GRGR(5) A walk along the beach (pp. 86-92)

[rj]

Irrelevant anecdote aside, I cite the poem 'Dover Beach' as a
probable/definite allusion within Pynchon's text. The descriptive
passages, particularly at the close of the sequence, and the discussion
between Pointsman and Mexico, are closely aligned to Arnold's theme, in
mood and tone also. I will link it to a later passage. In fact, I might
do this now as my time management is not ungood. Viz:

"Now what sea is this you have crossed, exactly, and what sea is it you
have plunged more than once to the bottom of, alerted, full of
adrenalin, but caught really, buffaloed under the epistemologies of
these threats that paranoid you so down and out, caught in these steel
pot, softening to devitaminized mush inside the soup-stock of your own
words, your waste submarine breath? It took the Dreyfus Affair to get
the Zionists out and doing, finally: what will drive you out of your
soup-kettle? Has it already happened? Was it tonight's attack and
deliverance? Will you go to the Heath, and begin your settlement, and
wait there for your Director to come?" (pp. 389-390)

Arguably addressed to Belaustegui or Graciela Imago Portales (but it's a
stretch really, and these are at most cameo roles in the novel); and
coming right after the magic realist time modulation sequence where the
John E. Badass is saved from the Argentine U-boat torpedo because Seaman
Bodine has spiked the mess coffee with Oneirine; I think that the "you"
here is, if not only, at least inclusively directed to the reader. It
can be pinned down as such, regardless of whatever else it may mean. In
other words, it is an overt intrusion on the reader's space. The contest
of epistemologies revealed and represented over and over again in _GR_
is one which *must* be played out in the reader's realm as well.
Conditioned to expect a climax -- Pynchon building this sequence as
something of a traditional wartime high seas adventure -- the reader is
suddenly thrown a curve. A truly miraculous intervention occurs and the
climax -- tragedy perhaps -- is averted. We cannot read this miracle in
the same way we have read the lead-up to it. Our epistemologies are
challenged (just as, earlier, we have seen the seemingly inexplicable
case of Slothrop cause Roger to feel "the foundation of [his] discipline
trembling" 85.15, just as his own unyielding statistical proofs
challenge and cause dismay for Pointsman's Pavlovia, just as the
behaviourist's Machiavellianism has challenged and usurped Pudding's
humanistic moralism.) In this later return to Arnold's metaphor, and
stepping out of the text for a moment, Pynchon confronts us with a
challenge to our epistemologies of reading and literature and 'reality'
in very explicit and ominous terms. This sea is again a "Sea of Faith",
just like Roger's faith in the actuarial tables, or Pointsman's in
stimulus/reflex causality, or Pudding's in God and Country. 

That there are no answers, no certitude, that these 'faiths' or
epistemologies have all been washed away: this is Pynchon's recognition
also. And yet, and yet ... the quest for miracles persists in his
fiction, and is cherished.

sorry to jump ahead,
best