Heaven?

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Peter Watts suggests:
"But of course there's no pigs in space, nor slothrops. and i stand by my
earlier assertion that by earth standards of debauchery and comfort
heaven is kinda all spacey and thin. it's sorta like the difference
between drinking earths thick nectar, or a cold pepsi perhaps, and drinking
sun tea without the tea in it.
but i'm still a pig so maybe its just teenage immaturity."

Not immature at all, I think.  There is in fact a strong strain of modernist
American thought that rejects transcendence or at least prefers earthliness
to transcendence.  See Robert Frost's "Birches" or Wallace Stevens' "Sunday
Morning" for definitive statements.

"Earth's the best place for love," Frost sez, and I think Pynchon agrees, but
then we do *desire* that transcendence too, so . . . 


Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)