GRGR Slothrop & Sloth

[Doug Millison]

Reading through TRP's NY Times essay on Sloth again, a good touchstone to
remember that we don't have to remain completely in the dark about Mr P's
own thoughts and beliefs.  These closing paragraphs of that 1993 essay
might be useful to consider as we read GR and ponder Sloth-rop's
adventures, as they seem to disclose something of what TRP thinks about God
and religion and time and technology:

"Unless the state of our souls becomes once more a subject of serious
concern, there is little question that Sloth will continue to evolve away
from its origins in the long-ago age of faith and miracle, when daily life
really was the Holy Ghost visibly at work and time was a story, with a
beginning, middle and end. Belief was intense, engagement deep and fatal.
The Christian God was near. Felt. Sloth -- defiant sorrow in the face of
God's good intentions -- was a deadly sin.

"Perhaps the future of Sloth will lie in sinning against what now seems
increasingly to define us -- technology. Persisting in Luddite sorrow,
despite technology's good intentions, there we'll sit with our heads in
virtual reality, glumly refusing to be absorbed in its idle, disposable
fantasies, even those about superheroes of Sloth back in Sloth's good old
days, full of leisurely but lethal misadventures with the ruthless villains
of the Acedia Squad. "

d o u g  m i l l i s o n  http://www.online-journalist.com