predestination & the preterite [Re: MDMD(3)--Just a thought]

[Vaska]

Jules says:
>In reading Elaine Pagels' book on the Gnostics, I see many
>points that indicate that the Gnostics were driven out of mainline
>Christianity by people who acted more like businessmen or political leaders
>than religious figures.
>
>Does Pynchon see I. G. Farben, et al, as the inheritors of the Christianity
>as business?

I'd have said yes, definitely a year ago, but don't really know what to make
of the apparently anti-deist sentiments expressed in _M&D_: tends to
complicate matters, somewhat.  [Or maybe not: Pynchon could have changed his
mind between 1973 and 1997.]

Also, Pynchon's take on Gnosticism is not without its critical bite either.
I love the bit in _GR_ where he introduces a whole sub-section with:

Dear Mom, I put a couple of people in Hell today....
                        --Fragment, thought to be from 
                                  the Gospel of Thomas
               (Oxyrhynchus papyrus number classified)

The section begins with a pointed allusion to Eliot's allusion to Dante in
_The Waste Land_ [Pynchon: "Who would have thought so many would be here?"]
and ends as Pirate and Katje "dissolve now, into the race and swarm of this
dancing Preterition, and their faces, the dear, comical faces they have put
on for this ball, fade, as innocence fades, grimly flirtatious, and striving
to be kind...."

1973: so, quite a few years before Pagels made Gnosticism fashionable. Or
were they already in vogue by the late '60s?  I think the guys who did those
early Pink Floyd album covers [what is this with PF, today?] called
themselves something or other gnostic.  Forgive my rambling.

Vaska