u/Allthatisthecase-

This a is admittedly playing in a sand box but re-reading Vineland I got this dawning realization that some key elements to Tarentino’s Kill Bill biology was taken directly from Pynchon’s, imo, underrated novel. DL, the white, western gorgeous female Ninja with off the charts martial skills is out for revenge; complete with an arcane, rarely mastered skill called “Vibrating Palm”. It’s a delay kill technique. That is, when applied it seems harmless but it has set up a chain of fucked up chi diversions that drops the victim stone dead at a later point. Hm . . . This doesn’t really matter (I liked Kill Bill). I was just struck by the direct lift from Pynchon.

As a fan and appreciator of GR I’ve always had a singular beef with it: it’s subsuming of character into idea. Case in point, for all the ink spent I have no sense of Slothrop as an actual human being. He’s an emotional and psychological black hole - I never feel his dilemmas nor his thought processes.
However, knowing Pynchon that’s undoubtedly the point. If individuals, for all their struggles, are mere products, and helpless products of greater overarching forces the Slothrop is prey to one of the largest and most dominant: Nature. In his case, biology. Students of Slothrop want to find a larger meaning, want to think his biology can be mapped as some sort of mystical or Pavlovian predictor of V2 strikes but, in the end, he’s just a walking, randy erection. A mere brush of fingertips has him in full rut. He’s a victim of his biology. Full stop. He’s a biological colonizer with no more agency than the rocket has after full burn and completely in the arms of Gravity. It’s a bleak hole in the middle of a magical and magisterial novel. The center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Btw: I feel exactly the same way about The Waste Land. GR is its heir. Thoughts?