The Quest and the Grail (or Logocentrism)

[Terrance]

Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote:
> 
> Terrance schrieb:
> 
> > Could it be that Weber is more a
> > source for critics than Pynchon?
> 
>   could it be that voegelin is more a source for eddins than pynchon? kfl

Yes! In fact, Eddins admits this and when I posted my
initial comments on the book I had two complaints, first,
the book is not reader friendly and second, Eddins' use
of Voegelin is typical of so much of Pynchon criticism, the
reader is obliged to read another  book essential to the
argument (Voegelin, for example) even though  the critic
readily admits that there is no evidence that Pynchon read
the book. On the other hand, we know Pynchon read Max
Weber's Protestant Ethic
& Spiritual Capitalism, Mendelson established this long ago.
Mendelson claimed that Weber is in every crack of the book
or 
something like that and critics have had fun digging in the
cracks.
However, as the Terry Reilly demonstrates in his essay this
fact induced critics to limit there focus on Pynchon's
religion (Eddins being the exception Reilly notes). 

With few exceptions, studies of religion have been
relatively straightforward; for Pynchon, most critics argue,
religion generally means Puritanism, and, more specifically,
New England Puritanism. In such studies, "Christian  Europe"
is often relegated  to a mythic, perhaps barbaric past, a
place that "was always...death and repression." Or, as Smith
and Toloyan put it, "despite the general applicability of
the
term 'Christian Europe,' it virtually never means Catholic
Europe and its expansion since the seventeenth century."
Instead, if we--like Slothrop--revisit the Puritan past and
reconsider "the fork in the road America never took, the
singular point she jumped the wrong way from," we can see
that a focus on early modern European beginnings of the
Reformation illuminates the road not taken by critics in
their discussions of GR. 

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, THE ANABAPTIST REBELLION IN GERMANY,
1525-35, AND THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELER, TERRY REILLY.


Jumping Jack Mick flash sat on a candle stick....