Logocentrism

[Otto Sell]

<Mom said, converts make the best Catholics. And I said, that
depends on what they convert too. She didn't laugh.>

"The Ascent to Christ is a struggle thro´ one heresy after another,
River-wise up-country into a proliferation of Sects and Sects branching from
Sects, unto Deism, faithless pretending to be holy, (...) Doubt is the
essence of Christ. (...) The final pure Christ is pure uncertainty."
Rev`d Cherrycoke, M&D, p. 511


This all belongs together and I reject any topic-cops. Been an alien all my
life on this planet. The question of Waco has a lot to do with the question
what we do to our children and what about the world we put them in - very
pynchonesque.

Many thanks for the posts (Terrance, SZ, Paul, Spencer too!) on
logocentrism. Pynchon`s oeuvre is so full of binary oppositions that we must
take Derrida (explained by Culler) into consideration to judge "our man"
rightly.
(I was looking for days for English written texts cuz I only got the Culler
in German. Can stop that now.)

Let`put all this in simple terms:

catholic vs protestant
protestant vs puritan
puritan vs William Slothrop

Am I right if I believe that the Puritans who are America`s Pilgrim`s
Fathers, left the protestant England because of their belief, but William`s
upside-down heresy was so heretic that all of them would have burned him in
reality.

Pynchon has of course been influenced by his catholic mother in a puritan
surrounding, but must have realized very soon that this religion is not able
to explain (like no other too) the modern world he was living in. Sorrily we
have no "official" reaction to the Siegel-text, so we must take it for what
it is:

Siegel writes:
When his parents came to visit, he introduced his mother this way: "Jules,
this is my mother. She's an anti-Semite. Mother, this is Jules. He's a Jew."
Mrs. Pynchon was later reported to have said about this, "I wasn't an
anti-Semite. I just didn't want my children to surround themselves with
Jews."
End of quote

Well, we all know that catholicism is a children-religion, full of miracles,
magic events and wonders, derived from the old desert-beliefs, built by the
patriarchs to control the people by fear, with categories of guilt, shame
and punishment after the overthrow of the original matriarchate. That was
built on it`s power to give live, all later were built on their power to
kill. Mr. Woytyla is still working this way in the abortion-discussion. A
fanatic catholic killing an abortion-doc with the intention to save lives
makes perfect sense to me.

Puritanism, as being explained to me by the books of Thomas Pynchon, is a
step further, but nevertheless the same old story: this life isn`t worth
anything, live faithful to gain the next one. It goes without saying that
this is no way of organizing a modern technical world but in fact it is
still done. We all live today like American people and the story of "shit,
money and the word" with all it`s ecological implications is one of the
highlights of GR to me.

It`s all an exchange of one -ism for another and this is what Pynchon makes
clear. There`s no metaphysical concept without the reference to the original
revealed word, which of course can`t be questioned. Turn the opposites (god
vs. man, subject vs. object) in the following upside down and you get a step
nearer to the likely truth ("Who claims Truth, Truth abandons", M&D, p.
350):

1. Mose 1.26-27, where God says that he made Man after his image. Turned
upside down it says Man made God after his image: a cruel, jealous old man,
who wants his children to suffer cuz he cannot enjoy life any more. And
additionally there follows the bible-quote too which lies at the heart of
puritanism: that we may conquer the world, that all animals and plants have
been given to us and we`re free to use them (1. Mose 1.28-30).

Now you know why I believe that TRP is a postmodern writer and not something
like Kai wrote which I don`t know what is is: a writer of 'constructivistic'
late modernity.

See you all in Limbo, looking for Belacqua, at the post-life group-reading
of the Beckett-Trilogy.

Otto