Their artificial distinctions and forces of normalization, vectors that force Us into the compromise of a thousand little deaths. . . . When organized (and that itself is always risky, ephemeral) We can form a potent Counterforce. But that takes a very intricate knowledge of control, of hope, of love, and of laughter — the ability to cry out Joyce’s most emphatic yes! to counterbalance the Burroughsian schlupp! of vampiric absorption. “They” are the classic Masters, hung up on control systems, worshipers of the Northern Death Cults — from SS officers to mad Pavlovians, believers in the Granfalloon, inhabitants of corporations and governments, rendered faceless by the sheer multiplicity and interchangeability of Their bland servants. . . . They are, as Burroughs might have it, running the Mayan scheme, the classic Mind Control Game. And the most frightening thing of all is not that They can control Us; but that it’s so very easy for Us to simply — and slowly, one decision at a time — become Them. In Something Wicked this Way Comes, Ray Bradbury asks of evil: “What will they look like? How will we know them?” Looking nervously at each other, his characters suddenly apprehend the answer: “Maybe, said their eyes, they’re already here.”

Love. So simple and yet incalculably profound . . . what “great” works fail to grapple with “love’s bitter mystery?” For Pynchon, love is a vital force, a transforming essence that runs through his work like a scarlet network of life-giving arteries. Pynchon is not afraid to announce Love as a transcendent power, as a mystical state that elevates us from the chaos and filth of the world and which has the capacity — even if only for a fleeting moment — to transform us into radiant beings. Like Gabriel García Márquez, whom Pynchon admires, he is not afraid to stand at the edge of the abyss of his irony and cynicism, turn his back to its well-brooded depths, and reach out for a holy flame, as if to say, well, yes, I see what my back is against, but hey! this makes a difference. . . . It is something that even They can experience despite Their attempts to bring it under control; something that may even offer Them a brief glimpse of redemption. It is something that We can also experience — indeed, something that We must. Love is omnipresent in Gravity’s Rainbow; but not just spiritual love, or carnal love, or romantic love . . . the prism of Gravity’s Rainbow refracts the whole spectrum contained in the white light of this central enigma, from the infrared heat of carnal lusts to the yellows of jaded decadence to the unseen ultraviolets of Satoric communion. . . . There is room for all: soul love, divine and painful in its flaming intensity; erotic sorcery, green and verdant as the equinox; physical love, painful in its immediacy, the unexplainable wiring of the flesh to the aching heart; the broken love that binds dysfunctional systems of mutual need; casual but tender couplings that affirm life and stave away the night; Freudian desires that rake the heart with talons confused guilt . . . even the simple touch of one stranger to another in the dark, to reassure, to say that I am not alone. . . . If the dynamic Us and Them provides Gravity’s Rainbow with a polarized tension, love is the current that flows mysteriously between both systems — sometimes binding, sometimes destroying — but always electrifying. To quote one of Gravity’s Rainbow‘s most twisted — and memorable — characters: “I want to break out — to leave this cycle of infection and death. I want to be taken in love: so taken that you and I, and death, and life, will be gathered inseparable, into the radiance of what we would become. . . .”

The third principle theme that I would like to discuss is the theme of transformation. Transformation, transfiguration, transubstantiation, metamorphosis — all modulations of this leitmotif may be heard in Gravity’s Rainbow to varying degrees, ranging from the comically vulgar to the sublime. One of the most powerful manifestations of this theme is that of the mundane or the vulgar being translated to a higher level of being, whether it be acts of sex into acts of communion, the Rocket into a vehicle of Salvation, or coal tars into iridescent dyes: “We passed over the coal tars. A thousand different molecules waited in the preterite dung. This is the sign of revealing. Of unfolding. This is one meaning of mauve, the first new color on Earth. . . .” Occasionally these transfigurations are satirically inverted, as in one unforgettable scene where brutal acts of sexual domination are mapped onto the Qabalistic ascent to the throne of God. Everything is subject to transfiguration, even death — but understanding the nature of these transfigurations, comprehending their meaning — there lies our dilemma, and a source of much delusion. When the whole world becomes an open text, a Torah whose letters may be permutated and recombined into new meanings, “always unfolding,” where can we locate an immutable Holy Center? If, indeed, one even exists, and is not merely a mirage formed by the unconscious projections of our desires onto an insouciant reality. Does ultimate meaning exist? Or are we forever locked into our own permutations, unable to grasp the secret name of God, unable to ever apprehend the Word? Pynchon is silent on any answers — indeed, he even takes pains to unmask our uncertainty even farther by serving up purposeful ambiguities. Through the clever placement of ironic transformations and satirical inversions, there are several focal points throughout the work where two opposing images exist simultaneously, setting up an ironic dissonance — the fact that Hiroshima occurs on the Feast of the Transfiguration, for example, or that Easter Sunday corresponds to April Fool’s Day. Is there a message in such a dissonance? Which image contains the greater truth, or is the truth to be found in the juxtaposition itself? Or do we truly dwell in an observer-created reality, where the only meaning we are allowed is what we create from the primal chaos, where all connections we see are fictions, imposed by us upon the universe in order to maintain an illusion of understanding, a ghost of control. . . .

