V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

Paul Mackin schrieb:

> 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. 


  wait a moment! jbor's observation that spiritual themes play a less important 
  role in pynchon's first two books than they do in the later ones is certainly 
  a right one. interesting in this context is the obvious switch to chinese   
  semantics in both, vineland and m&d, where gr stays with kabbalah (- present 
  in m&d too), astral traveling & tarot. perhaps trp has turned into an american 
  daoist?! that he, in any case, believes in the value and fruitfulness of     
  regular spiritual work becomes, imo, obvious in his intro to jim dodge's 
  "stone junction" from 1997 [!]: " ... stone junctions's allegiance, however, 
  is to the other kind of magic, the real stuff---long-practiced, all-out, 
  contrary-to-fact, capital m magic, not as adventitious spectacle, but as   
  pursued enterprise, in this very world we're stuck within, continuing to give 
  off readings---analog indications---of being abroad and at work, somewhere out 
  in it (xiii)". you may disagree, but i cannot recognize the most tiny bit of  
  irony in this very statement ...      

> But what then is gnosticism to him? 

  well, sloterdijk once defined gnosticism as "the original story of 
  dissidence". in this sense the religious anarchist thomas pynchon was, is and 
  will always be a gnostic to me.

kfl