Johnny Quest

[Mittelwerk at aol.com]

mythologies are not mythic.  they dramatize the failed attempt of a given
culture to rescue the contents of myth without doing irrevocable damage to
the symbols which contain those contents (in mythic form).

the first slothrop, odysseus, plunders and cartographs the mythic realm,
kills all the magic monsters (remnants, already, of older myth), and is bored
off his ass.  he lapses into stoicism along with the rest of antiquity--which
is form his cunning takes in the freshly repressed world that no longer has
any use for him.

in the boring grail cycle,  the contents are already fetishes, and the quest
is already reactionary.   this is the historical Christian  attempt (which
becomes synonomous with the meaning Christianity) to rescue Christ from
ever-encroaching reification.  The principle by which the knights fail is
authoritarian:  they are not fit, they are insufficiently righteous.  the
grail is demoted to hollow idol.

slothrop is pointedly, not after anything.  everyone wants him because he is
physiognomically connected to the other side of the equal sign--the point at
which absolute scientific determinism swings full circle and meets the mythic
core of meaning.  everyone wants their piece before the world is closed off,
once and for all; before--as with 'brenschluss'--all the variables connect
and the world becomes subject to a fate worse than myth, which is, a world
without myth whatsoever.  in this case, it's the symbol itself that does the
damage, and , as Blicero knew, the saving . . . .