Though I interpreted it as an order, I received some good advice this week: don’t work for a while. Edict or recommendation, I don’t care: I’m stopping working on my prospectus on Tuesday and not starting again until next weekend. I need a break. I started rereading Gravity’s Rainbow from page one this week, looking for some fresh perspective and new insight, but all endeavor’s really accomplished is to remind me that I’m dealing with a humongous novel to which I’m applying complicated theory that I don’t fully grasp. Instead of cracking the code, I’ve just made myself more anxious.
In the meeting this week, I discussed having too much to cover in my thesis: the Sublime, sex, paranoia, and a big-ass novel. I almost wonder if any thesis about Gravity’s Rainbow should be ventured at all. I don’t know how Seth makes dealing with Moby-Dick, to which Gravity’s Rainbow is the 20th c. corollary, look so manageable. I’m itchy with envy right now.
To scale this project down to a reasonable scope, I find myself jettisoning things left and right. The conversation I had the other day focused on which form of the Sublime to abandon. Do I lose Kant or do I lose the postmodernists? I’m still wobbling on that decision. And while that quandary still hangs in the air, I need to shed additional matter. Do I lose paranoia or sex?
I mean, historically I’ve definitely had more of the former than the latter, but …
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