GRGR(16): a thing so awesome Even Dzambul could not sing it

[Doug Millison]

Jeremy Osner said, re the Kirghiz Light "being a real-live miracle -- I'm
having trouble integrating that with the rest of the story right now."

I don't read it as miracle, a one-time event. The Kirghiz Light is there, a
presence of this sacred place, a place of power. The power of the Kirghiz
Light is such that it blasts "believer" and "non-believer" alike (to borrow
Jeremy's implied dichotomy). At first I wondered why it would blow
Tchitcherine away and not Dzaqyp, who is able to tend to T while T's in the
Light's grip -- but Dzaqyp being an adept would explain that.

I'd say the direct experience of God's presence that fells unprepared
Tchitcherine is central to GR. Try tying it in with the final page of the
novel, where we see a "Light that hath brought the Towers low" -- towers,
perhaps, like those which may have graced the "prehistoric city greater
than Babylon lying in stifled mineral sleep a kilometer below his back" (GR
359).

A light of awesome proportions ends the dream sequence that begins GR, too:
"When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it bring its own light?
Will the light come before or after? _But it is already light._"

Framing T's experience of the Kirghiz Light thus opens it to at least two
readings:  as the direct experience of God as described by the mystical
traditions of all the world's religions, and as the destruction that
follows the missile:  A4, in the historical setting of GR, or ICBM in the
nightmares that haunted many people -- perhaps Pynchon, too -- in the tense
Cold War '60s.






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