Slothrop's Nativity & Religion

[David Morris]

>From: "Douglas Lannark" [snip]
>Furthermore, Otto Sell in Episode 4, Chapter 1 on his excellent and 
>profound, yet incompleted, Pynchon Site, elaborates on the theory of a 
>connection, an influence at least, between GR and the major work of John 
>Bunyan, "The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is To Come."
>
>http://www.itap.de/homes/otto/pynchon/episode.htm

This came up beck in GRGR(2):
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9905&msg=121&sort=author

From: "David Morris" <davidm at hrihci.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: GRGR(2) - Inside a parable
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 15:08:07 -0700


>1. What is it to be "inside a parable?"

(25.3) Ruins he goes daily to look in are each a sermon on vanity.  That he
finds, as weeks wear on, no least fragment of any rocket preaches how
indivisible is the act of death... Slothrups Progress:  London the secular
city instructs him:  turn any corner and he can find himself inside a
parable.

Everywhere Slothrup looks he sees lessons in the from of sermons, delivered
in parables.  His stars are, in the parlance of Thomas Hooker's "God's
garden of love" sermon, the flowers of Slothrop's "lovelies."  Likewise, the
"vanity of man" is revealed in the ruins of the City.

"Slothrop's Progress" is a reference to "The Pilgrim's Progress" by John
Bunyan

from:
http://www.newlife.org/pilgrim.html

Kipling refers to Bunyan as "The Father of the Novel, Salvation's first
Defoe". Bunyan..had of course no thought of writing a novel; indeed, we read 
it as a novel  today simply because the of the amount of felt and observed 
reality it contains..Bunyan was a transcendent genius, the first to appear 
in English prose fiction of any kind, and his work as original as anything 
in literature can be.

"The craft that we call modern,
the crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had them typed and filed
in 1682."
Kipling


The following are excerpts relevant to this topic (from the writer's apology 
segment). the full text of P.P. may be found at:
http://www.bibleclass.com/lib/bunyan/pp.htm

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
FROM THIS WORLD
TO THAT WHICH IS TO COME
DELIVERED UNDER THE SIMILITUDE OF A DREAM
BY JOHN BUNYAN

[snip]
May I not write in such a style as this?
In such a method, too, and yet not miss
My end -- thy good? Why may it not be done?
Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none.
Yea, dark or bright, if they their silver drops
Cause to descend, the earth, by yielding crops,
Gives praise to both, and carpeth not at either,
But treasures up the fruit they yield together;
Yea, so commixes both, that in her fruit
None can distinguish this from that: they suit
Her well when hungry; but, if she be full,
She spews out both, and makes their blessings null.

You see the ways the fisherman doth take
To catch the fish; what engines doth he make?
Behold how he engageth all his wits;
Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks, and nets;
Yet fish there be, that neither hook, nor line,
Nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine:
They must be groped for, and be tickled too,
Or they will not be catch'd, whate'er you do.
[Remember the lines from that Steely Dan song?:
"Throw back the little ones
And pan-fry the big ones
Use tact, poise and reason
And gently squeeze them"]
[snip]

'Well, yet I am not fully satisfied,
That this your book will stand, when soundly tried.'
Why, what's the matter? 'It is dark.' What though?
'But it is feigned.' What of that? I trow
Some men, by feigned words, as dark as mine,
Make truth to spangle and its rays to shine.
'But they want solidness.' Speak, man, thy mind.
'They drown the weak; metaphors make us blind.
'Solidity, indeed, becomes the pen
Of him that writeth things divine to men;
But must I needs want solidness, because
By metaphors I speak? Were not God's laws,
His gospel laws, in olden times held forth
By types, shadows, and metaphors? Yet loath
Will any sober man be to find fault
With them, lest he be found for to assault
The highest wisdom. No, he rather stoops,
And seeks to find out what by pins and loops,
By calves and sheep, by heifers and by rams,
By birds and herbs, and by the blood of lambs,
God speaketh to him; and happy is he
That finds the light and grace that in them be.
Be not too forward, therefore, to conclude
That I want solidness -- that I am rude;
All things solid in show not solid be;
All things in parables despise not we;
Lest things most hurtful lightly we receive,
And things that good are, of our souls bereave.
My dark and cloudy words, they do but hold
The truth, as cabinets enclose the gold.



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