Fortunately I was wrong and he quickly tossed off Inherent Vice, a hilarious detective novel set at the end of the hippy era. Supposedly, Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie adaptation of Inherent Vice is filming now with rumors of a ensemble cast full of stars. But what’s even more exciting is that Pynchon has a new novel coming out later this year. The novel is called Bleeding Edge and it is set in New York between the collapse of the dot-com bubble and September 11, 2001.

Read the first page of Bleeding Edge here.

I’ve read just about everything Pynchon has written, and his longer novels are my favorite. I particularly love Gravity’s Rainbow and Against The Day because there is so much going on in them, so many different angles to the narratives, and so many different ways to read them, that every person who reads the novel comes out of it with a different experience.

A while ago I picked one angle and wrote a review of Gravity’s Rainbow.

Article first published as Book Review: Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon on Blogcritics.

GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon

Dubbed “The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II” (The New Republic), Gravity’s Rainbow is a massive, freewheeling, paranoid journey through Europe at the tail end of the Second World War. Novelist and esoterica buff Thomas Pynchon is in top form for this, his third novel. A dense, challenging epic, Gravity’s Rainbow is highly rewarding for those with the attention span and patience to take it on.

From the first line we know the concept of The Preterite, or passed-over, is going to be a prominent theme. “A screaming comes across the sky…” A screaming what? The allusion is to a rocket, faster than sound so its target has no way to hear it coming. And the hunt for this preterite rocket, codename “00000″, and its mysterious black device, the S-Gerat, is a loose analogy of our main character, Tyrone Slothrop. In Pynchon’s own post-modern, self-reflexive words, “Some called [Tyrone] a ‘pretext.’ Others felt that he was a genuine, point-for-point microcosm.” (p. 753) This atypical approach to writing defies expectations, assuring Gravity’s Rainbow a prominent place in the history of the novel, even if it is often overlooked.

Pynchon loves to play with the form. The book introduces a madman’s variety of characters in a stunning array of literary styles. Often hilarious, sometimes shocking, Gravity’s Rainbow is no simple story. Perhaps not since Ulysses by James Joyce has an author swung through the canopy of styles so freely, offering up slapstick, scientific realism, hallucinatory stream-of-consciousness and more. The novel slides from one heterodox story to the next, immersing the reader in the chaos spread across Europe by World War II. Some characters hide, some fall in love or dive into obsession to distract from the reality of wartime, while others charge in headfirst, hungry for glory. And all the while, the real question is being asked – why? Why was there a war? Who made the decisions leading up to it, and how was it determined that war is the best option?

Tyrone isn’t introduced until page 61, but even before that we get a sense of his complicated personality. Tyrone has been the subject of bizarre, pseudo-Pavlovian conditioning that somehow leads him to be sexually aroused just before a rocket strike. Stranger yet is that he seems to have subconscious knowledge of exactly where the rocket will hit, though he thinks he’s just following his libido. We begin to understand that Tyrone’s motivations are not wholly his own. Like everyone in the war, Tyrone is deeply affected by a terrifying situation beyond his control. And like the 00000, we sense that he will only become aware of his true role in all this when it’s too late.

Gravity’s Rainbow has been called meta-historical fiction. The historical context of the story is completely true, but Pynchon draws the reader into the mania of the characters, little tangents and cul-de-sacs of fantasy that elevate the story to the realm of mythology. This sounds intellectual and heady, and it is, but the story never feels dry; sex, drugs, love and mystery drive the plot forward with a knowing humor that is both laugh-out-loud and profound.

Following a variety of WWII fringe groups brings the story into even stranger realms. Shadowy organizations like The White Visitation, PISCES, and Operation Black Wing look at the war through lenses of parapsychology and the occult. Delving into Nazi legend, corporate conspiracy, Kabbalah, the elusive Schwarzkommando, ballistic hermeneutics and a unique brand of rocket mysticism, Gravity’s Rainbow offers up a paranoid dream for hippies and soldiers alike. The novel seems to say that some special form of mass insanity must be responsible for something on the magnitude of a World War. What the cause of this insanity is, exactly, is a little more elusive.

Tyrone is an American-born rocket specialist, a guidance man who frequently peeks his head up into the realm of superhero. His irresistible urge toward sex and predilection for drugs find him stumbling into situations oblivious to the big picture, though he often ends up in the right place. When a hashish pickup goes awry Tyrone raids an opera costume trunk and becomes “Rocket Man”, a stylish WWII hero if ever there was one. Tyrone is not a typical hero, just as Gravity’s Rainbow is not a typical novel. Tyrone is both Preterite and Elect. He is a Chosen One, the special subject of strange experiments in behavioral conditioning. But he always manages to stay out of the limelight, passed over at crucial times while danger misses him by a hair. In one of the more brutal scenes in the book, pair of doctors search a spa for Tyrone, who by now is dressed as a giant pig. Through a case of mistaken identity, Tyrone avoids a horrible future that would more than dampen his sex life. Both his preterition and election save him from the worst of the war.

