Death, Thank You, reference

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

Thank you to those who have responded to my Byron the Bulb question.
My copy of Blade Runner is ready for another run sometime soon.
The source of the James is the essay "What pragmatism Means," although
I was put onto it via Richard Poirier's essay "The Reinstatement of the 
Vague." Poirier is no mean reader of Pynchon himself, of course. 
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 " Pynchon read Evelyn Waugh's death-cult satire "The Loved One" deeply.
There are any number of references to it in his works. (For ex---The last
sentence of CL49 is a parody of the last sentence of "The Loved One.")

 Death does a great deal of complex work in Pynchon; and it modulates
 from context to context enormously. I am tempted to think of William James
metaphor of work with language as taking place in a stream of experience
which, while offering no answer, indicates the direction for a programme
of more work. 

  For the dialectics of death, the inanimate, sterility and power are in 
constant and fascinating evolution here. Pardon the pun, but I'm sure 
it would be productive of a worthy study.

 It is however clear enough that central to Pynchon is the recognition
that death and life are part of the natural cycle; one is needful to the other.
The desire for transcendence or immortality in the same state of being is
tied deep to troupes of inanimate mechanistic assembly, abuse of power,
anti-humanism, fascism.

      I wonder how my favourite character, Byron the Bulb, is implicated
in this. I'm not sure. But it might be instructive to think on it."