The Gnostic Pynchon

[Dave Monroe]

I haven't gotten around to Dwight Eddins' The Gnostic Pynchon yet, but ... Eric
Vogelin's Science, Politics and Gnosticism was, I believe first published ca.
1968, and could presumably have been a source for Pynchon, at least in time for
Gravity's Rainbow.  However, I've not seen it come up much, if at all, in the
critical literature.  I've just subscribed to this list, so I don't know if
it's been mentioned, but I believe the general consensus has been that
Pynchon's source for most things gnostic was likely Hans Jonas's seminal The
Gnostic Religion, first published in English, I believe, in 1963--at any rate,
that seems the source for most commentators, and I recall that I came by it via
some bit of Pynchoniana or another.

Now, my understanding is that Pynchon, indeed, came from a New England
Protestant, even Puritan, background, although his Catholic mother raised him
as a Catholic (hence perhaps the relationship between chronology in Gravity's
Rainbow and the Liturgical calendar, as noted by Steven Weisenberger in his
introduction to his A "Gravity's Rainbow" Companion).  And I've no doubt about
his interest in, use (and abuse) of gnosticism--indeed, heterodox and/or
heretical Christianities in general--in Gravity's Rainbow (and it seems to me
his interest in Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies might be realted, but ...),
but what I find interesting is his rather ... counter-gnostic emphasis on the
body, on the corporeal, on the vulgar, on that "lower material bodily strata"
(Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World) which, in its kenotic (Bakhtin
again?) emphasis on Incarnation vs. (as with the gnostics) Resurrection, on
this vs. the other, an other world (see, for example, Peter Brown, The Body and
Society: Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity), on, perhaps, the Preterite
vs. the Elect.  Pynchon as, Pynchon a gnostic?  If not hardly, then, well, with
difficulty, Pynchon's Christian background being complicated, indeed.  Indeed,
perhaps Pynchon, like Vogelin, recognizes a certain gnosticism in modernity,
postmodernity, even (see Harold Bloom, Omens of Millenium, as well as Mark
Edmundson, Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism and the Culture of
Gothic), in contemporary (at least) science, and is making it a point of
critique.  Anybody recall if Alfred North Whitehead had anything to say about
this in Science and the Modern World, which was definitely a source for
Pynchon?  Any comments?  Examples? Lines to follow?  Let me know ...

Terrance wrote:

> 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....