The same goes for the novel. It is a Bible of countercultural intellectualism, an underground epic for dope smokers and mystics that by its undeniable brilliance was awarded a National Book Award. On the other hand Gravity’s Rainbow was passed over for a Pulitzer Prize despite a unilateral vote. The Pulitzer committee decided instead to hand out no prize that year, presumably because of the morally questionable material throughout the book. Despite the real horrors of WWII and the Nazi party, apparently this fiction was too much for the Pulitzer board to handle. A book like this will likely never be given the prestige it deserves because it deals with too many fringe elements in a sympathetic way. Gravity’s Rainbow blurs morality, details too much real-world corruption and power politics, discloses too much about the business of war, GE and IG Farben, looks at behavioral conditioning and fetishism, and all with strong undertones of anarchy. Books like this are almost always passed over by the Establishment.

Gravity’s Rainbow takes place in the tumultuous fallout of war, and much like the victims of a rocket strike, swirls and writhes to recover what has been destroyed. “My mother is the war,” says mathematician Roger Mexico. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and in a war like this one everyone is affected. Everyone reacts in his or her own way to the visible and invisible causes of war. Despite the chaotic and multifaceted paths taken by our heroes, the many become unified in their loves and fears, all raising a glass in song at the absurd, sublime condition of our world. Nothing is the same after the war. And those who make it through the dense prose of Gravity’s Rainbow will remember it as a benchmark novel like no other.

Gravity’s Rainbow is a novel to be read and re-read, a companion to be studied over a lifetime. Thanks to the grandness of the story, the prodigal complexion of the prose, and Pynchon’s ability to weave minute detail and lofty abstraction into the telling, Gravity’s Rainbow reveals more and more of its secrets with subsequent reads. It grows with the reader, like an old man dispensing wisdom through the years, unafraid to offend or enlighten.

Sports are full of superstitions. So are the arts. Some athletes wear the same item during every game, regardless of whether it brought them a win or loss in the previous game. Actors will curse you if you say “Macbeth” backstage at a play, even if the play they’re performing is Macbeth. It’s a strange world out there, full of strange beliefs.

Interestingly, today I read an article in Scientific American about the power of rituals. The article points out that according to a few recent studies, rituals work. And they work regardless of whether you believe they will. Now, when I say “work”, I don’t mean they make the impossible possible, but they have an effect on the people who do them.

And why shouldn’t they? So many unconscious processes affect us all the time that we really can have only a vague idea why we succeed at some things we attempt and not others. Many of our unconscious processes contradict our conscious intentions, so we often manufacture failure for ourselves without realizing it. If we can perform some ritual to prime our unconscious, to let that invisible brat know it’s game time, we might find our performance enhanced.

I know from experience that the best plays and the most outstanding goals usually don’t spring out of a conscious plan. They happen when the player’s conscious mind gets lost in the chaos of the game and the instinctual unconscious takes action. This is why “beginner’s luck” exists. A new golfer might hit a hole in one while a veteran may wait his or her entire life and still never get one. Beginners don’t out-think their unconscious intent because they haven’t had all the lessons, haven’t heard all the ways their swing is incorrect.

On the other hand, there is a popular theory that we can become an expert at just about anything by accumulating 10 000 hours of practice. This makes sense too because the repetitive conscious practice drills the desired behaviors into our unconscious through muscle memory and long-term potentiation in the brain. When you’ve racked up that much time doing anything, you don’t need to think about it a whole lot to have success. Just let the invisible brat do it.

But make sure you don’t piss the invisible brat off. There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “If you want to see God laugh, tell Him your plans.” The brat loves to mess with conscious intent, and it has the mentality of a four year old. So don’t talk about your goalie’s shutout or your pitcher’s no-hitter until the game is over. I keep my important plans silent so God doesn’t know what to think.

What the fornicate?

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) May 14, 2013

I’m not saying LaPierre is clever. He might be, but what’s more likely is he truly believes in his cause, is afraid his constitutional rights are in danger, and is negligent of the facts. While actively supporting and promoting gun culture, when children were massacred in Newtown the NRA’s first statement was a condemnation of the entertainment industries for promoting violent content.

