scholarly journals Thomas Pynchon and the Black Panther Party: Revolutionary Suicide in Gravity's Rainbow

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOANNA FREER
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Pynchon ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Gravity’S Rainbow ◽  
Gravity's Rainbow ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Eldridge Cleaver ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Black Panther

This article pertains to the recent upsurge of interest in the politics of Thomas Pynchon. It considers Pynchon as an author very much of the 1960s counterculture, and explores the countercultural values and ideals expressed in Gravity's Rainbow, with particular emphasis on revealing the novel's attitude to the Black Panther Party. Close textual analysis suggests Pynchon's essential respect for Huey P. Newton's concept of revolutionary suicide, and his contempt for Marxist dialectical materialism, two core elements of Panther political theory. Drawing on an analogy between the BPP and Pynchon's Schwarzkommando, an assessment is made of the novel's perspective on the part played by various factors – including the Panthers’ aggressive militancy, the rise of Eldridge Cleaver through the leadership, and the subtle influence of a logic of power influenced by scientific rationalism – in bringing about the disintegration of the Panther organization by the early 1970s. Given the similarities between the paths taken by the BPP and the wider counterculture in the late 1960s, the article considers Pynchon's commentary on the Panthers to be part of a cautionary tale for future revolutionaries fighting similar forms of oppression.

Repression's Rainbow: The Presence of Norman O. Brown in Pynchon's Big Novel

PMLA ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
pp. 873-889 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence C. Wolfley
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Pynchon ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Death Instinct ◽  
Gravity’S Rainbow ◽  
Gravity's Rainbow

In Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon shows his indebtedness to the school of psychoanalytic culture criticism best exhibited in the two major works of Norman O. Brown—Life against Death and Love's Body. Brown's neo-Freudian view of repression as the source of man's uniqueness in nature is mirrored in virtually every thematic aspect of Gravity's Rainbow. In one sense, the physical gravity of the title is a metaphor for the human repression that engages Pynchon on the psychological level. Pynchon's understanding of history, like Brown's, reflects “the slow return of the repressed.” Other themes include the hypertrophy of the death instinct as manifested in weapons of destruction, the pernicious influence of Calvinist dualism opposing true dialectics, the interdependent abuses of sexuality and power, and the need for an antirational conception of art based in transcendental symbolism. The novel enacts the struggle of life against death, and its style affirms man's freedom.

Black Power Assaults the Black Newspaper

Race News ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Black Power ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
Student Newspapers ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Black Panther

The alternative black press grew in popularity and editorial stridency in the 1960s, prompting commercial publishers to try to steer the Black Power Movement into acceptable political channels. Alternative publications included student newspapers, leftist political journals, and organizational newspapers for Black Nationalist groups. The Black Panther and Muhammad Speaks claimed circulations that rivaled the largest commercial newspapers. Alternative editors questioned the value of integration, endorsed armed self-defense, and embraced a Marxist critique of American capitalism and empire. Commercial publishers attempted to advise young sit-in protesters and then tried to define Black Power as the effective use of political power. By the late 1960s, though, they almost universally condemned the Black Panther Party and other militant activists, fearing unneeded provocations would erase significant legislative achievements.

Mathematics and Fiction: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’S Rainbow

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-156
Author(s):  
Nina Engelhardt
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Thomas Pynchon ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
Mathematical Concepts ◽  
Gravity’S Rainbow ◽  
Gravity's Rainbow ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Ontological Uncertainty

Chapter 4 sets the engagement with modernist mathematics into broader context when examining the rise, fall and transformation of Enlightenment thinking and science in Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. This chapter also zeroes in on a topic that runs through all chapters: the interrelations of mathematics and fiction. The analysis focuses on illustrations of fictionality regarding the mathematical concepts of infinitesimals, the calculus, and probability theory and their philosophical and ethical consequences. The examination of interdependent ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ elements in mathematics provides a new perspective on Brian McHale’s identification of ontological uncertainty as the novel’s definitive postmodernist trait: the chapter shows that the novel’s renegotiation of mathematics is a decisive factor in its introduction of postmodernist features. As the title ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ with its combination of a scientific and a poetical image implies, Pynchon’s novel suggests that the shared use of fictional concepts both in mathematics and in literature connects the seemingly opposed realms.

scholarly journals “Orders Behind the Visible” – Puritan Elements in the Polish Translation of "Gravity’s Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon

Ad Americam ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 103-111
Author(s):  
Łukasz Barciński
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Thomas Pynchon ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
American Writer ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gravity’S Rainbow ◽  
Gravity's Rainbow ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Productive Potential

The article discusses contemporary American writer Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, a leading representative of postmodernism in literature. The study contains an examination of possible references to Puritanism in his novel, Gravity’s Rainbow. Religious motifs seem to play a crucial role in the interpretation of Pynchon’s work where the past is combined with the present and the Puritan religious doctrine merges with a paranoid approach to reading. Then, fragments from Gravity’s Rainbow in Polish translation are analyzed in terms of preserving the source text’s productive potential regarding the most important Puritan themes in the novel, e.g. animal symbolism and the doctrine of Preterition. Finally, the study offers conclusions related to the extent to which Puritan elements are recreated in the target text, highlighting the most considerable losses and gains in the translation process.

Fleeing to Sweden and Algeria

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-127
Author(s):  
Paul J. Magnarella
Keyword(s):  
Black Panther Party ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
Eldridge Cleaver ◽  
Black Panther

While on bail, prior to his appeals, Pete and Charlotte O’Neal escaped to Sweden and then to Algiers where Eldridge Cleaver accepted them into the International Section of the Black Panther Party. An American, Elaine Klein, helped Cleaver and the Black Panther Party become recognized by the Algerian government as an anti-colonial movement. Pete describes the organization and activities of the International Section, focusing on its contacts with the embassies of various communist states and non-state revolutionary groups. He explains the reasons for the split in the Party between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the latter’s departure from the Party, and Pete’s assumption of the International Section’s leadership role. O’Neal describes the two plane hijackings to Algiers, the resulting frictions between the Panthers and the Algerian government, and the Panthers’ departure from Algeria. Pete also relates the Panthers’ experiences with some visitors, including Timothy Leary.

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