Gravity's Rainbow

Connections to Pynchon's wide-spread yet remarkably hidden family history are scattered throughout this masterwork. Well known author, bag man, and urban legend Thomas Ruggles Pynchon the Fifth comes from a long line that begins with William Pynchon, founder of the town of Springfield, Massachusetts. Thomas Ruggles Pynchon the Third is more than a footnote to Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables. This Pynchon Timetable comes from the Vheissu website:

Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The House of the Seven Gables. Rev. Thomas Ruggles Pynchon (1823-1904) writes the author a letter, complaining about the 'abuse' of the 'Pyncheon' name. This rev. Thomas Ruggles Pynchon will become the ninth president of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn, where he teaches science and religion. In 1881 he publishes an Introduction to Chemical Physics. His brother William is the great-grandfather of author Thomas Pynchon.

The use of language in his 'Introduction to Chemical Physics' is reminiscent of his younger namesake:

"The name Chemistry, is said to be derived from the Arabic word Kimia, something hidden or concealed, and from this, to have been converted into Xyueia*, a word first used by the Greeks about the eleventh century, and meaning the art of making gold and silver. Between the fifth century and the taking of Constantinople in the fifteenth century, says Dr. Thomson, in his History of Chemistry, the Greeks believed in the possibility of making god and silver artificially; and the art which professed to teach the processes was called by them, Chemistry. This idea, however, has long since been thoroughly discarded, and is now no longer heard of."

Like the author we are discussing, The Thomas Pynchon of Trinity College, Hartford Connecticut, was a daunting polymath. If you open 'Introduction to Chemical Physics', one of the first things you will see is are Rainbows, the rainbows from the workings of a Chemical Spectrometer:

When a material is heated to incandescence it emits light that is characteristic of the atomic makeup of the material. Particular light frequencies give rise to sharply defined bands on the scale which can be thought of as fingerprints. For example, the element sodium has a very characteristic double yellow band known as the Sodium D-lines at 588.9950 and 589.5924 nanometers, the colour of which will be familiar to anyone who has seen a low pressure sodium vapor lamp.

Much of the scientific material in Gravity's Rainbow concerns the commercial applications of Chemistry. One of the branches of the Pynchon Clan, George M. Pynchon, ran the Wall Street Investment firm Pynchon & Company In Gravity's Rainbow, 'we' start in a train:

"There are no lights inside the cars."

. . . .and wind up in a theater, waiting for the end to come, singing an old church hymn from Tyrone Slothrop's Pig Farming Ancestor, William Slothrop:

John Pynchon, William Pynchon's son, did a bit of pig farming:

"According to order by the Selectmen there was granted parsell of land at fresh water brooke, to Mr. Pynchon, George Colton and Benjamin Cooley, in proportion as they carry on their design of keeping swine there. In all forty acres of upland, ten acres to each quarter part, and thisupon conditon that they doe within two years carry on the design of keeping swine there. If they fail in carrying on that design within two years, or such of them doe faile, they forfeit the land & it remains to the other or them that do keep swine there; or else falls to the town, if none carry on that design of keeping swine. The design of keeping swine there was accordingly caryed on & within the tyme limited, and continued until Windsor corne fields eat up ye swine."

Pynchon & Company started in the Railroads, got involved in all sorts of [then] high-tech enterprises, and lost out when film maker and investor William Fox was taken down by a consortium of Banking and Technology interests.

More to come,

Robin Landseadel