具體描述
內容簡介
Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then (as Thomas Pynchon puts it in his sinister, insinuatingly sibilant opening sentence), "a screaming comes across the sky," heralding an angel of death, a V-2 rocket. The novel's title, Gravity's Rainbow, refers to the rocket's vapor arc, a cruel dark parody of what God sent Noah to symbolize his promise never to destroy humanity again. Soon Tyrone is on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany. gravity's Rainbow, however, dosen't follow such a standard plot; one must have faith that each manic episode is connected with the great plot to blow up the world with the ultimate rocket. There is not one story, but a proliferation of characters (Pirate Prentice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more) and events that tantalize the reader with suggestions of vast patterns only just past our comprehension. Gravity's Rainbow is a blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, and the lowest of jokes. 作者簡介
Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner, a collection of short stories, Vineland and, most recently, Mason & Dixon. He recieved the national book award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974. 精彩書評
Other Reviews Between V., Pynchon's maverick if disorderly first novel, and Gravity's Rainbow which is still more unstrung and far denser while lacking the narrative encroachment of the earlier book, there is even a direct line of extension. Very literally - it is a third longer than the original's 500 pages; but where V. was only death-directed, this seems almost death-obsessed and annihilation (from the V-bombs of World War II to the later Rocket with which this is concerned) looms over every page in a world where the technology of terror presides. . . . "Is the cycle over now and a new one ready to begin? Will our new Edge, our new Deathkingdom, be the Moon?" Somehow surfacing above it are other nonspecific, mystic, psychokinetic forces, perhaps Gravity, the "extrasensory in Earth's mindbody," or more simply, just a sense of wonder. They are personified in Tyrone Slothrop, the central character, who is identified as some sort of receiver when first institutionalized in the Abreaction Ward of a London hospital - he's paranoid - and later tagged as the Rocketman and sent to the Zone where the later postwar action partially takes place. Around him are all sorts of others - scientists, behaviorists, friends (Tantivy who is killed; statistician Roger Mexico who remains trapped in the detritus of the War and is unfit for Peace) and assorted girls. It is reductive, perhaps presumptive, to say what this is all about - the "depolarizing" or neurotic instability which follows war; the metallic mechanization of life thereafter; the blacks and blackness; drugs and sex - a kind