Article

King Ludd Sets Up Shop in the Zone: Narrator as Trickster in Gravity's Rainbow

Author: Reuben J. Ellis (University of Colorado/Boulder)

Abstract

We have in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow a narrator who would embrace, who would delight in the double-entendre Nietzsche's translator constructs for the word lieth. By gratuitously and a-contextually transporting the fundamental ambiguity of this pun to Pynchon's Zone, we make available certain insights into not only the anatomy, but also the affective presence of Pynchon's work, that is, its capacity to act upon itself, to influence the world it describes. At the very least, I propose here one possible itinerary, a segment of an Autobahn that "lieth" as a route through a work of highly complex and shifting meaning.

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How to Cite: Ellis, R. J. (1986) “King Ludd Sets Up Shop in the Zone: Narrator as Trickster in Gravity's Rainbow”, Pynchon Notes.(0). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.351