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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1973

Literature

The story behind the card

This is the third of five “Proverbs for Paranoids” scattered through Gravity's Rainbow (1973), by the famously private American novelist Thomas Pynchon. Set mostly in Europe at the end of the Second World War, it turns on Germany's V-2 rockets. Its hero, the American lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop, comes to suspect that powerful organisations have been studying and steering him since infancy; the proverbs are rules for living with that suspicion. The Pulitzer jury chose the novel in 1974, but the prize board overruled them and gave no fiction prize.

Türkçe oku
Sana yanlış soruları sordurabilirlerse cevapları dert etmelerine gerek kalmaz.
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1973

Söz, Thomas Pynchon'ın Gravity's Rainbow (Yerçekiminin Gökkuşağı, 1973) romanına serpiştirilmiş beş “Paranoyaklar İçin Atasözü”nün üçüncüsüdür. Amerikalı yazar, kamuoyundan uzak durmasıyla ünlüdür. Roman, İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nın son aylarında, çoğunlukla Avrupa'da geçer ve Almanların V-2 roketleri etrafında döner. Kahramanı Amerikalı teğmen Tyrone Slothrop, güçlü kurumların onu bebekliğinden beri incelediğinden ve yönlendirdiğinden şüphelenmeye başlar; atasözleri bu şüpheyle yaşamanın kurallarıdır. 1974'te Pulitzer jürisi romanı ödüle değer buldu, ama ödül kurulu bu kararı reddetti ve o yıl kurmaca dalında ödül verilmedi.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Thomas Pynchon
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