Abstract

Gravity's Rainbow exploits concepts of entropy and paranoia familiar to Pynchon's readers, but the labyrinthine novel takes its particular character from a matrix of "correspondences." In this variant of the doctrine that unity resides in multiplicity, apparently disparate items reveal their fundamental oneness by signals obvious only to an informed initiate. Pynchon' has updated this Renaissance hermetism by using Jung's alchemical theory in a context of modern organic synthesis, and has further enriched the allusive maze by offering a choice of three possible cosmologies to "explain" the universe of the novel.

How to Cite:

George, N. F., (1980) “The Chyrnische Hochzeit of Thomas Pynchon”, Pynchon Notes 4, 5-22. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.494