GRGR(33) - Mandalas 1

[David Morris]

Just started Kathryn Hume's "Pynchon's Mythography," and she points to a 
mandala-like geography in GR:

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   "The horizontal configuration of most symbolic cosmoi is simple:  at the 
center is a core of light, order, and fellowship;  beyond this are the 
wastes of the forests or marshes or seas or deserts inhabited by monsters or 
outlaws." (38)

   "Pynchon's world, however, is threefold.  In the middle is the Zone, the 
exploded center. [...] In the power vacuum that results, people learn to 
cope with unaccustomed freedom: "It's an arrangement," Geli tells Slothrop. 
"It's so unorganized out here. There have to be arrangements.  You'll find 
out."  [...] Much evidence suggests that this open life in the Zone, though 
disapproved and feared by Western culture, is strongly upheld by Pynchon.  
His placing it where he does reflects this esteem.
   Surrounding this core are the Western powers, made by their victory yet 
more rigid and more obsessed with control.  Instead of putting them within 
the circle of light, Pynchon places them in the location traditionally 
reserved for monsters, the dark wastes beyond the lighted core."  (38-39)

Beyond the controlling powers, outside them or within their barren wastes, 
is a third kind of territory.  These are the peoples who have been 
oppressed, dispossessed, and rejected [...]  Within memory, their lives are 
ahistorical, cyclical, and, in some senses, free.  But these peoples are 
more reminders of lost options than viable choices now" (39)
**********

The mandala as a structure has many functions, but is mainly a means of 
establishing a safe place amidst chaos.  For the child given his first 
crayon, his repeatedly circular scribble represents himself, an established 
center of experience just beginning to differentiate an identity apart from 
all the imputs of the world.  For the Tibetan meditator it is a walled and 
gated palace, a fortress, the four cardinal points representing opposing 
directions for the soul.  The fortress walls hold one within a reasonable 
boundary, in a fluctuating "balanced" state, in relative proximity to the 
center.  At the center, a place one negotiates around, but rarely occupies, 
is the Ruler, God.  It is the place beyond places.

Hume's/Pynchon's mandala, above places chaos at its center and rigid order 
without, but that is the new desirable construct.  This is an inversion, but 
in GR Cotrol is the monster and freedom is the Grail.  This is only one 
application of the mandala in GR, and I'm only just starting into Hume's 
book, but it resonates so far, and GRGR(33) is chock-full of mandalas....

David Morris
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