Austin Meakim’s Reviews > Gravity’s Rainbow > Status Update

(4) And at the end of the mighty day in which he gave us in fiery letters across the sky all the words we’d ever need, words we today enjoy, and fill our dictionaries with, the meek voice of little Tyrone Slothrop, celebrated ever after in tradition and song, ventured to filter upward to the Kid’s attention: “You never did ‘the,’ Kenosha Kid!”

Dear Mr. Slothrop:
You never did.
The Kenosha Kid

The entire fabric of the air, the time, is changed—…
Their hearts pound. Eardrums brushed taut by the overpressure ring in pain. The invisible train rushes away close over the rooftop…

Jessica breaking down in a giggle as he reached for the spot along her sweatered flank he knows she can’t bear to be tickled in. She hunches, squirming, out of the way as he rolls past, bouncing off the back of the dogs but making a nice recovery, and by now she’s ticklish all over,…
But a rocket has suddenly struck. A terrific blast quite close beyond the village

“One took lots of aspirin. One was drinking or drink much of the time. One was concerned about getting one’s lounge suits to fit properly. One despised the upper classes but tried desperately to behave like them…”
“And one cried wee, wee, wee, all the way—“

“All I remember is that it was silly. Just overwhelmingly silly. Nothing happened…”
“I know that, I can read magazines. But what was it like?”
“Just…just damned silly, that’s all. Worrying about things that don’t—Jess, can’t you really remember?”

“Don’t be ridic, I’m serious, Roger. I don’t remember.” Watches dimples come up either side of his mouth as he considers this, smiling at her in an odd way. It’ll be like this when I’m thirty…flash of several children, a garden, a window, voices Mummy, what’s…cucumbers and brown onions on a chopping board, wild carrot blossoms sprinkling with brilliant yellow a reach of deep, very green lawn…

Pointsman’s… his…a bleakness wherever she meets him. Scientist-neutrality. Hands that—she shivers. There are chances now for enemy shapes out of the snow and stillness. She drops the blackout curtain. Hands that could as well torture people as dogs and never feel their pain…

“What do you expect from me, working day in day out among raving lunatics.” … “they believe in survival after death, communication mind-to-mind, prophesying, clairvoyance, teleportation—they believe, Jess! and—and” … she comes up out of the fat paisley chair to hold him, how does she know,… muscles touches, skins confused high, blooded—know so exactly what Roger meant to say?

—for an end to all change, for a long static afternoon and the grouse forever in blurred takeoff, the sights taking their lead a slant purple hills to pallid sky, the good dog alerted by the eternal scent, the explosion over his head always just about to come—these hopes so patently, defenselessly there that Roger even at his most cheaply nihilistic couldn’t quite bring himself to take the pictures down,