Yes, Virginia

[Paul Mackin]

>From Matt Percy:

I'D have to disagree with you here.  Granted. TRP doesn't denounce all 
science, gbut he does denounce science - like behaviorism - which makes 
an epistemological claim to know an objective truth. 

For me it isn't so much a DENUNCIATION  of behaviorism or a host of other
technologies from rocketry to psychoanalysis,  but rather a portrayal of the futility of our reliance on all such marvels to deliver us from our preterite state. It is essentially a religious message and, since God is dead, a message of hopelessness.

Naw, lemme try again . . .

In _GR_, the many knowledge systems employed to gain CONTROL over our destiny just don't seem to be very effective for this purpose.  Things always go wrong. The wrong guy gets castrated (or actually the right guy might have in this one case but only by accident). So, in other words, the possibility of
CONTROL is nil.

This isn't to say the various sciences have no legitimate use at all. The 
thing of it is Pynchon often trots out some pretty zany examples of ideas
people have taken seriously from time to time in our long history. He certainly
makes fun of things. Whether it is a denoucement or not would I guess
be a matter of individual perception.

But it seems to me we don't need a genius of Pynchon quality to tell us 
brainwashing is wrong (not to say genocide and all the rest). But he
does serve to drive home the essential truth of that old Murphy's Law.

And Pynchon makes life more pleasant for us while we await our preterite
doom. So ho, ho, ho.

				P.