u/Allthatisthecase-

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?