We should assume from their reasoning that before video games and movies, there was very little violent crime. When Caesar invaded Gaul it’s thought there were over one million casualties and another million people taken into slavery. And that’s people hacked to pieces by swords, not dispatched with the clinical precision of drones or guns. So what precipitated that violence? To be fair, the graffiti on Roman buildings was probably pretty racy. Get real.

It reminds me of these ridiculous controversies about movies being too sexy. Sexual deviance does not exist because of pornography, it is exactly the other way around. Movies and music videos continue to get more explicit, and this shocks the older generation, but it is completely natural. As entertainment and arts continue to show us our humanity in new forms, we should always expect there to be fringes where the boundaries of decency are pushed. There will always be violent art because art draws from and expands the human experience. And while I’ve seen movies that are way too violent, I’ve still never seen a movie that’s too sexy.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem likely we’ll radically change human behavior any time soon. Let’s assume there will always be maniacs out there. We can’t lock every nut up preemptively, but we can make certain behaviors difficult. That’s why there are laws. Can anyone tell me why background checks for gun ownership is a bad idea? 80% of Americans think it’s a good idea, including many NRA members, yet the government can’t get it together to do the will of the people.

If you’re a government official and you intentionally stand in the way of the will of the people, plus you’re a pimp for gun manufacturers and completely lack a conscience, you should be thrown out on your ass and kept far away from any policy-makers. This seems very obvious to me, but I haven’t heard anyone take it seriously. It seems that in government broad change is nearly impossible without a bloody revolution.

Maybe that’s what the NRA and Republicans are after. They make their money by selling guns, after all, and what better tool for a bloody revolution? The NRA has given $80 million to politicians to keep the sale of guns as easy as possible. And while gun casualties continue to mount in heartbreaking numbers, the NRA continue their rhetoric about freedom, lashing out like a jock whose manliness is in question.

Well, I don’t question the manliness of the NRA or gun lovers. But I also realize that manliness isn’t something that matters in the grand scheme of things. Intelligence, on the other hand, definitely matters. If there is a revolution, I hope it’s one that stands up and says, “It’s not okay to be stupid.” Kudos to those already fighting that fight.

Billboards crowd our urban highways and city streets, radios run commercials as often as music, and television programming seems almost to be entirely dictated by advertisers. But an interesting thing has happened to television commercials in recent years.

The PVR, or DVR, has given the audience the ability to skip commercials. Provided one isn’t watching live TV, I see no reason anyone would consciously subject themselves to commercials when they have the opportunity to ignore them.

But I don’t like using the “Skip” function on my remote; I like to come back to a program clean after a commercial break, not accidentally skip twelve seconds into the show and then have to rewind. So I use the fast forward function and zoom through commercials until I know I’m close.

So instead of seeing the commercial narratives and hearing all that noisy advertising, I hear nothing and see a flash of images that usually culminate in some logo or slogan. I sometimes wonder what effect this has on me. After all, these images have been carefully selected by professionals to produce results, and it’s well documented that the subconscious responds to imagery even if we don’t consciously notice it. Could I be accidentally making commercials more effective by circumnavigating my conscious mind?

When I see a commercial normally, my guard is up. Nobody likes to be manipulated, and we all know this is what commercials intend to do. So generally we can watch a commercial and feel like it won’t have any coercive effect on us. Naturally we don’t have any idea what effect the commercial will have on our unconscious, but with the conscious mind mediating the commercial, we at least feel like we’re making our own decisions when we’re shopping.

When I hit fast forward I shut my conscious critic off (unless I notice something hilarious or outrageous, in which case I usually rewind to watch the full commercial, as is often the case for drug commercials). So if a picture is worth a thousand words, I’m cramming my subconscious with millions of words without tempering them by logic or common sense. Because my subconscious was exposed to a pretty, smiling girl eating a Big Mac, I might be more inclined to “spontaneously” feel like one. Plus, I might be more inclined to rationalize that behavior; if I haven’t noticed the external influence I might assume my McWhim came from “me”. (In case you were worried, I haven’t eaten a Big Mac in about fifteen years.)

Social forces like Adbusters or Mad Men have made us hip enough to recognize that advertisers specifically target our unconscious wants. Usually our only conscious want while we’re watching television is to be entertained, so commercials are meant to be entertaining to keep us on our couches. The real intended effect, where the money comes from, is often a combination of images, sounds and specific words meant to embed in our unconscious. They hope when we experience something related, we will correspond it to their specific product. So when we’re hungry we think of a specific burger chain.

Those unconscious desires are insidious because they rarely come with a list of pros and cons. Consciously I can deliberate a cost-benefit analysis and outsmart the charlatans. But the unconscious doesn’t seem to argue with itself like the conscious mind does. The unconscious mind seems to wait until the conscious mind is off guard before it goes after its desire. Otherwise our unconscious desires manipulate our conscious minds into justifying that want.

