Pynchon in Central Asia: The Use of Sources and Resources

PYNCHON IN CENTRAL ASIA: THE USE OF SOURCES AND RESOURCES by Javaid Qazi* In order to illustrate the use of sources in Gravity's Rainbow1 I'd like to take a clearly defined segment of the narrative and show how Pynchon builds his fictional world. For this purpose the Central Asian sequence serves very well. Here we find a lavish use of local color and a great wealth ofinformation about a people who are quite removed from the Europe of 1945. The first question that the reader confronts is this: what is Thomas Pynchon doing in Central Asia? Or, to put the problem in another way, what is this lengthy section about Kazakh life in the 1920s doing in Gravity's Rainbowwhich is ostensibly a novel about the effect of the Second World War on Europe and the development of the V-2 Rocket bomb? The study of sources can only be valuable if it illuminates the meaning and message of the finished work of art. However, if we are to understand Pynchon's method as well as the created artifact, we must enter his secret workshop, and if we are lucky we will be led to "a back room fitted out with telephones, a cork board with notes pinned all over, desks littered with maps, schedules, An Introduction to Modern Herero, corporate histories, spools of recording wire," (GR p. 536) and there we will see how the Magus makes his magical world. Like Borges and Coleridge, Pynchon appears to be a tireless reader of arcana and delights in exploring history, travelogues, accounts of voyages, and scientific reports. This research is neither haphazard nor aimless. Pynchon is interested in discovering a meaningful pattern in the flux of modern history, in finding out if Man and his enterprise on earth has a chance of survival. He also wishes to nudge the reader in certain directions, reveal how humans brutalize each other, how the innocent and powerless are nearly always victimized by aggregates of Power. If Pynchon's mind is like a computer, it has been carefully programmed with JAVAID QAZI was born in Sahiwal, Pakistan on June 3, 1947. He obtained his BA. from Government College, University of the Punjab in 1967. In 1968 he came to the United States to work towards a graduate degree in English. He finished his Ph.D. in 1978 at Arizona State University. Currently he is working as a Technical Writer for Delphi Associates of Phoenix. Apart from being a Pynchonophile he is also interested in creative writing. One of his short stories will be appearing in the Spring issue of Kansas Quarterly. 1. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (New York: The Viking Press, 1973). All references are to this edition and will be indicated by page numbers prefixed with GR. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW229 Javaid Qazi data of a particular kind to yield a particular vision of the world. The "facts" are gleaned, culled, edited and embellished to form a picture of the world that Pynchon wants the reader to see. Obviously, it is not a pleasant picture. We are shown recurring patterns of bloodshed, exploitation, persecution. Again and again, in one geographical locale or another, during one period of history or another, Pynchon seeks out examples of Man's inhumanity to Man. This is why he takes us to Central Asia. The Kazakhs are related to the Jews of Germany, the Hereros of Southwest Africa and the DP's (Displaced Persons) of The Zone at deep levels of experience and history. In the third section of Gravity's Rainbow labeled "In the Zone," Pynchon leads his bumbling hero, Slothrop, into a very bizarre and confusing environment, a world in which all boundaries have broken down, where it is difficult to distinguish between the dead and the living since the "categories have blurred badly" (GR p. 303) and where competing power groups, the Russians, the Americans, the British and the French are struggling for control over what is, by and large, a pile of rubble and unburied corpses. In this chaotic cosmos, Slothrop wanders AWOL, assisting shady types such as Blogett Waxwing, Francisco Squalidozzi and Emil "Saure" Bummer in clandestine ventures, hoping in a vague...