The Quest and the Grail

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Terrance wrote:

>GR is a critique
>of the West, so it follows that christianity is a target.
>But what is it about christianity (and we would need to talk
>about the various religions--Puritan, Catholic, gnostics,
>etc.) that is criticized? It's certainly not the belief in
>god or an exalted state. Other religions in GR are praised
>for exactly these reasons. I disagree with Paul. It does
>matter. Irony doesn't explain it away. Is GR anti-Puritan?
>That's news to me. There is a specific critique of the
>Puritans--the WORD. GR is quite sympathetic to the Puritans.
>What about Judaism? Jewish mysticism in GR is essential to
>the text. Jewish mysticism, like gnosticism, is associated
>with evil in GR--like murdering children. But GR  unites the
>ancient Jews with the pre-christian Herero and I don't here
>anyone suggesting that  GR is anti-herero.
>

I've been told that Pynchon's treatment of Puritanism is heavily influenced
by Max Weber's "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" (my
translation) in which Weber argues that Protestant or Calvinist ethics are
the root of capitalism. In any case, in the US Puritanism smoothly
translated into the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Both concepts were as
teleological and manichaeic (or based on binary oppositions, if you like) as
they get: The idea of conquering the continent in order to erect a "Citty
upon a Hill", as John Winthrop famously put it, is not very different from
the notion that "Progress is God." (William Gilpin). Both were based on the
belief that the dark, Biblical wilderness and its red devils had to make way
for the white steeple, the Divine Light and the Word. What remained after
Winthrop's city had been built and the ordained Destiny of the white man in
North America had been reached were "Shit, Money, and the Word", and the few
ignoble savages who had not died from hunger, cold or the shells of the
Howitzer guns of the US-cavalry.

I believe that the relation between Puritanism and Capitalism constitutes a
major theme in Pynchon's fiction. And I think that his fiction displays an
acute awareness of the historical pattern outlined above. His use of colour
imagery in GR seems to me even to point to a wholesale rejection of
Christian thought, insofar as it despises nature and people with different
colour of skin - his treatment of mysticism is somewhat different. To cut
this short: Yes, I believe that GR is anti-Puritan, and I would be
interested in your arguments to the contrary, namely that "GR is quite
sympathetic to the Puritans." That's news to me. Could you give some
examples? And where in GR is Jewish mysticism "associated with evil"?
Thomas

			
                   		
		"I've been chasing ghosts and I don't like it
		 I wish somebody would show me where to draw the line"

								John Cale