So when we think about the amount of commercials we see, and the ever-increasing skill with which they manipulate our wants, we should expect our society to consume more and more advertised products, to become more and more conflicted in its wants, and to fall more easily into the consumer lifestyle that is dictated by media images. Does this seem to be happening?

Fortunately we have reason, which gives us higher-order thinking and veto power over urges. I thank reason for the fact that I’m not buying Lunesta sleeping pills or Geico insurance. The other thing I have going for me is that I almost never buy products, outside of the ones I eat and drink while watching television…

“Lunesta is different, it keys into receptors that support sleep. When taking Lunesta, don’t drive or operate machinery until you feel fully awake. Walking, eating, driving, or engaging in other activities while asleep without remembering the next day have been reported. Abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations or confusion. In depressed patients, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide may occur. Alcohol may increase these risks. Allergic reactions such as tongue or throat swelling occur rarely and may be fatal. Side effects may include unpleasant taste, headache, dizziness and morning drowsiness.” – Lunesta commercial

I don’t see why we need an apology for nihilism. Think through history about the people who have been killed or injured in the name of Nothing. Now think of the people killed in the name of some belief. Let the believers apologize if they want. Nihilism gives me no anxiety.

I consider myself a nihilist because I make a conscious effort to hold no fixed beliefs. I can watch the sun rise six days in a row and “believe” that it will rise on the seventh. But this isn’t a fixed belief, it’s just memory and understanding. I definitely do not hold the fixed belief that the sun will rise forever. As a matter of fact, I know this is impossible.

Many people assume nihilists are automatically immoral. They have no grounds to do so. I recently read a moronic tweet asking an atheist why he doesn’t just kill and rape anyone he wants? The atheist responded, “I do.” Of course he does, and so do I, because normal people don’t kill or rape. Let’s disambiguate the term nihilist from “asshole” forever. A better synonym for “asshole” would be “fanatic believer”.

Rosenberg takes a staunch materialist view of everything, it seems. He thinks that matter and energy and strict causality created all of reality, and that absolutely everything can be answered by physical facts. I find this ridiculous on a few levels. At exactly what point in history did science gain all the answers? It is a perfectly true fact that science has never had all the answers.

In the early days of the Newtonian revolution, everyone thought his system was The System. Of course Einstein proved that he was completely wrong. Sure, Newton’s theories were a huge jump forward owing to their usefulness, but let me just reiterate, he was wrong. The idea that there is some absolute space and absolute time is pure fiction, false to the facts of the universe. To assume physics will ever have all the answers is to disregard history with a faulty intellectual hubris. Not surprising since Rosenberg believes history is meaningless.

Everything that science has illuminated, it has done so through the human nervous system. There are no cold, hard facts sitting out there in a vacuum. Everything we understand about reality happens as a result of some nervous system interacting with the universe, of which that nervous system is a part. We can talk about the material basis for thoughts and feelings, but in order to express the uniqueness of each individual, we need something more.

Every one of us lives in our own unbelievably complex semantic environment. We interact with symbols, languages and feelings all the time, and all of these experiences become uniquely related to the observer. Even contemporary material science recognizes the effect of the observer on an observed physical system. Of course life loses meaning and purpose when you only consider the material side of reality. The semantic side is full of meaning, and inextricably linked to everything we know or can know about the universe.

Somehow Mr. Rosenberg thinks he can speak for the universe by eliminating the human experience. Then again, I haven’t read his book. I’ve only read the review. Anyway, it’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.

I liked the bullet point Q & A that outlines Rosenberg’s position, so I’ll just give a quick rundown with my first reactions for your reading pleasure. Naturally snappy answers to big questions are oversimplified.

Is there a God? No.

“Yes” or “No” doesn’t matter much to me without any attempt to define God.

What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.

Physics itself says nothing. Physics is the name human beings have given to our own scientific observation of the universe. But even physicists don’t agree. There is still no fully developed model of our universe that doesn’t contain huge contradictions. Loop quantum gravity, string theory, etc., are not compatible. Even the Big Bang is just a theory, and one that no monolithic scientific community can get behind. To assume our current science is on the right track to discover everything is ridiculous. As our powers of perception continue to increase there will be always be more unknowns in the universe.

What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.

The question is a teleological error. Teleology, the doctrine that final causes exists, is nonsense to most modern philosophers, so the question is a silly one. The answer is correct though.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

I dare Rosenberg to define the word “meaning”. If he chooses to define his words with other words, and to define those words with still more words, he will eventually come to either a circular definition or ambiguous nonsense. Meaning is a function of the semantic structure of some human experience.

