Doug's Question on Pynchon and Esoterica

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

>(...)things don't have to be
>either/or, they can be both/and -- connect up the dots in a dizzying array
>of connections and conspiracies, none of them are true, they're all true.(...)
>in his novels you can find evidence to support that he comes
>down on the side of spirit, the unknown, the mystical as ultimately
>including, surpassing the engineering/scientific/rational.
>this list believe that close examination of his
>texts and allusions/references reveals that Pynchon systematically
>undercuts both sides of this equation, letting it balance out to zero,
>leaving open all the possibilities or none, rather than coming down on one
>side or the other?     Thanks, Doug


     I don't know if the balance is perfect, and I'm unclear as to
zero being the most Pynchonian place upon which to find
that balance if it exists---perhaps between zero and one? 
Or as I will suggest, in a little bit broken off between
two halves.

     Okay--- we are deep inside a series of mixed metaphors here.

     It does seem that some very good readers of TRP dismiss,
or rather all but dismiss, the use of mysticism, theology,
religious arcania, etc. as ultimately not central to what Pynchon
is trying to achieve. These readers may argue that these 
produce models for the paranoid architecture of 
thought-systems which ultimately prove disastrous, or
at least increase the entropy in the larger system of
human history. Other readers, more sympathetic, see
in these areas of the Unknown a chance for something
unaccounted-for to slip in, or slip by, which may
be life affirming (even as it is sometimes death affirming.)
But even among readers who acknowledge that this is a valid 
aspect of Pynchon's work, it is often considered less
central to his project than political, social, economic or 
other areas of secular historical concern.  

   To my mind Pynchon has some ongoing interest in those 
boarder areas between religious history, theology, ancient
myth, urban myth, theosophy and the Occult, but is it more
than a passing interest? Does it provide more than background
scenery?

 I think this complex of interests does provide far more
of interest than background  scenery. But I think one must be a
very careful reader to differentiate particular moments in the
texts when Pynchon is in sympathy with, or partial sympathy with--- 
or out of sympathy with, some aspect or other of this idea-nexus.
One shouldn't try to answer the big questions without
asking the thousand small questions, of and in particular textural 
contexts. For Pynchon's opus is now very long and extremely 
various, and in these circumstances it is usually a mistake to paint
a picture with too broad a brush.

    As to the absolute centrality of these issues to Pynchon's thought,
I am personally unsure but interested to continue considering. 
But the following I keep in mind.  J. Hillis Miller, a very fine critic,
when trying to investigate the "mind of Dickens", found out that 
Dickens lived long enough to change his mind on many things, 
some at least twice. Pynchon might be our Dickens (or is he our 
Dante?), and I'd be willing to bet the chap who wrote The Crying 
of Lot 49, a  book I am very fond of indeed, is a rather different
man from he who has just given us the wonderful Mason & Dixon. 

     If someone was asking me if I thought it was still a good idea
to write on Pynchon and the Occult, I'd say sure, why not, it 
interests me too. But there is a fair bit already available 
(on Gnosticism, Christian Allusions, Kabbalah, etc.) Have a look 
at that first to see how much existing arguments convince you, and
where the new  wellsprings of research may be. 

And be prepared for half the world to disagree with you, while the 
other half quietly ignore you. Fear Not! 'Twere ever so. And 
anyway, as Pynchon seems to indicate, there are rarely two perfect 
halves of any perfect whole; bits of interesting if preterite Life do 
escape our deadly accounting, and there may be a place for your 
work and interests yet.
Eric Alan Weinstein
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk