grgr: overcoming of metaphysics

[Otto Sell]

"a good Rocket to take us to the stars, an evil Rocket for the World`s
suicide, the two perpetually in struggle." (727)

Every metaphysical system is based on binaries and Pynchon uses them all
(according to deconstruction, but you can forget that word if it disturbs
you - in the case of Pynchon just cling to look for binaries and (their)
zeros, circles in all variations - zero and circle share the same symbolic
values, standing at the same time for the nice binary of All vs. Nothing -
from horoscopes to Joseph Campbell`s hero business and Rocket Mandalas,
inversions, reversements, interfaces and crossover points) for his game,
mocking them all. So he`s not metaphysical or gnostic at all. I guess
growing up among Puritans but taught Catholic praying makes you agnostic.
But it`s not like you wrote that it`s coincidential what he has put in, it
is well chosen according to its binary contents, the metaphysics, calculus,
the Rilke, Frost, soccer game etc:

"It all goes along together. Parallel, not series. Metaphor. Signs and
symptoms. Mapping on to different coordinate system (...)."
(GR, p. 159) - mapping, that`s what Pynchon does.

With Kabbalah it`s similar. He uses things out of it which fits to his
structural models.
(148, down): "Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation" - accord. to
WeisenBurger (WB, quoting Gershom Scholem, NY, 1965) in "Kabbalistic myth,
the "vessels" of physical being were thought to have received the divine
light at the moment of creation. (...) As Gershom Scholem (On the Kabbalah
112-13) explains: "Nothing remains in its proper place. Everything is
somewhere else."" (Weisenburger, 87).
By the way: now we know where the
black jewish servant in M&D got his name from.
(231) "I am blessed Metatron..." - WB p. 122: "Note how satirically inverts
these representations (...) each of the seven anterooms through which
Pudding passes inverts the comparable motif in Kabbalistic lore."

There are some more (584 - Katspiel, 717 - Sixth antechamber to the
Throne, ) like he uses Tarot (Fool=Zero), I Ching (No. 21 - Mong, wise man
versus young fool) etc., but my favorite example for mapping (in this case
the Kabbalah on Rocket technology) is always on p. 727: "Kabbalists who
study the Rocket as Torah, letter by letter--rivets, burner cup and brass
rose, its text is theirs to permute and combine into new revelations, always
unfolding . . ." - Are we on the list Pynchon-Kabbalists who study the novel
as our Torah?

Sorry, but I like it that simple and I like it when text passages are given
in discussing a book. Forget Heidegger. Take Weisenburger.

Otto
-------------------------
o.sell at telda.net
http://www.itap.de/homes/otto/pynchon/lit2.htm


----- Original Message -----
From: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2000 7:30 PM
Subject: Re: grgr: overcoming of metaphysics


If someone can point out that gnosticism/Kabbala/Heidegger and other things
really
has influence mr. Pynchon's writings, it will interest me.  Otherwise: not.

On the way home from the library he found a class with 150 pupils in it.  He
couldn't find a way to put THAT in.

Kind regards,
Michel