The term meaning is related to the level of abstraction taken into consciousness. Rosenberg wouldn’t admit that his book is meaningless, while most people should agree that a kitchen sink has no ‘meaning’. Meaning involves a cohesive structure of symbols, interpreted through a nervous system, reason, emotion, intuition, etc. As a writer, I consciously create meaning through the manipulation of symbols. Meaning is what we make it.

Of course if he’s talking about some objective meaning for all of life, I agree there’s no master plan at work here outside of our own.

Why am I here? Just dumb luck.

Yes. Good call.

Does prayer work? Of course not.

On this point he is actually wrong. There have been numerous studies that show results from prayer and meditation. Even if prayer only serves to focus one’s attention on certain concerns, it has had an effect. This type of answer reeks of dogmatic atheism, a fanatical belief which I have no time for.

Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding?

Are you kidding? Once again, asking ambiguous questions, making no attempt to define the topics, and writing them off. Forgivable in this short-form index.

Is there free will? Not a chance!

Hmm. It’s tough to define consciousness, but among its criteria is the ability to apply different responses to stimuli. The more responses an organism can have to a given stimulus, the more conscious it is. This is a very reduced and ambiguous definition, but broadly acceptable to my mind. Strict determinism makes a lot of questionable assumptions about why different reactions would be given to the same stimuli. Chaos Theory and quantum effects might form a material basis for an answer, but that level of reality is effected by observation.

It’s very easy to feel from daily experience that the decisions we make come from thinking and not because of material, deterministic factors. To say that thoughts are only the results of electronic impulses is to completely disregard the human experience, to disregard quality over quantity.

What happens when we die? Everything pretty much goes on before, except us.

To be fair and literal, nothing ever just goes on as before.

What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.

This may sound controversial, but I agree. I do not believe in moral absolutes, and as there is no such thing as a teleological expert, all moral systems are of equal value. Obviously going around killing people isn’t helpful to oneself or anyone else, and so is simply stupid. I do agree with his assumption that people are naturally inclined to be good and nice.

Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral.

I more or less agree here. I think personal happiness is a good goal for life, and everyone’s personal happiness is connected with mine.

Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes.

To quote the creed of Hassan-i Sabbah “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.” Sabbah was the founder of the Assassins…so he’s probably not a great example for “nice nihilism”.

What is love and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it.

Huh?

Does history have any meaning or purpose? It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.

History is a collection of data on the experiences and interaction of organisms similar to myself. If I can glean anything about what motivates people to act, I can apply this knowledge to my own decision-making process.

Does the human past have any lessons for our future? Fewer and fewer, if it ever had any to begin with (2-3).

I have no reaction to this one.

P.S. I was reminded of a scene from The Big Lebowski that highlights the absurdity of this phobia towards nihilism. Three extortionists threaten to cut The Dude’s nuts off. Walter refers to them as Nazis but he is corrected by The Dude – they’re nihilists. Walter gets serious and says, “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, but at least it’s an ethos.”

In high school I played poker constantly, hosting a weekly game and even playing at school with friends and teachers. Around the time I turned 19, a casino opened up in my hometown and I got a taste for table games such as Mini-Baccarat, Blackjack, Let It Ride Poker, etc., and for a couple years I gambled regularly and ended up with what I remember as a net win (though I didn’t keep records of my play back then so I can’t say for sure).

But I quickly realized one can’t make a living at those table games because, put simply, they are “house games”. This means the mathematical structure of the games ensure the casino will win more than it loses. Unless you can count cards at the Blackjack table, or you have enough of a bankroll to play as the bank in Baccarat, the only casino game you can win at regularly is poker. In proper poker you play against other humans, rather than playing against the rigged probabilities of the house. Of course the casino makes automatic profit on poker, but if you can make better decisions than your opponents you’re almost guaranteed a profit over the long term.

I basically eliminated house games from my repertoire and was always happy to point out to friends why they shouldn’t play them. Around this time I took the attitude that our provincial lottery is a kind of tax on the mathematically deficient. Of course everyone who plays realizes the odds of winning the lottery are basically nil. When people play they are not doing so because it’s a good mathematical proposition; either they are ignorant of the math, or they are ignoring the math.

For a long time I would automatically assume they were ignorant of the math. What I was missing is the fact that gambling is a legitimate form of entertainment. The odds-against can reasonably be justified as the cost of that entertainment. I know how exciting it is to draw out against a better hand. Even when we lose, those indeterminate moments where we’re waiting for a card to fall have our rapt attention, and for a good reason; trying to win out against the chaos of nature has been a pastime of humanity forever.

