fools to frighten winter

[Dave Monroe]

Thanks!  Am working my way back through--well, around, at any rate--Brown's life against Death myself, and am finding it very helpful, indeed.  What about Luther's "thunderbolt" of inspiration in that (repressed) privy in the Tower at the beginning of the chapter?  Sets off a few flashes for me, at any rate, though still waiting for the spots to clear from my vision.  Towers, lightning, Protestantism, privies ...

STILL waiting on the Kharpertian and Eddins books (again, have missed a decade or so here, at LEAST), but always appreciate a good bibliographic exhibition (which reminds me, both Young Man Luther by Erik Erikson and Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character through Folklore by Alan Dundes?).   Am curious, what Pynchoniana WOULD everyone here recommend in particular?

But am curious, how do you think Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, differentiates Catholicism and Protestantism?  I don't disagree, but I can't say I recall much specific textual basis on which to agree, either.  Lots of Protestantism, but only recall Catholicism coming up in its role as institutionalized prosecutor of heresies, as (The) System, and rather late in the novel.  But I've hardly internalized the book the way many of you seem to have, so  ...

J Suete wrote:

> In "The Protestant Era" Brown takes on Luther, the Devil, and the Anality

> the "more merciful Catholic tradition"

> contrast Protestant notions of "predestination" with Catholic or St. Augustinian "Free will."

> TRP's attack on Catholicism is relentless, but quite different from his attack on several denominations of Protestantism.

> See "Inperium, Misogyny, And Postmodern Parody In Thomas Pynchon's V. by Stefan Mattessich, ELH 65 (1998) 503-521, John Hopkins University and Chapter Two of A Hand To Turn the Time, and last, and best, see Chapter Three of Gnostic Pynchon-"Depraved New World, the last two are full length books.