V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams

[Paul Mackin]

Fer hevensakes, let me answer both Terrance and David in one fell. swoop. No, I do not
reject the material world and doubt P does either for the simple reason that it is the
only world we have .There is nothing else. . I've just been throwing out ideas about how
people in very dire staits--which are the straits most people have been in for most of
the history of the world and we wouldn't quite be human if we did not sympathize a little
with them--with their all-too-pitiable plight---might be inclined to react to the
situation in which they find themselves.

What we of course KNOW in our modern enlightenment is that the world  is going to
continue on in the same  muddled state--same old same old-- and there is  not going to
appear suddenly some esoteric knowledge from above--the world miraculously set right--but
rather that we will mostly carry  on in much the same manner as always . . . . per omnia
secula seculorum. (sp???--it's been a long time since I starred in Latin)


                            P.



David Morris wrote:

> >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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