Cards, dice and boardgames are a great analogy for life. It’s a challenge to ride the waves of probability to success. Games of chance mimic the unpredictability of life. But never mind the philosophy; it’s just fun.

My rule of thumb is to play games where the decisions I make during the game alter the outcome. The lottery and bingo are out because if the game is truly random, no decision I make can increase my chances of winning. Same with Roulette; if I bet on the number 6 or “Even”, it has no affect on where the ball lands. All Roulette wagers are equal underdogs. The exception to this rule is sports-betting or proposition gambling. Here you can out-analyze your opponents, even if your wager won’t affect the game or proposition.

The more decisions I can make during a game that affect the outcome, the more opportunities I have to outplay my opponents. This is why I’ll take poker to Blackjack any day. It’s also why I’ll take Risk over Monopoly, and Axis and Allies over Risk. Naturally when there’s no money on the line, my rules don’t hold very much water. Sometimes it’s just fun to stick your hand into the chaos and take your chances.

When confronting this disrespect of religion it’s helpful to remember that religions maintained their power for centuries by the systematic persecution of all those who disagreed with them. This is much worse than ridicule, and entrenched power structures still pull this nonsense today. It’s only now that U.S. politicians are taking a second look at the religiously-inspired intolerance of homosexuality. (And just this weekend, BBC reported that a 60-year-old woman was tortured for alleged witchcraft in Nepal, which assault was apparently sanctioned by the local village council. Last year a different woman was burnt alive for the same reason.)

The problem seems to be that everyone is so sure of themselves. I recently saw an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher that mocked a Newsweek article called “Heaven Is Real”, in which a comatose neurosurgeon claims to have visited the afterlife. Bill and his panelists scoffed in their usual manner, claiming the account was unscientific and unreal. While the account was definitely unscientific, its reality is debatable.

The scientific empiricist laughs the experience off as a hallucination, as unreal because it is not verifiable in a laboratory. They say that such an article is harmful to science, and therefore to society, because it promotes belief in the supernatural. They would argue rightly that belief in the supernatural leads away from belief in empirically-testable phenomena and hence towards insanity.

Of course there is no doubt that Dr. Eben Alexander’s experience was real to him. It reordered his conception of reality and was a transformative experience with obvious subjective value. He is not wrong to write about his experience, though he is wrong to call it scientific. The whole method of science is to root out those variables that are purely subjective.

This debate brings me to one of my favorite topics: The Real. I get a lot of personal joy from the fuzzy definitions of the word “real”. Individually the definitions of the word are unbearably limiting because they fail to acknowledge the multi-ordinality of the word (to borrow a term from Alfred Korzybski). The definition of the word “real” depends entirely on its context and the structure of the argument in which it is used.

Through our entire lives experience is the primary datum. We can’t even properly speak of the universe without reference to our experience of it. Scientific advancements are valuable to us because they can make the macroscopic, microscopic, or sub-microscopic realms intelligible to our experience, just as a telescope is merely a technological extension of our sense of sight. A telescope does not measure the reality of far away places; it is the empiricist who proclaims “I see it, therefore it is real.”

“The empiricist…thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.” – G. Santayana

I am comfortable in proclaiming the reality of subjective experience. However, subjective experience has the insidious tendency to colour our perceptions of the outside world. William James says the mystic has every right to his or her visions, and that no outsider can refute this. However the corollary to this is that mystical realities are valid only to the one experiencing them and do not extend beyond the subjective realm. The connection between the inside and the outside cannot be perfect.

This is where I can get on board with Bill Maher: theism and atheism aside, when purely subjective experiences leak out into the objective world, the objective world is made insane. When religious metaphysics shape our social policies, the politicians are out of touch with the external reality they ought to be governing. It is only when subjective experiences are true to the facts of the external world that they should be used to dictate external laws. To do otherwise is a confusion of planes; what is real externally may not be real internally and vice versa.

Zeno’s paradox of dichotomy, which states we can never make it to our destination because we have to first travel half way there, then half of the remaining distance, and so on ad infinitum, is silly and insane because it disregards the external fact that we don’t travel according to logarithmic principles. I simply walk to my destination and arrive without noticing when I’m half or three-quarters of the way there. Zeno puts mathematics before experience, but mathematics is a priori and doesn’t refer to nature.

When empirical policies must be formed, empirical laws must be obeyed. When we decide our own personal code of beliefs and ethics, the subjective experiences of our life will be determinative. To regulate belief from without would also be a mistake. As for religion, if a subjective, personal connection to the divine becomes good enough for everyone, I bet these atheists won’t have much to say about it. It’s mainly belligerent evangelism they’re trying to tear down.

