Abstract:
William Blake's poem, The Four Zoas, survives in one unfinished manuscript. Los, the fallen narrator, relates the Fall of Man to us and contemplates a return again to grace, to Salvation from the vegetative world of birth, generation and extinction. Thomas Pynchon's novel, Gravity's Rainbow, also represents a fall: the techno-bureaucratic manner by which a portion of mankind – named the elect – control and constrict those who serve them – deemed, the preterite. Therefore, in different contexts, both works seek to capture the indeterminate nature of human understanding in the sense of the race being condemned to a fallen state. Both works seek a sublime vision born of the fallen, material world; a vision of the transcendent. The complex private construction of each work (Blake's mythology; Pynchon's fantasy-realist fictions) make these visions very difficult for the writers to realise, and more so, for the reader to apprehend.
This paper explores readings that attempt to "complete" both works. It argues the following: firstly, there is an overlap between peculiar methodological problems in approaches to Blake's poem and Pynchon's novel; secondly, that there is a 'parallax gap' between unfinished 'ends' that "complete" readings of the works (in both texts, for material and literary reasons) and the unending narratives the run throughout The Four Zoas and Gravity's Rainbow. It will argue that between unfinished 'ends' and unending narratives there is a parallax which will be connected to a critique of certain aspects of postmodernism. Though it sounds theoretical, the paper is not meant to obfuscate either work and attention will be paid to the material condition of both works - especially aspects of Blake's Four Zoas manuscript.
Click on the links:
Blake's Four Zoas The site illustrates two plates from The Four Zoas, with Blake's mythological characters. On the top, the plate captioned "Urizen weakens Orc by stretching him on the Tree of Mystery," emphasizes Orc's Christ-like identity; while the large plate on the bottom shows Enitharmon confronted by Orc in the shape of a serpent, an indication of the complex and shifting nature of Blake's mythological world.
Marsha Keith Schuchard on William Blake
Gravity's Rainbow cover art
Pynchon Online
