Osmosis & P's Gnostic Cosmoses

[Dave Monroe]

... but I do think the tendency to read Pynchon as valorizing gnosticism
stems not only from a slightly less-than-nuanced,
less-than-deconstructive (though, certainly, appealing, and a reading
I've made myself) reading of that Pynchonian deconstruction of the
Elect/preterite binary, but also because of that perhaps
less-than-nuanced, less-than-deconstructive as well straightforward
association of the heretical, of gnosticism, with "dissidence," with
Pynchonian dissidence, whatever that might be, esp. in light of those
fabled, dissident 60s (an interesting book in this regard, perhaps
exemplifying this tendency to valorize heretics in the name of
"revolution" might be former Situationist Raoul Vaneigem's The Movement
of the Free Spirit, though I've only flipped through it myself) ...

Inetrestingly, that introspective gnostic drive seems--seems, although
...--diametrically opposed to the libidinal liberation espoused by the
likes of Herbert Marcuse (Eros and Civilization) and, esp., Norman O.
Brown (Life Against Death), both of whom were certainly influences not
only on Pynchon by at LEAST the time of Gravity's Rainbow (Terrance?),
but influential figures throughout those swinging free-love sixties as
well.  But do take a look at Marcuse's reconsideration of such possibly
wrteched excesses in his "Political Preface" in the 1966 republication
of E & C (he also wrote an aftertword to Brown's Love's Body which I've
yet to see which I'm under the impression might be of a similarly
cautionary tenor), think that, esp. by the time of GR, esp. in the
aftermath of those wretchedly excessive 60s (Vietnam, Altamont, all
sorts of metonyms come to mind here), there might well be a similar
reconsideration of all such "dissidences" going on in GR.  But what then
to say of V.?  Well, we do have The Whole Sick Crew,  Foppl's party,
Southwest Africa, and so forth ...