Almost finished. Twenty-three years of study, thousands of nights wrestling math, and his life is an acknowledged waste. When he was fired he knew exactly what to do. He would paint, and he would kill himself. His life of analysis and logic was for nothing. He would leave behind illogical beauty.

He had fought bitterly about infinities in functional mathematics. You damn well can’t multiply it by q[E + (v x B)], so how his replacement pulled the wool over their eyes is a mystery.

It’s done, he decides. Door unlocked, note on table, he climbs out onto the ledge looking down thirty-one stories. No anxiety now, no pain.

Accidentally, he falls. When he forces his eyes open he realizes something is wrong; he’s falling sideways, and he’s not alone. Everything not nailed down flies sideways, rocketing over the Atlantic Ocean. His painting flies past him and disappears.

In a split second he realizes he’s falling towards Switzerland. Then it dawns on him; his young replacement has fudged the math, and the fine scientists at CERN have opened a black hole.

So it wasn’t for nothing, he thinks, and laughs all the way to the Event Horizon.

END

[On the one year anniversary of my blog I'm glad to be posting some fiction for a change. Most of the stuff I write floats around between me and various speculative fiction magazines and posting it on this blog might make it ineligible for publication. I submitted Pictures of Infinity to the Lascaux Flash Fiction contest (250 words max.) and since it didn't win I'm happy to publish it here instead. I hope you got a kick out of it.]

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Bottle Rocket on Blogcritics.

THE FILM

Bottle Rocket is the debut film from director Wes Anderson and introduces brothers Luke, Owen, and Andrew Wilson. The Blu-ray edition was released by The Criterion Collection in late 2008, fully four years after its release of Anderson’s second film Rushmore. Though less polished and flashy than Anderson’s successive work, Bottle Rocket remains Anderson’s most genuine, warm and sophisticated film. My appreciation for it seems to grow with every viewing thanks to its subtlety. Fortunately it is one of the most re-watchable comedies I have ever seen.

Bottle Rocket is a quietly funny masterpiece. There are no major gags, no crazy set-pieces, and it’s not a jokey movie at all. Its hilarity comes from the depth of its touching characters. A nuanced character study is not usually the most fertile field for comedy, admittedly, and it might take viewers a few watches to appreciate the precision of Anderson and Owen Wilson’s script (and of course Luke and Owen’s performances). But the film’s honesty shines in the hands of Wes Anderson and these talented actors.

James Caan has an good interpretation of the title, as mentioned in the commentary. A bottle rocket is a small explosive. As a kid, you might be excited to light one off, but the explosion is more or less tame and probably won’t get anyone into serious trouble. And that is true of these characters and the movie as a whole. All have a beautiful capacity to dream, but the goals are never as big a spectacle as the enthusiasm. As the film’s biggest dreamer Dignan plans a bookstore heist featuring explosives and a .357 Magnum, he draws himself as the star on the map because in his own mind, he is a star. Naturally he draws the getaway driver Bob as a “zero”.

When Anthony’s enthusiasm ignites Dignan, we want to see his dreams explode into reality. Although he’s not that smart, has skewed morals, and is a terrible criminal mastermind, we want Dignan to succeed because we know how happy it makes him to live out his fantasies. Characters without cynicism are rare these days. Owen Wilson’s enthusiasm is hilarious, but his fragility is heartbreaking. That is the theme of Bottle Rocket. These characters struggle to bring their dreams to life, to have that explosive moment of danger.

These characters are products of an environment that requires no risk. Anthony has retired to a mental hospital for exhaustion despite having never worked a day in his life. Dignan has a criminal mind but uses the money he steals for pinball and fireworks. Bob is well dressed but still lives with his parents, where he grows marijuana plants. Only Mr. Henry (James Caan) seems to be successfully living his dreams. Mr. Henry inspires Dignan to make his mark as a criminal while Anthony’s little sister, the most cynical character in the film, acts as the voice of reason.

Anthony is on the verge of growing up. When he meets Inez, a housekeeper where the gang is laying low, his emotions threaten Dignan’s 75-year plan. But Dignan is an iconic dreamer. Like Henry Hill from Goodfellas, Dignan always wanted to live outside the law. But his dreams take him further from reality; when his big heist falls through he literally seeks escape in a door labeled “No Exit”. His plan of incorporating dynamite, laughing gas, and pole vaulting into crime were never going to happen. His dreams are destined to fail because they are unrealistic. Even still, we get the sense that for Dignan, their attempt, their brief brush with danger, might have been enough. Maybe his dreams were only ever meant to be dreams.

