V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams

[Dave Monroe]

Not a matter or "really want[ing] to" "read anything into anything,"
rather, of noticing that it seems relevant, can be commented on, is a
productive line of inquiry, et al.  Not a matter of being "ripe for such
revelations as Gnosticism later afforded him" as elaborating,
foregrounding the gnosticisms of, say, modernity, modernism, modern
science and technology, modern politics, even, in an elaborate, alveit
rather less foregrounded, critique of the same of Pynchon's own.  Themes
that pervade that Pynchonian oeuvre.  Eddins didn't need to convince me,
but he sure did confirm some intuitions for me, sure did elaborate them
well beyond anything I might ever have had the time, inclination or
ability to do.  But as if anyone's convictions necesarily confirm or
dispell anyone else's, so ...

Again, that archaeology (Foucault), that thick description (Geertz),
that new historicism (Greenblatt), that taking into account, that taking
account of, a texts possible, probable, likely, known contexts.  Say,
Eric Voegelin's critique of that articulation of science, politics and
modernity (The New Science of Politics, and, later, Science, Politics
and Gnosticism),  or Norbert Wiener's recognition of both Augustinian
and Manichean themes in both the genealogy and the implications of
statistical interpretation, information theory, cybernetics (The Human
Use of Human Beings), certainly, in the air.  And Pynchon sure does seem
to breathe deeply (and I do think he got a lungful of Baudelaire along
the way as well, so ...) ...

Again, the question is not so much to determine if such ideas "in the
air" were correct, or even reasonable, or not.  Rather, what is of
immediate interest are the traces, the signs and symptoms, the
significance and symptomatics, of said ideas in, say, teh cultural
productions of a given time, place, context, habitus, whatever.  Cf.,
say, the use of the bodily humors in literature from (various) Greek
(sub)civilization(s) through the (various national, disciplinary)
Renaissance(s) and beyond.  And there are an awful lot of traces of
gnosticism and the critique thereof in those Pynchonian texts, in V.,
even whether or not its author had much elaborated it as such, on or off
the page ...

A strange and ultimately untenable requirement, to insist on, only on,
referring to "only" what is on the page.  Just not the way language
works, just not the way writing works, just not the way literature
works, just not the way reading works, just not the way criticism works,
heck, just not the way "we" work, you or I or anyone else here, and not
only when "we" work on those Pynchonian texts ...

And I'm not so sure "we" can label Henry Adams "gnostic," either.
Although we might perhaps label him a critic of gnosticism, of the
gnosticisms of his own political, scientific, technological, et al.,
context/s, a "precursor" (taking into account Borges' caveats about
such) of, an influence on, Pynchon's own such critique.  But would we
have needed V. to mention Adams in order to discern its use of his
texts?  That moment actually seemed a weakness to me, that
unnecessairily explicit mention, use, even, of Adams ...