Kids

[Terrance]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> ... well, I see you all beat me to yr copies of Philippe Aries's
> Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, so I won't even
> attempt to rehearse the undulating history of the notion of childhood
> innocence (though I'm taking Rousseau, Romanticism and Victorian
> Sentimentalism as key moments, myself), but I will note that, in
> "Christianity" (as for The Sex Pistols), no one is innocent, that
> "original sin" thing, indeed.  Though, again, and as has been noted by
> others, the culpability of children varies among Christianities, though,
> presumably, baptism cleanses that there original sin away, at least,
> although not all Christians are baptized as children, either, so ... but
> perhaps that's all beside the point, at least as far as Pynchon,
> Gravity's Rainbow is concerned.  

I don't think so, infant/adult Baptism is very important ot
GR. This is an example of why I claim that knowledge of
Catholicism helps one read Pynchon. 


Richard Poirier, in his review of GR,
> "Rocket Power" (handily reprinted in the very useful indeed Thomas
> Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, ed. Harold Bloom; Bloom's introduction, by
> the way, of course, takes an affirmative view of GR as gnostic, but I'll
> decline to disagree here) 

With whom? 


conveniently hits a few key points on the
> subject of Pynchon 'n' kids.  While he notes what seems to be Pynchon's
> genuine sympathy for children--says Slothrop "will do anything for
> little kids," something like that, right on up to an including wearing a
> giant pig costume; he also notes Pokler's poignant series of meetings
> with a girl and/or girls who may or may not actually be his daughter--he
> 

Children are the lowest of the low, it's not simply genuine
sympathy, they may be compared favorably with the
pre-christian Herero prior to fairy tale infection. "Got any
gum chum", but they get infected and they dream of machine
guns and fairy tales lands on the moon,  like our Father
with the plastic penis, sterility, death, and the Death
Kingdom. 


also notes Pynchon's "extraordinary affection for adolescent
> girls"--e.g., Bianca; 

Bianca? Wow! If that's affection, no, no, that's not a good
example, not Bianca or Isle. 
Unless he is a self loathing misanthrope and I don't think
there is any evidence of that. 


(though I'll note that > Byron is referred to as an "old
soul"), note what Pynchon, via Jamf and  Blicero,
respectively, puts Baby Tyrone and Gottfried through as
well,
> both caught up particularly twisted moments of plastics R&D.  

Why does Pynchon put Gottfried and Byron through this? 
These are examples of the System's pathology not Pynchon's.