The issue of control is another theme which Gravity’s Rainbow spends a good deal of time exploring from several angles. What is the nature of control? How does this power spring into being? How can it shift from one locus to another? Can a person or a group really possess this power, or is control itself another illusion, another case of humans foisting egocentric assertions upon a chaotic universe? Almost every character in the book seems so have a different perspective on control, and this includes even the dead — whose often cryptic pronouncements from beyond the grave seem to indicate that the living misunderstand its nature entirely. For some, the need for control becomes a point of obsession, and for others, a point of possession — a vampiric hunger to force their will onto other beings. Images of control and its consequences are numerous throughout the book. Statistical equations force characters to confront their utter lack of influence over events that may permanently change their lives. Private lives are dissected in order to find any defect in the soul; any flaw, addiction or psychological fault line where another may insert hooks, binding wires and puppet strings. (As Weisenburger eloquently states, “a person’s profoundest nightmares are colonized and used for purposes of control.”) There are many points in the narrative at which a character’s development hinges on how they deal with this issue. Each must come to an understanding concerning his or her locus of control; and the resolution of this realization often marks a turning point in the character’s development. Like everything else in Gravity’s Rainbow, control is seen from two often contradictory angles. On one hand, Pynchon seems to be saying that you have the willpower to shift your locus of control to yourself, and by removing it from the grip of others, a new level of self-awareness and maturity is reached. On the other hand, perhaps the very idea of control itself is an illusion. Like a rocket at the point of Brennschluss, the point at which its engines cut off and it surrenders to the immutable Law of Gravity, we may be bound to laws and systems we can barely perceive. And at first, these seem to be mutually antagonistic perspectives. But what if these two opposing states have a resolution at a higher energy level — at least the dead seem to hint at such. There is a certain terrible beauty to this idea of complete surrender, a paradoxical freedom found only in the complete dissolution of the ego. So what are the consequences of surrendering control? Perhaps it depends on the nature of the surrender. Those who have never pulled their locus of control inward in the first place are at risk of losing their soul, in danger of becoming one of the Qlippoth, the “shells of the dead” to forever wander soulless and blank. But what of those who have internalized their locus of control, and, through the alchemical transformation of a higher understanding, have made the decision to voluntarily surrender it — not to Them, evil motherfuckers that They are — but rather to the flow of universe itself? Is this the path to Satori, the key that allows us to “become the crossroads,” to enact a mystical transformation to a higher evolutionary state?

In the beginning there was the unbroken truth, a divine Unity, the Limitless Light of the Godhead — a time when all was One. But perfect symmetry is sterile, and holds only limitless Potential. The symmetry must be broken for diversity to bring forth life. The very pressures of Divine Being forced a breaking of this Unity. In order for Creation, there must be a Big Bang, a breaking of symmetry . . . the Word must be spoken and the Godhead must fall down in a fertilizing shower of divine sparks. This destruction and materialization of pure energy into a cascade of creation — this splintering of the One into the Many — is a Gnostic and Qabalistic notion that Pynchon has used before, and one which provides the book with a background suffused with an Edenic sense of loss and an almost instinctual hope for return. Many of his characters — including even a curious contingent of body cells! — are vested with an intuitive sense of fragmentation, of mystical yearning, of impending near-revelation. There is a sense that his characters are drifting between two metaphysical shores, with a haunting awareness of spiritual disconnection on one side and an almost epileptic near-apprehension of the Word on the other, but tragically unable to fully comprehend either. . . .