THE DISC

The video, 1080p at 1.85:1, is a nice improvement from standard definition, but the clarity does not blow me away. I am able to make out some nice background action, out-of-focus business I hadn’t noticed before in standard definition. But some noise is there if you look for it, especially in scenes with washed-out, overcast skies. Considering Criterion released Bottle Rocket several years after its first DVD release, I was hoping for a better image.

The making-of documentary, new for Criterion, is an interesting 25-minute retrospective that incorporates the memories of several key players including the three Wilsons, Wes Anderson, James Caan, James L. Brooks, Mark Mothersbaugh and plenty more.

The disc includes a commentary from Anderson and Owen Wilson. Recorded exclusively for Criterion, it’s a nice casual dialogue which starts slow but adds a few nice insights and two likeable opinions. One story told by Anderson fits nicely: a big screening in Santa Monica went brutally, and only one comment card was full of enthusiasm for Bottle Rocket. They kept the card and memorized it for inspiration. Later Anderson coincidentally met the girl who left the card and said, “Here’s our audience. One in five hundred.” Fortunately the careers of the key players following the movie have helped that number significantly.

Deleted scenes are raw and unpolished, but a welcome bonus of somewhat indulgent scenes. Correctly edited out, in my opinion, there are still good laughs and more content for enthusiasts. An anamorphic screen test gives us a taste of what could have been a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and it has promise. Murita Cycles by Barry Braverman is a strangely tangential short film that chronicles the life and junk-hoarding of a bicycle shop owner in Staten Island. Murray fills his shop and house with junk and excuses this with a type of sententious dementia. The short film shows a depressing version of the life of a dreamer and in truth, I would rather not have seen it. Though it was supposedly a heavy influence on Bottle Rocket, the tone is just the opposite.

A photo collection from Laura Wilson is a fine special feature; storyboards are for the completists. A storyboard is a tool and I don’t really get the appeal of looking at them. Yes, they came from Wes Anderson’s own hand, but he certainly didn’t imagine stick figures talking in the final film, and he’s no Picasso. The Shafrazi Lectures, No. 1 is a mildly interesting talk with Tony Shafrazi, an eccentric art dealer, but the feature feels too pointless and egotistical to take seriously, despite being called a “lecture”.

As with most Criterion Collection films, this Blu-ray is the current definitive edition on the market. The supplements exclusive to his verison make it a worthwhile purchase. Bottle Rocket is a gem, and in my opinion one of the best comedies of all time. Martin Scorsese thinks so too.

The scientific worldview gets more and more refined through time. It offers increasingly accurate discovery of our world, more and better ways to deal with problems, and continually improves on itself (in theory, at least). Science progresses along a forward timeline towards a far-off technological utopia.

Many religions, on the other hand, feel that we live in dark times. Hindu belief calls this age the Kali Yuga, as in Kali, the demon of confusion and pain. They consider it an age of spiritual degeneration, a dark age. Many Christians would agree that we live in an age of moral disintegration marked by vice and irreverence. There is something slower, more solemn, and holier about the past. They long for Eden.

The scientific person might say the religious person longs for something that doesn’t exist. Science considers the beliefs of the olden days naive; they didn’t have the tools or knowledge we have today. Since the scientific acumen of the people grows constantly, the people of the past must have been exceedingly dumb, relative to today, and especially relative to tomorrow.

The religious person has faith in a different mode of existence outside the scope of science. They don’t really look to go back in time, they are looking to get outside of time. Their Eden (or Heaven, for that matter) represents an extra-temporal mode of being, free from degeneration. Scientists can scoff all they like, the religious person isn’t worried. They can feel sure such a mode of existence is real, even without direct experience, because it has been documented through all stages of history as a fundamental human experience.

Technological utopia is unrealistic. As the leading-edge of technology is pushed further and further by specialists, the ability to integrate systems becomes harder and harder. The pursuit of technological achievement fills our world with cancer, confusion and noise in a way that makes it very difficult for us to find the sacred.

Eden is a mystical fable written by a desert-mad prophet and its lessons contribute very little to modern humanity. Longing for simpler times is fine, but shying away from technological convenience pulls one out of step with the rest of society. The world keeps getting noisier and the effects are inescapable.

If scientific and religious progress stopped, the scientifically-minded could still look for their utopia by looking outward towards an integrated, perfected whole while the religious-minded could look for their utopia by turning inwards to the realms of personal experience. Religion and science would still be looking opposite directions.

Maybe this is a good thing. Two heads are better than one, and if you look two different directions you have a better sense of the big picture. Interestingly, where history meets the future and the inner intersects the outer, we find the here and now.