V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams

[Paul Mackin]

The view of jbor that between Lot49 and GR. P acquired sophisticated  knowledge
in a variety of religious and philosophical subjects including Gnosticism and
that this is used to astounding  effect in his mature work is certainly my own.
(Kai agrees in his post of this morning)

Seems to me that "sympathy for the Gnostics" may be a good way of putting it.
Sympathy for the down and out. Not that Gnostics were always
down-and-outers--although the Australian example does help bolster the
genraliziation.  Also, would  not a prime motivation or appeal for the Gnostic
position have lain in quite an utter disenchantment with the material world. A
view that poverty and disease and starvation most assuredly work  to instill. The
material world is unquestionably  unfair. If this can be seen as a mistake in
creation then the hope is reasonable that some correction can yet take place.
The truth and the light may yet somehow prevail.

Does Pynchon entertain this hope? And in what sense?

                    P.

jbor wrote:

> Yes, I agree with you Paul. I don't think that even in _GR_ Pynchon
> discloses himself as a card-carrying, goat-sacrificing (or whatever . . . )
> Gnostic. That "Kabbalist spokesman" Steve Edelman comes across as being a
> little bit silly: It seems to me that it is "scholasticism" itself --
> whether it be Edelman and "Rocket-state cosmology", "world-renowned analyst"
> Mickey Wuxtry-Wuxtry, or Mitchell Prettyplace and his twelve volumes on
> 'King Kong' -- which is most heartily satirised; and I think the same goes
> for a "scholarly quest" such as young Stencil's, who, if it *is* him
> narrating, seems to be offering the comparison of himself to both Graves and
> Frazer (61.5) as a type of self-aggrandizement. (As we shall discover, such
> a comparison is quite ludicrous because Stencil achieves very little,
> understands even less, and doesn't actually even seem to *want* to find
> anything out). The sympathy for the Gnostics which can be discerned in _GR_
> seems to me to be political in tenor rather than any all out embrace of a
> particular belief system: as we well know, Pynchon tends to side with the
> underdog, the persecuted, the passed over, and it is little doubt that the
> Gnostics were (and still are) one of the more persecuted sects.
> (Newly-arrived refugees from the Middle East, mainly Iraq, who I think call
> themselves Mandaneans, are Gnostics, and have settled locally here. They
> have been as badly treated in their homeland as the Kurdish were/are: denied
> education, chased from their homes, tortured, murdered etc.)
>
> But I'd say that Pynchon hadn't really read up on the Gnostics, or Kabbala,
> Manicheans, Tarot, I Ching etc etc until after writing _V._ and _Lot49_. I
> think Monroe is using small 'g' "gnostic" as a synonym for "secular", which
> is trying to draw a rather long bow imo.
>
> best
>
> ----------
> >From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
> >To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >Subject: Re: V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams
> >Date: Fri, Dec 8, 2000, 1:31 AM
> >
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> >>