The Quest and the Grail (or Logocentrism)

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Terrance,

unfortunately I wasn't able to follow the discussion too closely. Nor did I
find the time to reread GR. What I posted were thus more or less generally
accepted, not to say stereotypical, notions about the text and the attitude
towards Puritanism one might find expressed in it. All I can offer for the
moment - though I find this topic highly interesting, as you know - are
impressions. 

>If we can not bunch up the "christians" and "puritans" 

Well, the attitude I spoke of was the concept of subduing the wilderness and
its inhabitants in the name of God and material progress. This concept is
not restricted to Puritans or the supporters of Manifest Destiny, it has in
fact fueled the whole sickening history of Europe's dealings with nature and
with people whose colour of skin happens to be other than white. The
Puritans ideology was only an extreme form of the traditional Christian
enmity towards nature - Calvinism unequivocally considered nature as fallen
and in need of redemption. One has to keep in mind, of course, as Doug says,
that Christianity is not a monolithic block, but that there were always
different ways of looking at creation as well.

>Is it a blanket
>condemnation of christian thought? I don't think that's the
>case.  GR is not an anti-christian novel. P's imaginative
>pattern is only partly an historical pattern. History may be
>consistent with it or not. In the example you note the
>patterns coincide, P degenerates the Calvanist's elitist
>doctrine of providence to the three american truths, "Shit,
>money and the Word," and this is an historical pattern, a
>pattern we can trace to his sources, but we cannot apply
>this pattern to history or to christian thought wholesale. 
>

The tradition of Christianity in which the natural world is considered only
an obstacle to spiritual and material development is the one that has
prevailed during the course of history - it is, in fact, what Christianity
IS in terms of history. But of course you are right when you say that
Pynchon's perspective is only partly historical. That is why I made an
exception for mysticism: Mystics like Meister Eckhart or Jakob Böhme, or all
these Renaissance Christians who were fascinated by alchemy, are something
else - not only in terms of the history of the human spirit but also as far
as their treatment - and the treatment of their ideas - in Pynchon's
fictions is concerned. This means, no, I don't see a blanket condemnation of
Christian thought in GR - and even less in M&D - but a condemnation of
Christianity as a motivating force of "historical progress".

>Weber and the chapters I suggested from Graves and Adams
>support your claim that P's fiction displays an acute
>awareness of the historical pattern, but what is that
>pattern and what use does P make of it? 

The pattern can be described in the words I used, teleological thought (the
wilderness must be conquered in order to erect a "Citty upon a Hill" or a
"Civitas dei", as St. Augustin put it) and manichaeic thought (white as the
"imperial hue (...) giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky
tribe", aka racism). To answer the question what use Pynchon makes of it
would take at least two years of research, I'm afraid.

>> P's use of color imagery in GR seems to point to a
>>wholesale rejection of Christian thought, insofar as it
>>despises nature and people with different color of skin,

>sounds wrong to me. 

>Both statements are too Black and White I think, although I
>agree that those that despise the earth and people of
>different color (some are puritans) are denounced in GR.

I was not expressing myself too clearly. What I meant was "a wholesale
rejection of the strand of Christian thought that despises the earth and
people of different colour".

>Pynchon's use of the term Puritan is typical of his use of
>other important terms, like christian and paranoia,  in that
>he we need to figure out what he means by puritans by the
>context. It's confusing because he often uses the term
>comprehensively, for example,  "it's a Puritan reflex of
>seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as
>paranoia, filtering in." [GR.188] 

It is not that confusing I think. What Pynchon does with his reference to
Puritanism is to evoke a rather large portion of the history of the human
spirit and associate it with the psychic state characterized in his fiction
metaphorically as paranoia, just like Roman Catholicism may up to the
present day be associated with the feelings of guilt and shame. Which is to
say that old religious concepts still play an important role in how we
perceive the world and still, up to a certain point, condition our responses
to certain situations.

>I will argue that Pynchon
>is sympathetic to all "primitive" communities,  including,
>for example, the Ovatjimba, the aardvark people, the Herero
>prior to the christian sickness, and the early Puritans. 

Except for the Puritans, upon which topic I really would like to hear
something from you, I agree. I will not be able to further contribute to
this thread during the next days - especially since the European Soccer
Championships are on at the moment - , but I really enjoy the discussion.
Thanks. 

Thomas

P.S. Kudos to Bruce Springsteen for "American skin (41 shots)".