Contrary to the opinion of some frustrated readers and a few cranky critics, Gravity’s Rainbow is not an unstructured work that sprawls chaotically across 800 pages. Like its literary grandparents Moby Dick and Ulysses, if the light of intelligent analysis is directed upon its pages, a structure emerges from the dense thickets: there is a method in its madness. On the most basic level, it is organized into four parts, each given a name and prefaced by a quotation. These parts are then divided into smaller sections generally called episodes which vary in length from a single page to fifty or more. Although unmarked by Pynchon, critical convention has given these episodes numbers. (See Larry Daw’s summary for a complete synopsis of each episode.)

Closer study will reveal that certain organizational themes are also at work to bring a sense of cohesion to the book. These tend towards the religious, the mythopoetic and the occult, and are reinforced by recurring textual correspondences to the Christian calendar, the Qabalah, the Tarot, astrology and numerology, and various mythological systems including the Teutonic, the Herero (African), and the Celtic. The most important organizing principle seems to be the Christian calendar as mapped onto the seasonal wheel of pagan festival dates, and each of the four parts begins and ends on key points across a nine month period, from Advent season to the Feast of the Exaltation. Interestingly enough, the climax of the book centers on Easter Sunday — the focal point of a nine-month parabola — although these events are not actually revealed until the end. While these temporal nodes provide a grounding of sorts, three other important organizing principles may be found in the various systems of the Jewish Qabalah, the Tarot and its imagery and symbolism, and in the idea of the hero monomyth. These three deserve some further elaboration.

The Qabalah provides a major tool to understanding both the structure and some of the underlying themes that hold Gravity’s Rainbow together, and a very brief explanation may be in order to shed some illumination on Pynchon’s magnum opus. In the Qabalistic Tree of Life, Godhead emerges from the incomprehensible Beyond and cascades downwards to our material world in ten stages, or “Emanations,” each rich in symbolism and meaning. These focalized ten points make up the “Sephiroths” of the Tree of Life, and each one represents a decrease in the original power of the Godhead as it descends into the material world of the Creation from Kether, the first Sephirah, to Malkuth, the final Emanation. Each Sephirah also holds within its mystery the essence of all the lower Emanations — the Power flows downwards in a series of successive crystallizations. As Golden Dawn member Dion Fortune says, “Let us conceive of Kether, then, as a fountain which fills its basin, and the overflow therefrom feeds another fountain, which in turn fills its basin and overflows. The Unmanifest for ever flows under pressure into Kether, and there comes a time when evolution has gone as far as it can in the extreme simplicity of the form of existence of the First Manifest. . . . the next phase of development is to combine into more complex structures. Just as Kether crystallized out of Limitless Light, so the second Sephirah, Chokmah, crystallized out of Kether. . . .” And so on, down to good old Malkuth. The forces represented by each Sephirah are progressively closer to the limits of our comprehension, but each Emanation has also sacrificed some of the original purity and unity for complexity and new modes of existence. Therefore the first — Kether — is the most incomprehensible to the human mind, as it represents the pure unbroken Word as it is spoken from the negative Beyond. This Word is splintered and divided in its fall, all the way down to the final Sephirah. Malkuth, the tenth Emanation, represents the throne of the material world, and is therefore the point at which we must begin in making any spiritual journey back to the One. This idea — of the Fall from divine unity into the material world of illusionary division — is not unique to Jewish mythology, but the Qabalah stands as one of the most eloquent systemizations of the idea, and it provides an organizational structure rich in symbolism and tradition ready to syncretically graft itself onto other models and structures of organized thinking. Everywhere in the book there is a tendency for certain elements to descend, to be refracted downwards through many different incarnations and levels of meaning. Ideas are in constant transformation, moving fluidly between higher and lower planes of existence. Conversely, there is just a strong tendency in many of the characters for a desire to return to that unsplintered state of being. From “all the shit is transmuted to gold” to “there must be a return,” the narrative reinforces this theme quite frequently.

