Like a vet examining a very pregnant sacred cow, I am armpit deep into Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It’s warm, constricted and I’m pretty sure that the golden literary calf within is full of meconium. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad book. It has its “raison d’être” though it’s much much much too long. I can see its charms but reading it is a sick chore. On the farm chore scale I’d place it one step up from deworming a pig.
Without the cultural context of Joyce it kind of masturbates endlessly like a cocktail hour modernist. The lyrical anthropomorphizing of a WWII war theatre is clever but its sexualization comes off as very icky mid-century. The last-year kids today would simply stop at “mid”. It seems clear that the sexy bits excited male readers in 1973 and created a Playboy magazine style buzz for this book. Today it comes off as a sleazy yawn. It’s the kind of “edge” an insecure man like Bill Maher still finds sexy and relevant.
Calling Gravity’s Rainbow a postmodern work griefs the definition of postmodern. It’s a dense modernist book, yes, but merely discussing physics and time dilation isn’t enough. A true postmodern work would actually make you feel it. Various perspectives exist but the many questions they should pose are ironically lost in the sound of the explosion. In fact, Gravity’s Rainbow seems to pose few worthwhile questions at all while casting asunder the deeper core responsibility of archetypes. Where have we seen this kind of hollow treatment before? The three-year-ago kids would say “Ok, Boomer.”.
The more interesting thing for me is the accidental Thomas Pynchon historical parallel that prompted me to read his books in the first place. In 1937 Dr. John Clarence Webster wrote “Thomas Pynchon: The Spy of Beauséjour”, for the Sackville Tribune Press. I came across this essay while studying my family’s multi-faceted role in the American Revolution. A notorious and ignoble American Revolution era spy, Thomas Pichon is sometimes inaccurately called the Acadian Judas, though he was French. In 1751 he was the clerk of French Governor Jean-Louis de Raymond at Fortress Louisbourg. He was later sent to Fort Beauséjour which was eventually taken by Britain and named Fort Cumberland. There in French Fort Beauséjour this son of France served as correspondence scribe, editing and improving the grammar of Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre (see: Le Loutre’s War).
Long story short, Thomas Pichon was a promiscuous quasi-noble creep who liked little girls. He was also an opportunistic cowardly shit who envied other people’s expensive black slaves and lamented having to settle for Indigenous slaves. He spent his entire career as a clerk affixing himself to the rim of power’s anus like a blood-sucking tick. At a crucial period in Acadian history, he sold them out. Captain George Scott knew Pichon from Louisburg and invited him to Fort Lawrence. The Brits paid Pichon to betray French plans, especially planned attacks by “indians” and their Acadian allies. Though Pichon did his very best to kill it, the Siege of Fort Cumberland by allied Maliseet, Acadian and Nova Scotian American hopefuls did take place in 1776. It was an epic undertaking by a rag tag group of spectacular weirdos. It became the thorn in the British side which occupied The Vulture and helped Washington gain an upper hand. It is a little-known though important battle of the American Revolution and it directly led to the U.S. Treaty of Watertown.
His name is often spelled Pichon and he is said to have been born in Vire, France in the Calvados department region but Pichon family members are rare and usually just shorthand for the Pichonnier family which are found there. There’s no record of him or his parents there. On the other hand, Pinchon family members from Calvados department region of Ver-sur-Mer were common. Vire was often confused with Ver-sur-mer (seaside Ver). Older documents list him as Pinchon and even Pynchon though history has landed on Pichon. In this era of George Santos, it’s important to remember that liars lie and Thomas Pichon may have itself been a fake or “borrowed” identity with a fake back story. Then again, even as a true Pynchon (of Normand French origin) he wouldn’t be the first to betray his French roots and call for their demise. That and the sabotage of Indigenous interests has unfortunately been a very long Pynchon family legacy.
Thomas Pichon c.1700, shamed by his many ignoble exploits, changed his name to Thomas Signis Tyrrell after his betrayal and lived out his life in Britain. He died in Jersey, the Normand island off the coast of France. He was a prolific writer who died in 1781 (actual proof below) and left a vast body of work.
He courted famous authors and ran in literary circles despite how despised he was. He was highly educated and very clearly – a writer. His much much much too long-titled book collected the letters of his betrayal era as well as his feeble rationalizations. It was last published in 1966 right around the time when The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon was published and his career truly began to roll.
That’s just a coincidence of course, much like erections and rocket launches.
