Oceans

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Diana comments:
"After the "fortunate                    
fall" from the mother (RIP Mrs. Pynchon) and into language, we seek to get
back to that sense of oceanic unity *through* language, ironically enough.
Hence: literature. In an increasingly "broken" American culture, you
find literature like Pynchon's which refuses that return at the same
time it lusts for it. No wonder Eliot was attracted to England and
her Church of Totalizing Metanarratives (pace, Andrew).  Think of
Stencil's motto, by contrast: "approach and avoid" (mother) V."

It's interesting that Freud begins CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS with a
comment about an observation by a friend that religious faith could be
understood as an "oceanic" feeling, one that SF confessed that he himself
could never feel.  And that leads to a number of interesting speculations
(but Freud is always the most fun when he is being speculative rather than
dogmatic).

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)