GRGR: summing up Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1424

[jbor]

Apart from the first paragraph I find myself in agreement with much of what
millison writes here. The gratuitous demonisation of gnostics and gnosticism
in order to yoke Pynchon to the "Christian" bandwagon is transparently
ridiculous, of course, but good post, millison.

(pantheism n. [...] 3. ready to worship all or a large number of gods)

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millison unsnipped
>

> Terrance said "The rocket promises salvation to those that believe or
> long to transcend this Earth " and I trim the rest of a fine post,
> observing in passing that Terrance has done more to sustain a serious
> conversation in GRGR than just about anybody, and certainly he's done
> the best job of making consistently substantial comments minus the ad
> hominem attacks that characterize too many of his interlocutors'
> responses.
>
> In Pynchon's scheme, this hoped-for "transcendence" represents the
> ultimate sell-out and betrayal of life on earth, the
> pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by promise that enables fascist-minded
> religious fundamentalists (and their secular counterparts) to
> countenance the rape of the earth and the countless crimes that
> humans perpetrate one against another (apartheid, child abuse, War, &
> etc.). It's the Fall and Redemption hustle all over again, the
> meta-story that enables corporate greedmongers to co-opt the rest of
> us into their alienating, consumptionist economic and political
> programs -- all you need is that Something Else Somewhere Else to
> calm the itch, assuage the frustration, and They make sure there's
> always a new itch, a new frustration to keep you looking all the
> time. Longing for such "transcendence" ignores the pleasures of
> flesh, spirit, and reason that are available to earth's creatures,
> and rejects the possibilities for bliss that exist here and now, in
> the body, in nature, in each other's company, in the spirit. Pynchon
> rightly attacks this perversion of reason and spirit that has guided
> development of the West for 20-plus centuries.
>
> Having rejected the gnostic paradigm that underlies the modern
> corporate state, its governmental and commercial trappings and tools
> (Pynchon directs our attention to many of the people, places, and
> events in history which have brought about this hegemony -- see the
> way Hollander reads The Crying of Lot 49 in Pynchon Notes #40-41,
> then see what happens when you read GR using his approach), what, if
> anything does Pynchon affirm? Coming as he does from the American
> literary tradition, his vision is, not surprisingly, Christian, and
> in the best sense of that w/Word: GR expresses great compassion for
> victims of the System --  not just the obvious victims of the
> Holocaust, or the Herero, or the other genocides Pynchon alludes to
> or discusses directly but also including such grandiose fuck-ups
> (and, in the eyes of moralizing religious institutions, "sinners") as
> Weissmann/Blicero and lesser stooges like Pokler and Katje; focus on
> the blessing of being human;  and the simple enjoyment of nature,
> sex, moments of love and comfort in a sometimes dark and dangerous
> world. Pynchon's vision fits nicely the creation spirituality of the
> Christian mystics of the Middle Ages, Meister Eckart and Hildegarde
> (as developed by Matthew Fox in his books _Original Blessing_ and
> _The Coming of the Cosmic Christ_), who understood that fusion with
> the Godhead does not mean fleeing the body, the earth, nature but
> instead means embracing earthly existence, where the world manifests
> from the One (secular humanists can read "Big Bang" and the force
> that lies behind the Big Bang, if they wish) as the Many, where even
> the simplest preterite human subject can find her way through the
> Many back to the One, right here on earth. In this vision, God is not
> absent from creation, as the gnostics insist. We may be victims, and
> we may be led to choices, compromises, crimes that hurt others, and
> in all cases we hold that struggle between light in dark in ourselves
> (it's not, as s~Z reminds us, us Good ones versus those Evil ones out
> there, it's recognizing and struggling with the Wyrm within), but
> we're not lost in gnostic space, Pynchon says, God hasn't abandoned
> creation, we don't have to worry about finding our way back:  that's
> the gnostic lie that They (and They are, of course, to a certain
> degree, Us -- TRP must have read his Pogo, after all) want us to
> believe because They want us lost and lonely and frustrated and
> confused, all the more ready, even eager to embrace their
> technologies for control, to turn on each other and validate Their
> divide and conquer strategy. Embracing the fundamental holiness of
> being human, Pynchon does not succumb to simple sentimentality or
> fuzzy mysticism (even as his text alludes to the mystics and includes
> its own sentimental moments). The collective pain of the crimes
> humans commit against one another and against the earth rises in the
> scream that opens GR, and Pynchon very much leaves open the
> possibility that the anti-life forces will win in the end, even as he
> affirms, in those closing moments, the panentheistic creation that he
> has depicted between the covers of this marvelous book.
>
> --
>
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