of vacant, performing sex; and a lot of catch-as-catch-can cabala all figure in Pynchon's sort of social surrealism. He has made no concessions: from the proliferation of acronyms (some very clever) to the hybrid referrals (King Kong, Murphy's Law, Godel's Theorem) tailgating each other in one paragraph; to the words (azimuth, megalo, runcible, terrenity) which are an "impedance." As of course is all this jammed input - a parlous challenge to the reader's perseverance. But then however much the latter may have been strained, one must pay tribute to Pynchon's plastic imagination, his stunning creative energy, and here and there the transcendent prose: "It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thousand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame" - all marvelously descriptive of the world in which we live and are sure to die. (Kirkus Reviews)
塵封的航綫:一捲關於失落與追尋的史詩 《塵封的航綫》 是一部宏大、結構復雜、充滿隱喻和曆史迴響的敘事作品。它並非關於二戰末期納粹的秘密武器,也不是圍繞一個失蹤的士兵展開的黑色幽默,而是一次深入人類集體無意識和個體記憶迷宮的探險。 本書以虛構的“奧菲斯計劃”(Project Orpheus)為核心,這個計劃模糊地暗示著一項冷戰時期對聲音頻率和記憶重塑的秘密研究,但其真正目的是探討人類如何麵對那些無法被言說、被記錄,卻又深刻影響瞭我們存在的“空白地帶”。 故事的主人公是伊利亞·沃剋(Elias Vork),一位年邁的語言學傢和檔案管理員,他畢生緻力於收集那些被官方曆史抹去的聲音片段——失語癥患者的夢囈、被禁止的方言的最後遺言、以及電磁波中捕捉到的無法識彆的“幽靈信號”。伊利亞相信,真正的曆史並非記載於紙上的文字,而是潛藏在噪音和沉默之中。 第一部:碎片的圖書館 故事開篇,伊利亞身處於一個位於冰島火山地貌深處的秘密檔案庫。這個檔案庫與其說是存放書籍,不如說是一個巨大的“聲學陷阱”,裏麵充斥著數十年間被截獲的、含義不明的無綫電傳輸、氣象數據和模糊的錄音。 伊利亞收到瞭一批來自東歐某地廢棄的“共振站”的遺物。這些遺物包括一套精密的、由黃銅和石英製成的聲波分析儀器,以及一個裝著黑色、油膩的磁帶的锡罐。當伊利亞試圖播放其中一段磁帶時,他聽到的不是清晰的語言,而是一種連續的、令人不安的“背景噪音”——一種介於海洋深處的鯨歌與機器低鳴之間的復閤頻率。 敘事綫索圍繞著伊利亞試圖破譯這段噪音展開。他相信這段噪音指嚮的不是一個具體的地點或時間,而是一種“普遍的缺失感”。為瞭理解這種缺失,他不得不深入挖掘他自己的傢族史——他的祖父曾在二十世紀初參與瞭一場關於“拓撲幾何與精神狀態”的失敗實驗,並最終在一次船難中神秘失蹤。 在這一部分,作者運用瞭大量的交叉引用和腳注,但這些腳注並非指嚮外部資料,而是指嚮伊利亞本人檔案中的其他條目,形成一個自我指涉的封閉係統。例如,對一個特定頻率的描述,會引導讀者去看另一捲被禁的音樂手冊,而手冊的空白頁上又潦草地寫著一句關於“北迴歸綫偏差”的筆記。 第二部:頻率的迷宮 隨著伊利亞對噪音的沉迷加深,他開始經曆一種奇特的感官錯亂。他不再能區分自己聽到的聲音和他“記得”聽到的聲音。他開始懷疑,他所收集的檔案是否真的存在於物理空間中,還是他作為檔案守護者,無意中創造瞭一個“記憶的共振腔”。 敘事轉嚮瞭對“信息過載時代”的深刻反思。伊利亞的朋友和同事們——一位癡迷於古老地圖的數學傢,和一位專門研究中世紀煉金術文本的哲學傢——試圖將他的發現用傳統的符號學和物理學模型來解釋,但都以失敗告終。他們提供的解釋越是清晰和邏輯化,伊利亞聽到的噪音就越是混亂和具有侵略性。 故事的高潮部分發生在一次前往南美洲偏遠地區的旅程中。伊利亞根據磁帶中的微弱綫索,追蹤到一個被遺棄的、用於早期無綫電通信的簡易發射塔。在那裏,他遇到瞭一群被稱為“調諧者”的隱居者。這些人聲稱他們並非記錄聲音,而是“調諧於遺忘”,他們的使命是維持宇宙中必要的不和諧音,以防止整個現實結構因為過於完美或信息過於集中而崩潰。 “調諧者”嚮伊利亞展示瞭他們的技術:他們使用一種由植物縴維和礦物晶體構成的復雜天綫,引導來自遙遠星係的背景輻射。他們解釋說,伊利亞聽到的噪音,是宇宙在不斷“忘記”自身的熵增過程所發齣的聲音。 第三部:沉默的迴歸 伊利亞最終意識到,他所追尋的“真相”並不是一個可被解碼的信息包,而是一種不可抗的、結構性的缺陷。他所有的努力——整理、分類、解碼——都是徒勞的,因為噪聲本身就是信息結構的一部分。 在接近故事的尾聲,伊利亞迴到瞭冰島的檔案庫。他沒有銷毀那些磁帶,也沒有將“調諧者”的秘密公之於眾。相反,他做瞭一個極端的舉動:他開始係統地“淨化”自己的檔案。他不是刪除數據,而是用他自己對噪音的理解,替換瞭原有數據的標簽和描述。他將所有關於“奧菲斯計劃”的記錄都標記為“未分類的音樂碎片”,將那些充滿焦慮的電報重命名為“天氣預報:理想的雲層結構”。 《塵封的航綫》的結局是開放且內省的。伊利亞坐在嗡嗡作響的儀器前,他不再試圖去聽那段令人不安的噪音。他開始聽他房間裏自己心跳的聲音、老舊通風係統發齣的低沉的嘶嘶聲,以及窗外風吹過火山岩石的摩擦聲。 他終於明白,追尋那些被掩蓋的、失落的曆史,最終隻會將人引嚮一個無法被填補的虛空。真正的航行,是學會與自身的“背景噪音”和解,承認某些航綫注定要永遠塵封,而我們能做的,隻是精確地標記下那片我們未曾抵達的海域。這本書是對所有宏大敘事、所有試圖建立完整曆史觀的努力的一次溫柔而又堅決的抵抗。它邀請讀者進入一個充滿晦澀術語、哲學思辨和令人心神不寜的聲景中,去體驗追尋的本身比答案更具價值的旅程。