RC in TRP WAS RE: Hitler's Pope

[Mitchell R Coffey]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com> at Internet
> Sent: Thursday, September 30, 1999 1:18 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org at INTERNET
> Subject: RC in TRP WAS RE: Hitler's Pope
[SNIP]

> TRP is rather rough on the Catholic church in M&D -- the Jesuits are
> bad guys, aren't they?
[snip]

Yet note that one of the most "anti-Jesuitical" passages turns out to be a
passage from "The Ghastly Fop", that blends into the "real" action, which
thenceforth is never quite as "real" again, that...

My take was that the Jesuit passages were [1] send-ups of the then-contemporary
Protestant paranoid conspiracy mongering aimed at that order, and [2] meant to
amuse because we tend to assume that paranoid conspiracy mongering is a new
phenomenon.

Mitchell Coffey
___________________________________________________________________

Glendower: "At my nativity
                   The font of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
                   Of burning cressents, and at my birth
                   The frame and huge foundation of the earth
                   Shaked like a coward!"

Hotspur:    "Why, so it would have done at the same season
                   If your mother's cat had but kittened, though yourself
                   Had never been born.
                   ...

Glendower: "I can call spirits from the vasty deep!"

Hotspur:     "Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                    But will they come when you do call for them?"

                  - Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One, III, i