V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams

[David Morris]

>From: Terrance but if you are suggesting that the Gnostic's utter 
>disenchantment with the material world, the Neoplatonic disdain for the 
>Earth, Gnostic cosmogony, is in some way positive in TRP's fiction, that he 
>is sympathetic to this view, I should love to hear more. I find he is just 
>the opposite.
>
>he is a quester, a satirist, black with the miserable truth, Ah Humanity!

Your "miserable truth" is good.  Miserable is the present state of the 
cosmos.  Pynchon's "blackness" would be his recognition that this state is 
inescapable.  A Neoplatonic rejection of this state in favor of some clean 
ideal is not Pynchon's perscription.  He accepts the dirty nature of the 
world and urges small steps of virtue, even up to personal martyrdom as the 
means to an ever incomplete redemption.  Full redemption is impossible and 
antithetical to biological existence.

DM

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