New post! On the #chemistry of #purple, my favourite colour 💜

https://keiran-rowell.github.io/dyes/2025-11-05-aniline-and-the-german-chemical-industry/

This tale winds its way past sea snails and togas 🏛️, coal tar and dream snakes 🐍, industrial conglomerates and chemical theory ⌬ ⟷ ⏣, to flow back in recirculation to fundamental light-sensitive cells themselves 👁️💡🦠

Spend time with this hue right at the edge of our perception 🎨

#benzene #Kekulé #dyes #BASF #organic #porphyrin #GravitysRainbow #Pynchon #Perkin #rhodopsin #HistoryofScience #orbitals #art

1/In my journey through #Pynchon's #GravitysRainbow, I got to the part where Slothrop sneaks into Potsdam while Truman, Churchill and Stalin are meeting there to divide up Europe. The description is very specific as to the location of the house on the Griebnitzsee where Slothrop is trying to find the hidden kilo of hashish that Emil "Säure" Bummer has told him about: 2 Kaiserstrasse.

The firmament keeps telling me that I need to read the novels #InfiniteJest, and #GravitysRainbow

In #GravitysRainbow, here's Yank protagonist Slothrop all dressed up for a party:

"With my face shined up-like a microphone
And uh Sta-Comb on my hair,
I’m just as suave-as an ice-cream cone,
I’m Mister Debonair. . . .

"and turned out in a green French suit of wicked cut with a subtle purple check in it, broad flowered tie won at the trente-et-quarante table, brown and white wingtip shoes with golf cleats, and white socks, Slothrop tops off now with a midnight-blue snap-brim fedora..."

„Once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a certain degree of being connected one to another, the chances for freedom are over for good. The word has ceased to have meaning."
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow p.548
#ThomasPynchon #GravitysRainbow

„Once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a certain degree of being connected one to another, the chances for freedom are over for good. The word has ceased to have meaning."
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow p.548
#ThomasPynchon #GravitysRainbow

Ballard's Drowned World is 1962.

So far it gives me strong Bradbury, Pynchon, and Delaney feels.

Ray and JG were contemporary and I think it shows. In a good way!

It reminds me a lot of Dhalgren (1975), which I may rereread next because I kept losing interest carting around an enormous paperback that has since disappeared. No gay sex yet tho.

I won't reread Gravity's Rainbow (1973) again (I think), there's others I want to cover. Still have that kilo of a tome.

This is all probably somehow the fault of Paul Bowles.

@bookstodon #JGBallard #DrownedWorld #Pynchon #GravitysRainbow #Bradbury #PaulBowles

[2/3] My #VoteCorbyn volunteering began exactly one week before polling day on Thursday 27th June (two weeks ago today).

I had previously been busy. My American family (last visit #ge2017) managed to plan a visit (with Pirate Prentice levels of #GravitysRainbow empathy) for two weeks in #ge2024. Then I lost my job. Then I got distracted by the amazing #NeilForPoole campaign (final majority 18). And finally I needed a rest. With a book. On my parent's lawn. During the heatwave.

Do people still make covers for their paperbacks?
It took me a while to find something suitable for Gravity's Rainbow.

#Books #ThomasPynchon #GravitysRainbow #Bookstodon

#ThomasPynchon #Postmodern #PostModernLiterature

A great video analysis of #GravitysRainbow

The video essay has a slightly too obvious title. However, the essay itself has things to say beyond the synopsis of a book most won't read or of being an introduction to the same experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdOCNEJYtOM

#ProsePoem #EpicPoetry #EpicPoem #Postmodern #PostModernLiterature #Poetry
#Novella #Blog #Writing #WritingCommunity #Fiction #BLog

So This has been what I have been working on most of the last week. I feel like I have found my voice with the realization that #GravitysRainbow is a prose poem and I am writing in the tradition of Jim Dodge and Richard Brautigan by way of that realization.

all constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated.

The link is to my blog

https://m1a1-thesockmonkey.blogspot.com/2023/10/wayward-bound-or-warped-piano.html

Wondering if this is an appropriate book covering for Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

Currently on page 4: ONE. Beyond Zero.

I'd be further, but it took me a while to find the dinosaur wrapping paper.

#Books #ThomasPynchon #GravitysRainbow

One of the most challenging parts of #GravitysRainbow for me is grappling with the deliberately dreamy inflections in narration. So often, there isn't a single line where you're now inside the head of someone else - characters seem to grapple for agency over several paragraphs of shared narrative framing. Typically these contain the most confusing and the most honest feelings. I'm starting to think post-modernism is a commentary on how poorly conditioned we are to handle harsh realities.

Most haunting #GravitysRainbow line so far be "patrolled night and day by dogs specially betrayed". And there stiff competition.

Slightly puzzled why psionically inclined intelligence analysts would be impressed that evenly spaced V2 rocket impacts across London could be modeled and then predicted with a Poisson distribution equation - possibly this is a subtle satire on the ability of statisticians to see meaning in the stultifying banality of randomness? #GravitysRainbow #Pynchon

I'd like to discuss #Postmodernism with someone. I'm trying to figure out what I think about it. #InfiniteJest, #GravitysRainbow, #SlaughterhouseFive are among my favorite books, if that means anything.
A lot of these descriptions fit me:
"epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism." I think those are good traits, but I have a creeping sense that something is missing...
Maybe I am a #Postmodernist who is slowly inching toward something else?

https://lateboomersden.blog/2023/04/05/the-machine-all-of-us-created-together/
Just some sci fi geek rambling about what "the machine" is and what role AI and humans have to play in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF34N4gJAKE
#Technology, #AI, #Artificial Intelligence, #Bonobo, #Computers, #Consciousness, #Cyriak, #GravitysRainbow, #JohnnyRebeck, #JohnnyVerbeck, #Machine, #MIA, #RyeRye, #SausageMachine, #ThomasPynchon, #Pynchon

I see that it is the 50th anniversary of the first publication of #GravitysRainbow, my favourite book. Wilfully bewildering, stupefyingly erudite, profane, arcane, filthy and brilliant. I have never stopped reading it since I first opened my copy in 1984, 11 years after that publication. We almost share a birthday, although I will be a bit older when I celebrate.