The Tarot deck is another system of symbolism and correspondences that dates back quite some time. In essence, the 78 cards of the Tarot deck are divided into 22 Major Arcana (also called Trumps or Keys) and 56 lesser cards of the Minor Arcana (the “suit” cards.) The 22 Trumps represent metaphysical concepts similar to the Sephiroth of the Qabalah, and all have a wealth of astrological and Qabalistic correspondences that tie them into to numerous other systems of occult organization. The first 21 Trumps are numbered, from Key 1: The Magus, to Key 21: The Universe; and the 22nd card is called the Fool, which is usually marked as Key Zero and placed at either the beginning or the ending of the deck. In some views of the Tarot, the Major Arcana can bee seen as “stations” on the Fool’s mystic journey through Life. The other 56 cards are arranged into suits, and resemble our modern deck of playing cards. Generally speaking, the Minor Arcana are considered to be less powerful than the Trumps. Usually labeled as Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles, each of these four suits corresponds to one of the four philosophical Elements: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, respectively. The 14 cards of a suit are comprised of four court cards and ten numbered cards, each representing some aspect of life and having their principle meanings derived from the interplay between the symbolism of the given suit and the numerological position of the card itself. Today there are almost as many systems of reading Tarot cards as there are varieties of decks; but Pynchon kept to the then standard A.E. Waite deck and followed the familiar “Celtic Cross” method of divination. Both Larry Daw and myself favor the interpretations of Aleister Crowley, and the majority of my quotations about the Tarot cards are taken from his works.

The monomyth of the “Hero’s Adventure” may also provide us with some insight into the structure of Gravity’s Rainbow, particularly in regards to its main protagonist, Tyrone Slothrop. If Slothrop can be considered the “hero” of the novel, one can read his progress through its pages on several levels. In the context of the Tarot, he may be seen as the Fool on his journey. But Slothrop can also be quite nicely be placed into context with Joseph Campbell’s four principle stages of the “Hero’s Adventure”: Departure, Initiation, Return, and Death/Dissolution. Each of these four stages can be seen loosely reflected in the four parts of Gravity’s Rainbow. Of course, the fact that Slothrop is hardly the stuff from which heroes are made provides us with a slyly modern perspective. (But I would still rather have a few drinks with Tyrone than Gilgamesh any day.)

Part 1 takes its name from Pavlovian psychology; though the term will be broadened to allow for several other meanings as well. It has 21 episodes, all taking place over nine days in the Advent season. The time is winter, when the pagan gods lie slain and waiting for rebirth, and the Christian world prepares to celebrate their alchemical transformation of the solstice into a promise for spiritual renewal: Christmas. The section starts on December 18 and ends on Boxing Day, December 26, and takes from this calendar Christian resonances that center on dissipation and the hope of redemption — like the popular mantra of a Christian burial, “in sure and certain hope of resurrection,” the characters spend their winter looking towards the future with a mixed sense of hope and anxiety. This feeling of apocalyptic prehension colors many of the passages, and the whole mood of the first part tends towards introspection, anxiety and anticipation — the very air itself is charged with the Presence of the War, the almost sentient War . . . which is slowly dying, winding down like some Great Beast slouching towards Bethlehem to — to what? Not be born, unless Death itself is just a transfiguration. Surely some great revelation is at hand. . . .

Closer examination of both Advent and Boxing Day produce a few interesting notes. Advent takes its name from the same source as “adventure,” the Latin adventus or “arrival,” which provides another concurrence with the mood of Part 1. And the original custom followed on Boxing Day (which coincides with the Feast of St. Stephen) was to place presents to be given to the serving class in earthenware vessels (the “boxes”) which then must be broken. So the first part of the novel ends on a day when gifts arrive for the preterite classes, emerging from broken vessels like the Word tumbling downwards. . . .

Part 1 takes Pisces as its astrological sign, the sign that governs dissolution, decay, strife, institutions, psychic phenomena and the supernatural. (Although it should be noted that Sagittarius, and not Pisces, is the correct sign for the calendar time covered by Part 1, there are plenty of indications that Pisces is the operative mode. One must be careful when analyzing Gravity’s Rainbow; there are a variety of false leads and clever illusions that may lead one astray.) Crowley indicates that Pisces “represents the last stage of winter” and that it “might be called the Gateway of Resurrection.” The Tarot card associated with Pisces is Key 18, the Moon — card of the unconscious, of psychic powers and hidden forces, where “all is doubtful, all is mysterious, all is intoxicating.” The Moon represents the Dark Night of the Soul. An occult significance is further seen in the number of episodes — 21, the amount of numbered cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. This is made even more intriguing by the fact that the twenty-second card, the Fool, is marked as Zero and is traditionally assigned to a place at either the beginning or the end of the other 21 Arcana cards, a fact which gives the title of the first book an additional resonance. The Fool — understood to be Slothrop’s card — is one of the most striking of all the Major Arcana, representative of Force about to enter manifestation, and symbolic of the redeeming power of pure innocence. It is the card of Parsifal, of Bacchus, of the Green Man of the Spring festival and of the April Fool. Card 21 itself is the Universe, or sometimes called the World, and is compliment to the Fool. It is symbolic of success, completion, triumph, and return. As Crowley says, “The Fool is negative issuing into manifestation; the Universe is that manifestation, its purpose accomplished, ready to return. The twenty cards that lie between these two exhibit the Great Work and its agents in various stages.” The balance between these two cards then represents many of the themes in Gravity’s Rainbow, from the breaking of the Word to the promise of a redemption, a return.

