GRGR: Gospel of Thomas p. 537 WAS Re: M&D - Tyburn Tree'resurrections'

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Doug Millison wrote:

> 
> For sheer delight in textual analysis, and trying to understand what the
> authors of early Christian texts might have been trying to do with their
> texts (their intentions, in other words, a term that has started more than
> one fight right here on Pynchon-L, by the way), how those texts might have
> served or been perceived within their contemporary cultural contexts, it
> would be hard to beat the scholarship centered on early Christianity of the
> past 30 years or so. Crossan's book, in particular, (_The Birth of
> Christianity_) is, to my taste, fascinating.  Almost as much fun as trying
> to figure out who Pynchon "really" is and what he's "really" up to in his
> writing, and how TRP's writing is received and perceived today.
>

Some say that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure,
with good judgment, with fairness, with insight, until he
knows whether the writer of it be a moral or immoral person,
of mild or choleric disposition, of this or that persuasion.
They contend that readers not familiar with these
particulars may fail to understand the author. Some think
the author's biography irrelevant, while still others
protest that biography is meddlesome, intruding both on the
artist's privacy and on the reader's unique experience with
the book. With some authors, we either prefer to remain
ignorant, have not the time or the inclination to
investigate biography or we simply don't have much
biographical information to peruse. We have a great deal of
information on Herman Melville, yet to this day, scholars
continue to debate his Christianity, gnosticism, atheism,
and so forth.  With Thomas Pynchon we have not much to wade
through, and since he is a living man who guards his
privacy, we are simply not in a position to know or say all
that much about him. We have libraries of information
pertaining to the works and life of Shakespeare, but one
would be hard pressed to make a definitive claim that
Shakespeare was this or that sort of man or believed such
and such. This is the case because we have little of
Shakespeare's biography and what we know often fails to
enlighten us about what we can not. Shakespeare, even in his
sonnets, is not very conspicuous.  I like to call the
perspective of his Text Objective. His plays and poems seem
to conform to Hamlet's dictum that the end of acting is to
hold, as 't were the mirror up to nature.  I think the Text
of Pynchon is also, Objective in perspective. 

Does Pynchon believe in or suggest that "resurrection" is
possible, is to be hoped for, expected? Until he makes his
philosophy known (and perhaps even after he does) we can
only speculate. Our conjectures and opinions if not
conclusive of anything have value nonetheless, if only
because they are part of our unique experience with his art.
When dealing with poetry and works of fiction we have
speakers and narrators that complicate our pursuit of the
author's philosophy.
I think Pynchon is Dialectical in method. I gave the example
of how this distinguishes him from one of his more
influential American predecessors, Henry Adams. Adams, is
fixed by the dualities of Decartes, Pynchon is not. 
Pynchon's method of approaching things is dialectical. I
gave another example from his Luddite essay; wherein he
first rejects the polarized view of Snow-Art versus
Science-- and rejects Snow's polarized view of human
personality. The dialectical (Plato's word-dialegesthai, to
talk with) method is questions and answers. This method does
not seek to destroy the other guy with arguments, which is a
common misunderstanding of what Plato's Socrates is about.
It does not like Snow, see things in fixed polarities or
conflicts. The dialectic or dialogue endeavors to preserve
and transcend the position of the other. 

I think Pynchon is a satirist, and his novels have all of
the characteristics of the fiction that Frye calls
"Anatomy." Reading Pynchon's fiction, we find that his
characters-pedants, bigots, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts,
rapacious and incompetent professional men of all kinds,
schlemiels, "Badasses," are involved in a comprehensive
dialogue of subversion that often includes subversive and
subverted narrators, parody, and pastiche. The dialogue on
novels and history in M&D is a good example. In our current
grgr discussions, we have Mexico and Anti-Mexico, Spectro,
Pudding, Reverend Dr. Paul de la Nuit, the Freudian Edwin
Treacle and so on. Pynchon brings the entire encyclopedia on
to the stage of satire, and disappears. Even his narrators
can not escape his satire and so it becomes nearly
impossible to attribute the words or ideas of his narrators,
Cherrycoke for example, to Pynchon. 

Swift, the great Irish satirist provides a good example of
the problems inherent both in the insistence that biography
augments our understanding or appreciation of literature and
the limits of what can be known about the author. The
satirist Henry Fielding wrote, "the satirist is to be
regarded as our physician, not our enemy." Yet scholars,
intent on discovering the meaning of Part IV of Guliver,
determined that Swift was in need of a physician to relieve
him of utter madness and that readers should not read Part
IV of Guliver because it was the scatological lunacy of a
misanthrope with half his mind in the grave and the other
half in the toilet. How they are arrived at this opinion is
a long story no one here I think cares to here just now, but
it is a good example of criticism gone mad and the problems
inherent in biography and fiction. It was not until the
1950s that scholars would recognize the errors of their ways
and credit Swift with sanity and the physician's skill of a
satirist. So can we know that Thomas Pynchon believes in or
suggest that "resurrection" is possible, is to be hoped for,
expected? I don't think so, but we can speculate and we can
opine, and it is my opinion that his novels are first of all
satires, objective in perspective, dialectical in method.
They present a view of a world in flux and to use his term
from Slow Learner, of  "a soul in flux." Pynchon's fictional
worlds seem to reflect a world and a view of the world that
does not fall and can not be pushed into neat opposing
catagories----spirit and Matter, Man and Cosmos, Virgin and
Dynamo and so it is only as we say here, mho that
"resurrection" of physical or spiritual are as one and are
possible and are.

If course, I believe in the ghostliness of bread and I
haven't much resistance to the wind. 

TF