Myth-Religion-V.

[Steelhead]

Somebody wrote the other day asking about books on mythology and
comparative religion. The usual discredited suspects were put forth,
Frazier, Weston, and that awful Graves, whose ridiculous book on the Greek
Myths (and it, at least, was more accurate than that absurd flight of
fancy, the White Goddess) makes Edith Hamilton read like Joyce.

Then finally Chris Stotlz recommended Levi-Strauss's The Savage Mind and
Raw and the Cooked. Wonderful books. Fast-paced arguments, dense and witty
prose, and shockingly brilliant readings of ancient stories. A few years
ago Levi-Strauss distilled his basic technique of reading stories in a
wonderful short book called Myth and Meaning, available at most B and
Ns--believe it or not.

The great English anthropologist Edmund Leach sums one of Levi-Strauss's
views this way:

"We often phrase, in ideological terms, the general proposition that men
and women are more or less equal, no matter what other beliefs and
attitudes we might have about the relative important of males and females.
But we also explicitly condemn the practice of incest within the nuclear
family. We have in these two statements the making of a contradiction that
is hard to avoid and difficult to reconcile. If men and women are in fact
equal, they must have parents who are equal. Most creation stories begin
with two individuals whose offspring people the earth, but the only way
those first two can be absolutely equal is if they are siblings, are
brother and sister. If they are brother and sister, then all humans are the
consequence of an original act of incest, of a brother and a sister mating.
That is pretty distasteful in most cultures, but only some of them solve
the problem by having separate creation myths for women and men. It avoids
the incest problem, but it runs smack into a different one: if they are
created separately, they are not absolutely equal.

"The judeo-christian Bible opts for the other solution: Eve was created
from a portion of Adam's body, his rib, and then the pair set about
creating the rest of us. A pre-biblical account might have been chosen but
wasn't--the legend that Adam set about his procreative work with a mate
named Lilith, who was part human and part fabulous animal. The authors of
Genesis had a tough choice, but they chose incest."

V., of course, deals with comparative religion and myth from its first
pages, when, on Christmas Eve, the AWOL crew of the USS Scaffold plunge
into the Sailor's Grave. One of my favorite passages takes place when
Profane is out on the "prowl" with Angel and Geronimo in Little Italy
during the Feast of San' Ercole dei Rinoceronti ("which comes on the Ides
of March"). Benny's got eyes for the 14-year old Lucille [little warped
tribute to Nabokov here], who looks at the weird trio and sez:

"What do you guys do?'

"I tell tall stories to girls I want to screw, Profane thought. He
scratched his armpit. "Kill alligators," he said.

"Wha"

"He told her about the alligators; Angel, who had a fertile imagination
too, added detail, color. Together on the stoop they hammered together a
myth. Because it wasn't born from fear of thunder, dreams, astonishment at
how the crops kept dying after harvest and coming up again every spring, or
anything else very permanent, only a temporary interest, a
spur-of-the-moment tumescence, it was myth rickety and transient as the
bandstands and the sausage-pepper booths of Mulberry Street.

Geronimo came back with beer. They sat and drank beer and watched people
and told sewer stories. Every once in a while the girls would want to sing.
Soon enough they became kittenish. Lucilled jumped up and pranced away.
"Catch me," she said.

"Oh god," said Profane.

"You have to chase her," said one of her friends."

Stencil's not the only one a chase after Venery. A-and Benny just gets
saved from a little statutory action by that comical rumble between the
Playboys and the Bop Kings. W-Whew...

Steely

PS It is nearly incomprehensible to me that someone could read V. and
believe it to be the worst book Thomas Pynchon has written. I'd be hard
pressed to say he's written a better book.