Friday 13 November 2009

Sold on Suicide

Well I don't care-for, th' things I eat,
Can't stand that boogie-woogie beat-
But I'm sold, on, suicide!

You can keep Der Bingle too, a-
And that darn "bu-bu-bu-boo,"
Cause I'm sold on suicide!

Oh! I'm not too keen on ration stamps
Or Mothers who used to be baby vamps,
But I'm sold, on, suicide!

Don't like either, the Cards or Browns,
Piss on the country and piss on the town,
But I'm S.O.S., yes well actually this goes on, verse after verse, for quite some time. In its complete version it represents a pretty fair renunciation of the things of the world. The trouble with it is that by Gödel's Theorem there is bound to be some item around that one has omitted from the list, and such an item is not easy to think of off the top of one's head, so that what one does most likely is go back over the whole thing, meantime correcting mistakes and inevitable repetitions, and putting in new items that will surely have occurred to one, and - well, it's easy to see that the "suicide" of the title might have to be postponed indefinitely!

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p.320

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