On a mythopoetic level, Part 1 may be read as Slothrop’s heroic call to adventure as he enters Campbell’s first stage of “Departure.” Frequent analogies may be connected to numerous components of this mythic stage — particularly if we include Slothrop’s activities in the first two episodes of Part 2, which though located in a different place, actually take place temporally during the time frame covered by Part 1. Part 1 contains a heroic “statement of his powers,” an explanation for the “unusual circumstances of the hero’s birth,” and most importantly, the “call to adventure.” As Campbell explains, one of the ways an adventure can begin is when “a blunder — apparently the merest chance — reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are rightly not understood.” That’s a fairly decent description of old Tyrone. . . . Additionally, the first two episodes of Part 2 could be extended to Campbell’s “crossing the first threshold” and making the transition into a sphere of rebirth in the “belly of the whale” — perhaps under the womb-red tablecloth? Oh, yes, and of course there’s the monster that must be fought. Poor Grigori. . . .

Whitsunday — or “White Sunday” — is set 50 days after Easter and represents the Christian version of the feast of Pentecost. The Jewish Pentecost — Greek for “fiftieth,” and originally applied to the holiday of Shabuoth by Greek-speaking Jews — traditionally occurs fifty days after Passover. (In 1945, Pentecost was on May 18, and Whitsunday was on May 20.) The Christian celebration of this feast centers around events in Acts 2, when the Holy Ghost descended upon Christ’s disciples during the feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem, granting them the ability to speak in tongues so they could give proof of the savior’s resurrected glory. The narrative of Gravity’s Rainbow takes two internal reference points from this holiday — first, keeping in mind that the climax of the book can really be said to have taken place on Easter Sunday, Part 2 can be seen to close on the Feast occurring fifty days afterwards. Second, according to Acts 2:17, during Pentecost Peter was to sermonize with the voice of the Holy Spirit: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Part of this prophesy has a kind of humorous fulfillment *[I’m not sure what you mean here, Allen. Can you clarify it a bit? Maybe just mention a character, or something>]* in the closing episode of Part 2.

Aries the dominant sign of Part 2: the fiery Vernal sign of ego-confirming action whose Tarot card is the Sun, “Lord of Light, Life, Liberty and Love” and whose “Freedom brings sanity.” There are eight episodes, 8 being a number that signifies evolution to a higher state of being; of reaping what is sown, of cosmic balance and of infinity. Slothrop — like Stencil in Pynchon’s V. — will also have eight separate “identities” or disguises throughout the book.

The narrative also reflects the second stage in Slothrop’s development as a hero as it details the trials and tribulations of his training and education as he passes through the womb of rebirth and enters the “Initiation” stage, a “dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials.” Traditionally, these trials usually include a meeting with the Goddess as a mystical bride as well as an encounter with a temptress: in the case of Slothrop, they are one and the same woman. Other traditional stages in the hero’s Initiation are carried out with varying degrees of black humor and burlesque: Campbell’s “atonement with the father” has a satiric counterpart in Slothrop’s reluctant understanding of his unique childhood; our hero receives a few “boons” in the form of useful personal contacts and a talismanic Zoot Suit; and he must reach an “apotheosis” of sorts in order to move to the next phase of his quest.

