Preterition revisted

[Andrew Dinn]

Bill Burns writes:

> So here's the question. Is Pynchon inverting the concept of typology
> here?  Are the Preterite led to their Promised Land by the Khirghiz
> Light? Is the Rocket the inanimate medium for the dispensation of
> Divine wrath on the Elect?

I can think of several things to back this up. The randomness theme is
important but remember that election and preterition are also
arbitrary - no notion of Karma in Calvinism. So, if your take on the
randomness of the Rocket is that it is the working-out (or perhaps one
might say knotting-into) of a Nature `in nets only God can know the
meshes of' (I'll cite a page number for that tomorrow) then you might
prefer to assimilate the Rocket and that Divine hand reaching out of a
cloud. A rational empiricist, a Poinstsman, would argue that we too
can traverse the intricacies of such meshes, such labyrinths. An
anti-rationalist would argue that such an act of faith is no longer
possible or necessary. We have discovered a different order of
randomness - not the pretend, uniform, malleable randomness of
mathematics but the raw, chaotic, formless unknowability of a world
which we grasp in fleeting and transient snatches of lucidity. Live
with it and eventually die by it. End of story.


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.