GRGR Slothrop & Sloth

[MalignD at aol.com]

Millison wrote:

<< ... 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:

<<... 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.>>

Pynchon does little more in these paragraphs than toss the concept of sloth 
in with a paraphrase of some of Henry Adams's points made in The Virgin and 
the Dynamo (and eslewhere since).  It's a pretty lazy effort and reveals 
little about TRP thoughts and beliefs re "God and religion and time and 
technology."