Part 3 is the longest section of the book, taking 32 episodes to cover the distance from Whitsunday to the Feast of the Transfiguration on August 6. The dominant feeling is that of a Summer in transition. The action of this part takes place in the Zone: a conquered Germany opened to exploration, colonization, and restructuring. The Zone becomes a metaphor for a field of infinite permutation and fertility: all is permitted. All the previous structures have been collapsed, and its inhabitants — and conquerors — engage in a scramble to force its free energies into new configurations. Like a stable nucleus smashed by high energy particles, the Zone exists in the exhilarating sliver of time before unfettered potentialities must crystallize into new structures: for a brief amount of time, anything seems possible, and a hypothetical cloud chamber seems alive with a chaotic array of shifting possibilities. Only those who can most resolutely project their wills onto reality will be left standing at the end. . . . And for many, their plans include the Rocket. But just what each one sees in the Rocket is quite different. . . .

August 6 is the Feast of the Transfiguration, the celebration of the day when Jesus revealed his divinity to Peter, John, and James on the top of Mount Tabor. (Matthew 17:2 and Mark 9:2.) It has been called “the culminating point of His public life, as His baptism is its starting point and His ascension its end.” As an actual holiday, the Feast of the Transfiguration had its origins in the forth century. It is believed that it was substituted for an early pagan feast called Vatavarh, or Roseflame, held in honor of Aphrodite. In an ironic pairing typical of Gravity’s Rainbow, this feast coincides with another event on August 6, 1945: the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Leo is the operative astrological correspondence, another sign of spiritual radiance whose Tarot card is Strength — or as Crowley has it, Lust — a card that symbolizes “vigor, and the rapture of vigor,” “divine drunkenness or ecstacy,” “primitive, creative order,” and the alchemical process of distillation: the penultimate step before the completion of the Great Work. The 32 episodes of this third part have the most obvious occult correspondence in the Qabalah. The ten Sephiroth are linked by twenty-two paths, one each for a letter of the Hebrew alphabet and representing a dialectic between the two Sephiroth linked together. 10 plus 22 makes 32, the “number of acquired wisdom” — appropriate for the Zone, that vast and complex network of paths and connections which the protagonists must master to bring them closer to the completion of their quests.

The Zone provides the mythical background for Slothrop’s travels, and as such he makes the transition from his Initiation to the Return phase, wherein he must secure his “life-transmuting trophy” and return “back into the kingdom of humanity.” Slothrop’s adventures in the Zone — though he is still questing for enlightenment — have some marvelous parallels to Campbell’s monomyth. The “magic flight,” for instance, in which “a lively, often comical, pursuit” of the hero takes place seems to be a common theme of this third part. And in another inversion, “rescue from without” takes on quite a different spin when They attempt to retrieve Mr. T. Slothrop. . . .

Part 4 moves from the Feast of the Transfiguration to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross — from when Christ revealed his divinity to his disciples to the raising of the Cross. The time frame of the final part shifts from late Summer to early Autumn, and the action largely takes place in the increasingly stable Zone. The Counterforce section deals with the final outcome of many of the characters, and is filled with surprises and revelations — and a few enigmas as well.

