[In the following essay, Turier identifies the artistic and scientific sources of the octopus Grigori's attack on Katje in Gravity's Rainbow.]

The bizarreness of the image of the octopus Grigori's attack on Katje in Gravity's Rainbow, together with the orchestration of that attack by the mad Pavlovian Pointsman, stamps it with a typically “Pynchonian” uniqueness. Yet it is not the singular product of an eccentric imagination but another example of Pynchon's extreme eclecticism. For the octopus combines two radically different sources: one, that of early Japanese art; the other, the field of neurobiology. The image of a woman being “attacked” by a giant octopus is, in fact, not uncommon in early Japanese art.¹ It is best known in the West through the rendition of Katsushika Hokusai. Reproduced as “The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife”² in Lucie-Smith's Eroticism in Western Art, it is also widely represented in texts on Japanese Ukiyo-e, especially those concerned with Hokusai, in the West the best known of the Ukiyo-e school. Hokusai's rendition portrays a naked woman swooning in the arms of “twin incubi”³ between rocks and sea. Her lower torso is enveloped by the “giant” octopus, and the tentacles of the smaller octopus encircle her neck.

What is most notable about this image, besides its eroticism (certainly not out of place in Pynchon's text), is the ambiguity of the woman's reaction to the “attack”; does she swoon from terror or ecstasy? It is an ambiguity also present in Pynchon's portrayal of the scene; is Katje truly afraid or a knowing and willing participant in the “attack”? It is not her scream that is heard on the beach but that of “one of the dancers” (186).⁴ She thanks Slothrop afterward, with “[n]ot a tremor in the voice” (187). Yet, during the attack we see her “… already half in the water, … trying to cry out, but the tentacle, flowing and chilly, barely allows her windway enough to breathe.” Slothrop becomes mesmerized by her hand clutching his shirt, causing it to furrow “in tangents to her terror” (186). As well, we know as readers that it was the film taken secretly in Osbie Feel's kitchen (92) that was used to condition Grigori (113). Paradoxically though, and in contrast to Slothrop's reaction to Grigori—“wow it's a big one, holycow” (186)—her comments betray a cool detachment bordering on familiarity with the octopus—“They are very optical aren't they. I hadn't known” (188)—as well as a genuine surprise that it should attack her: “It saw me. Me. I don't look like a crab” (188). Nevertheless, as with Hokusai's print, which exudes eroticism, not terror, the intuition comes out in favor of the woman's participation. The ambiguity of Katje's response is not lost either on Slothrop: “Structure and detail come later, but the conniving around him now he feels instantly, in his heart” (188).

In relation to Pynchon's use of the octopus, however, it is not only this image which has antecedents. The suggestion that Pointsman might find the available Grigori a more suitable subject for experimentation than either Slothrop or the more conventional canine ones has, as does much of Pynchon's reference to science, a sound empirical base. Spectro's summary of the advantages of octopi as subjects (“… docile under surgery,” survival of “massive removal of brain tissue,” and the reliability of their unconditioned response) is in fact extremely accurate. His assertion that there is “[n]o limit to the things you can teach them” (52) is more than just the punchline to a parodic joke at the expense of psychological research (not to mention Pointsman himself). Joke though it is, the octopus has often been used in research into the structure and functioning of the brain. British anatomist J. Z. Young, during the late fifties and early sixties, pursued extensive research into brain function using cephalopods. His book A Model of the Brain⁵ documents the results of his work. Young used in his research both trained (that is, conditioned) and untrained octopi. His subjects also “stuffed” themselves “with crab meat” (189); their learned tasks also involved attacking “strange moving figures.”⁶ Besides the attributes outlined by Spectro, the structure of the cephalopod's nervous system makes it an ideal subject for the study of the brain. Octopi have limited sensory inputs—they are very “optical.” In addition to vision, they have only chemo-tactile receptors in the arms. They are entirely without hearing or an effective sense of smell. They possess a limited response range, that is, to attack or not to attack. These attributes, together with the size of their nerve fibers, make the study of brain function in cephalopods a much simpler task than it is in the more complex vertebrates, while the similarity of their optical system to that of vertebrates (including humans) makes the comparison of brain function a viable one.

The similarity between Young and Pointsman, however, does not end here. Pavlov and Pointsman's search for the mechanical/physiological root of behavior is echoed by Young: “I believe that it will be possible to find some changes in certain specific places after each learning occasion” (29). Some 230 pages later, he acknowledges that “there is still no definite knowledge of what this change is” (267) but goes on to speculate on where it might be found. Young states, “Whatever process operates in learning it seems likely that it involves the choice between two or more possibilities. It is usually assumed that this choice is made by some form of facilitation [my emphasis] in the pathway that has been excited” (282). Young, however, finds preferable the idea that “learning occurs by the elimination [my emphasis] of the unused pathways” (285), a hypothesis that bears a strong resemblance to Pointsman's idea of “spot's of inertia” (90).

One further point of significance, which links both sources of the octopus in Gravity's Rainbow, is the observation by Young that because the “octopus's central nervous system is less completely centralised than that of vertebrates” it “might be said to ‘think with its arms'” (100-101). The idea of the octopus as “all brain” is certainly reinforced in Hokusai's image. That science and technology (“the brain”) represent central thematic concerns in Gravity's Rainbow is well documented. Yet the implications of the assault upon the female by “the brain” are an area that has so far been completely overlooked.

Notes

1. Tom Evans and Mary Anne Evans, Shunga: The Art of Love in Japan, New York: Paddington Press Ltd., 1975, 249.

2. Edward Lucie-Smith, Eroticism in Western Art, New York: Praeger, 1972, 255.

3. Evans and Evans, note 1 above, 249.

4. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, Picador, 1975. All subsequent references will cite page numbers parenthetically in the text and will refer to this edition.

5. J. Z. Young, A Model of the Brain, London: Oxford UP, 1964.

6. Young, note 5 above, 79. Subsequent references will be given parenthetically in the text.