具体描述
内容简介
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. 作者简介
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. 精彩书评
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)
尘封的航线:一卷关于失落与追寻的史诗 《尘封的航线》 是一部宏大、结构复杂、充满隐喻和历史回响的叙事作品。它并非关于二战末期纳粹的秘密武器,也不是围绕一个失踪的士兵展开的黑色幽默,而是一次深入人类集体无意识和个体记忆迷宫的探险。 本书以虚构的“奥菲斯计划”(Project Orpheus)为核心,这个计划模糊地暗示着一项冷战时期对声音频率和记忆重塑的秘密研究,但其真正目的是探讨人类如何面对那些无法被言说、被记录,却又深刻影响了我们存在的“空白地带”。 故事的主人公是伊利亚·沃克(Elias Vork),一位年迈的语言学家和档案管理员,他毕生致力于收集那些被官方历史抹去的声音片段——失语症患者的梦呓、被禁止的方言的最后遗言、以及电磁波中捕捉到的无法识别的“幽灵信号”。伊利亚相信,真正的历史并非记载于纸上的文字,而是潜藏在噪音和沉默之中。 第一部:碎片的图书馆 故事开篇,伊利亚身处于一个位于冰岛火山地貌深处的秘密档案库。这个档案库与其说是存放书籍,不如说是一个巨大的“声学陷阱”,里面充斥着数十年间被截获的、含义不明的无线电传输、气象数据和模糊的录音。 伊利亚收到了一批来自东欧某地废弃的“共振站”的遗物。这些遗物包括一套精密的、由黄铜和石英制成的声波分析仪器,以及一个装着黑色、油腻的磁带的锡罐。当伊利亚试图播放其中一段磁带时,他听到的不是清晰的语言,而是一种连续的、令人不安的“背景噪音”——一种介于海洋深处的鲸歌与机器低鸣之间的复合频率。 叙事线索围绕着伊利亚试图破译这段噪音展开。他相信这段噪音指向的不是一个具体的地点或时间,而是一种“普遍的缺失感”。为了理解这种缺失,他不得不深入挖掘他自己的家族史——他的祖父曾在二十世纪初参与了一场关于“拓扑几何与精神状态”的失败实验,并最终在一次船难中神秘失踪。 在这一部分,作者运用了大量的交叉引用和脚注,但这些脚注并非指向外部资料,而是指向伊利亚本人档案中的其他条目,形成一个自我指涉的封闭系统。例如,对一个特定频率的描述,会引导读者去看另一卷被禁的音乐手册,而手册的空白页上又潦草地写着一句关于“北回归线偏差”的笔记。 第二部:频率的迷宫 随着伊利亚对噪音的沉迷加深,他开始经历一种奇特的感官错乱。他不再能区分自己听到的声音和他“记得”听到的声音。他开始怀疑,他所收集的档案是否真的存在于物理空间中,还是他作为档案守护者,无意中创造了一个“记忆的共振腔”。 叙事转向了对“信息过载时代”的深刻反思。伊利亚的朋友和同事们——一位痴迷于古老地图的数学家,和一位专门研究中世纪炼金术文本的哲学家——试图将他的发现用传统的符号学和物理学模型来解释,但都以失败告终。他们提供的解释越是清晰和逻辑化,伊利亚听到的噪音就越是混乱和具有侵略性。 故事的高潮部分发生在一次前往南美洲偏远地区的旅程中。伊利亚根据磁带中的微弱线索,追踪到一个被遗弃的、用于早期无线电通信的简易发射塔。在那里,他遇到了一群被称为“调谐者”的隐居者。这些人声称他们并非记录声音,而是“调谐于遗忘”,他们的使命是维持宇宙中必要的不和谐音,以防止整个现实结构因为过于完美或信息过于集中而崩溃。 “调谐者”向伊利亚展示了他们的技术:他们使用一种由植物纤维和矿物晶体构成的复杂天线,引导来自遥远星系的背景辐射。他们解释说,伊利亚听到的噪音,是宇宙在不断“忘记”自身的熵增过程所发出的声音。 第三部:沉默的回归 伊利亚最终意识到,他所追寻的“真相”并不是一个可被解码的信息包,而是一种不可抗的、结构性的缺陷。他所有的努力——整理、分类、解码——都是徒劳的,因为噪声本身就是信息结构的一部分。 在接近故事的尾声,伊利亚回到了冰岛的档案库。他没有销毁那些磁带,也没有将“调谐者”的秘密公之于众。相反,他做了一个极端的举动:他开始系统地“净化”自己的档案。他不是删除数据,而是用他自己对噪音的理解,替换了原有数据的标签和描述。他将所有关于“奥菲斯计划”的记录都标记为“未分类的音乐碎片”,将那些充满焦虑的电报重命名为“天气预报:理想的云层结构”。 《尘封的航线》的结局是开放且内省的。伊利亚坐在嗡嗡作响的仪器前,他不再试图去听那段令人不安的噪音。他开始听他房间里自己心跳的声音、老旧通风系统发出的低沉的嘶嘶声,以及窗外风吹过火山岩石的摩擦声。 他终于明白,追寻那些被掩盖的、失落的历史,最终只会将人引向一个无法被填补的虚空。真正的航行,是学会与自身的“背景噪音”和解,承认某些航线注定要永远尘封,而我们能做的,只是精确地标记下那片我们未曾抵达的海域。这本书是对所有宏大叙事、所有试图建立完整历史观的努力的一次温柔而又坚决的抵抗。它邀请读者进入一个充满晦涩术语、哲学思辨和令人心神不宁的声景中,去体验追寻的本身比答案更具价值的旅程。