V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams

[Paul Mackin]

Please excuse a poor nonreader of Eddins from treading into waters he knows
not of, but is anyone saying that late Pynchon believes himself to be in
possession of esoteric knowledge acquired through divine revelation of some
sort??

Well, no, of course not. But what then is gnosticism to him? Other than one
more scheme of beliefs of the sort  mankind has cooked up down through the
ages to explain the unexplainable and with which P can have fun sending up.
Like occultism or behaviorism or organic chemistry?

Would like to see what Eddins had to say but missed opportunity to buy the
last copy at the local Borders.

So am asking out of ignorace rather than flippancy.

                     P.


----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 4:22 PM
Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams


>
>
> ----------
> Monroe:
>
> > One might--or might not (Terrence?) grant that gnostic themes are not
> > quite so overt, certainly not so explicitly named as such, in V. (vs.,
> > esp., Gravity's Rainbow),
>
> Indeed. This is my point.
>
> > but, again, themes, elements, whatever, need
> > not be made explicit, to be named as such, in order nonetheless to be
> > present in, quite reasonably read from, any given text
>
> I suppose you can read anything into anything if you really want to.
Nothing
> I've read, either here or in the criticism, but more particularly in the
> text themselves (which should be the proof of the pudding I would
imagine),
> has convinced me that the fascination with Gnosticism and the occult which
> is evident in _GR_ is present in the earlier texts. Certainly, TRP, quite
> obviously unenamoured by traditional religions from word go, might have
been
> ripe for such revelations as Gnosticism later afforded him, and this
> readiness might indeed be discerned in the early texts; however, as I
wrote,
> I see no evidence in _V._ that Pynchon has delved into the specifics of
> Gnosticism to any significant degree at this stage of his career. Even the
> references to _The White Goddess_ and _The Golden Bough_ strike me as a
> little bit . . . opportunistic. A case of "use vs mention", something
which
> has also been discussed at length here before.
>
> I'm not so sure that we can actually label Henry Adams as a Gnostic.
>
>