Doug's Question on Pynchon and Esoterica

[Doug Millison]

Eric,

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I've enjoyed your posts and learned a
lot from them. I will dig deeper into what's already been written about
Pynchon and the spiritual side of the equation.

Pynchon does seem to put Mason and Dixon squarely in the
spiritual/unknown/mystical camp  -- two characters he's taken quite a few
years to create and situate in this new novel, characters that he's created
and treated with enormous sympathy; by endowing them with what appears to
be a fairly deep involvement in the mystical, I wonder if that might
indicate where Pynchon's sympathies lie.

Cordially,
Doug

At 12:24 PM 7/4/97, Eric Alan Weinstein wrote:
>>(...)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


D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com
     Today in history (4 July 97), from wire service reports:
   1862: Lewis Carroll began the "Alice in Wonderland" story.
   1900: Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, famed jazz trumpeter,
        was born in New Orleans (d: 1971).
   1966: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Freedom
        of Information Act.