Though the time covered by this final part of the book is from May 20 to September 14, it is important to note that the book’s climax does not really center on Autumn, but is reflected back via an analepsis to that most important of Christian days, Easter Sunday. True to form, these lofty dates find sardonic isotopes in the mundane calendar: in the year 1945, the Feast of the Transfiguration occurred on August 6, the day the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; and Easter Sunday landed on April 1st — April Fool’s Day. Each of these three liturgical holidays plays an important symbolic role in the novel. The Feast of the Transfiguration — discussed above — frames Slothrop’s final metamorphosis, again bringing to mind the theological appraisal of the Transfiguration as “the culminating point of His public life, as His baptism is its starting point and His ascension its end.” The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, also known as “Holy Rood Day” or “Holy Cross Day,” had its first celebrations in the seventh century. Rood Day commemorates several events connected with the Holy Cross: its adoption as a Christian sign, its miraculous appearance to Constantine, and the recovery and the return of the True Cross to Jerusalem. Constantine’s conversion to Christianity figures in the most heavily. Legend has it that before he defeated the Emperor Maxentius, he saw a vision in the sky of a giant cross and the Greek words “In this sign shall you conquer” emblazoned across it. Thinking “What the hell,” he gave it a whirl, and was so impressed with his victory that he became a Christian. When St. Helena uncovered the True Cross in Jerusalem, he honored his conversion by erecting a shrine for it. The True Cross was later captured by the Persians when they sacked Jerusalem in the seventh century; but it was returned by the Emperor Heraclitus II who carried it from Constantinople back to Jerusalem, and hence the origins of the feast. Gravity’s Rainbow makes use of this feast by translating the Cross into the Rocket. The Rocket, then, becomes the central figure of exaltation — and not just for the Herero whose Rocket-related project coincides with September 14. In a scene early in the book, Captain Blicero spies the words “In hoc signo vinces” scratched into the bark of a tree which holds a cross-shaped directional marker . . . “In this sign shall you conquer.” But of course, the most important holiday is Easter Sunday. Although, temporally, Easter takes place during the time covered by Part 2 of the novel, the events that occurred on that Sunday are only revealed as the book plummets to closure. If the narrative is a parabola of sorts, its focus converges on April 1st — and only after the arc is fully traversed are we allowed to see the Holy Center. Easter itself, of course, is one of the principle feast days of the ecclesiastical year, and represents the resurrection of Christ. It is celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. The name of the feast has its origins in the pagan festival of Eostre, the Teutonic goddess who was responsible for opening the gates of Valhalla to allow Baldur entrance after his six months in the underworld. (Baldur, the “white god” and ruler of the Sun, is the Teutonic deity most associated with Christ. After he was slain by Loki, he was forced to spend half the year in the province of Hel. His return to Valhalla was symbolic of Spring, and therefore the Christian resurrection.) As previously mentioned, in 1945 Easter fell on April 1st — April Fool’s Day. While always having associations with the Spring Equinox, April foolery really got its start in France. Up until 1564, people had exchanged new year’s gifts on April 1st. After Charles IX adopted the reformed calendar that set the beginning of the year to January 1st, it became customary to send mock gifts to people on the old date, as quite a few Frenchmen resisted the calendar change. Eventually the victim of an April Fool’s prank became known as a poisson d’avril, or an “April Fish.” One of the more interesting theories explaining this epithet is that at the cusp of the Equinox the Sun leaves the zodiacal sign of Pisces and enters Aries. . . . The fact that Easter and April Fool’s day also coincide again raises the nagging question of meaning: which is more real to us, the sacred or the vulgar? Or is the quest for meaning itself another Fool’s errand? And if it is, which fool are we? The Holy Fool of the Tarot, or the poisson d’avril? As previously mentioned, Gravity’s Rainbow enjoys pointing out these ambiguities; as Weisenburger states, “the book refuses to dish up that totalizing signifier. It approaches, but avoids, closure. It combines the elegance of a preordained structure and the unintelligibility of pure coincidence.” In other words, if we demand concrete answers, Gravity’s Rainbow will, like the old Zen master, cheerfully whack us with a stick.

There are 12 episodes in this last part — a number freighted with many important correspondences. For Christians, 12 is the number of Apostles gathered around Christ. 12 were the Labors of Hercules, an archetypical hero. 12 are the signs of the Zodiac. Key 12 of the Tarot is the Hanged Man, a card that symbolizes, among other things, Crowley’s “baptism which is also death . . . the descent of the light into the darkness in order to redeem it.” It has connotations of self-surrender, sacrifice, Christ-power, and the completion of the Great Work — transmuting base matter into gold; which itself is symbolic for the transformation of base intelligences into the pure ecstasy of awareness. The astrological sign of this final part is Virgo, an earth symbol attached to those who seek for an ideal, the sign of grail-questers, and a powerful symbol of “Fertility in its most exalted sense.” Virgo’s designated Tarot card is the Hermit, whose Hebrew letter is Yod: which means hand, but also divine sparks of creative energy, representative of “the Logos, the Creator of all worlds.” The Hermit’s lonely figure contemplating his lamp — the Orphic egg — represents to Crowley “the entire mystery of Life in its most secret workings. Yod=Phallus=Spermatozoon=Hand=Logos=Virgin. There is perfect Identity of the Extremes, the Manifestation, and the Method.” It is a powerful image to attach to Virgo, and a good set of associations with which to end the book.

Here also we find an end to Slothrop’s adventure as a hero, analogous to Campbell’s “transformative departure” and “dissolution.” As he states, “The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today . . . the enigmatical figures dissolve back into the primal chaos. The mighty hero . . . is each of us. This is the sense of the prayers for the dead, at the moment of personal dissolution: that the individual should now return to his pristine knowledge of the world-creative divinity who during life was reflected in his heart.” For Pynchon, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus provide the pattern for the dispersion and dissolution. Let’s hear it for the rainbow cock. . . .

Final words:

Before I close, I would like to make a few comments on my view of the overall structure of Gravity’s Rainbow. I previously implied that I believed the overall structure of Gravity’s Rainbow to be parabolic in form. This is certainly not agreed upon by everyone, and I would like to elaborate my ideas. In particular, Weisenburger remarks that the book “unfolds according to a carefully drawn design. Gravity’s Rainbow is not arch-shaped, as is commonly supposed. It is plotted like a mandala, its quadrants marked by Christian feast days. . . .” Although I respect Mr. Weisenburger’s opinion, I see the shape as being more of a synthesis of the parabola and the mandala. I see the book being, indeed, circular in design — but parabolic in manifestation. The narrative itself only covers nine months of a year, emerging suddenly as “a screaming came suddenly across the sky,” soaring into the air to a lofty peak, then falling and plummeting back down into the earth in mid sentence. The rest of the book is unknown, deliberately unwritten, inconclusive, chthonian: Persephone and Baldur in the Underworld. As the narrative itself informs us, a rainbow is: “not, as we might imagine, bounded below by the line of the Earth it ‘rises from’ and the Earth it ‘strikes’ No But Then You Never Really Thought It Was Did You Of Course It Begins Infinitely Below The Earth And Goes On Infinitely Back Into The Earth it’s only the peak that we are allowed to see.” What lies in these hidden Autumnal months? The Underworld? The Beyond? Maybe the answers to all Gravity’s Rainbow‘s ambiguities, answers hinted at by those called back from the dead by the craft of canny mediums. This model allows us to see the whole work as symbolic of consciousness itself. The narrative surfaces from the Piscean depths of the Moon-haunted subconscious, rams into the air with fiery brilliance, turns at a visible cusp, pounces back down with a leonine energy, disassembles itself and splinters on its fall to impregnate the virgin earth on its way through to repeat the cycle again. The focal point of the parabolic narrative is Easter, where many narrative rays come to a convergence: a progressive unfolding of allusions, hints, and analepses all seem to draw our attention there as we progress through the arch — first a tentative projection forward, then after the cusp is turned, a strengthening projection inward, then backwards — and yet this critical moment (the peak, or the peek?) is denied to us until the completion of the arch, as if it could not be revealed until we had swept all the light from the shape of the rainbow. And yet, even then, we are denied a total completion — for the focus is the Holy Center of a great mandala, and we are not allowed to continue our Fool’s errand into the last quadrant by following the narrative alone . . . . We must rely on our own abilities to complete the mandala, to determine for ourselves if we are on the vision quest of the Holy Fool or following the fruitless capering of the poisson d’avril.

In closing, I would like to reaffirm my belief in the open text — I am not suggesting that my interpretations are somehow definitive, correct, or even all that much valid. Pynchon’s work is so large, so encompassing, that to claim I know all his intentions, themes, and meanings is quite foolhardy. I am sure that I have neglected some things that a few of you find very important, just as I hope that I brought to light some interpretations that might be worth considering. My favorite metaphor for reading Gravity’s Rainbow is that old story I mentioned earlier, the one about the student who rushes to his Zen master, filled with enthusiastic questions, meanings, relationships — only to be whacked on the head with a stick. Gravity’s Rainbow is that cheerfully disruptive Zen stick. In spite of this whacking, however, if I had to select one “message” learned from the book to stand as the most important, I would probably let Roger Mexico and Jessica Swanlake speak for me:

“They are in Love. Fuck the War.”

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949.

Crowley, Aleister. The Book of Thoth. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1969.

Douglas, George William. The American Book of Days. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1937.

Dunkling, Leslie. A Dictionary of Days. New York: Facts on File Publications, 1988.

Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1984.

Gray, Eden. A Complete Guide to the Tarot. New York: Bantam, 1970.

Leary, Timothy. Neuropolitique. Scottsdale, AZ: New Falcon Press, 1991.

Regardie, Israel. A Garden of Pomegranates. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1970.

Waite, Arthur Edward. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1971.

Wang, Robert. The Qabalistic Tarot. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983.

Weisenburger, Steven. A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988

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