pynchon-l-digest V2 #1432

[Doug Millison]

Thanks, Terrance, for some fine posts that go to the heart GR. 
Obviously (to anybody who read my recent, simple, summing up post), 
we share some basic assumptions about this novel, and about Pynchon's 
oeuvre. Perhaps Pynchon's most penetrating insight, as he worked on 
GR and brought it to fruition, was in understanding the degree to 
which his literate audience had been infected with the same sickness 
he chose to give Weissmann/Blicero, such that this monster, whose 
ultimate goal is to deny the blessings of human life on Earth, could 
be received as some sort of tragic hero -- a dark vision on Pynchon's 
part indeed. I think P learned his Orwell well and understood 
perfectly the way his intellectually sophisticated audience had been 
-- and, obviously, still is -- corrupted and co-opted by the 
political and economic actors that profit from the anti-life 
worldview that Weissmann/Blicero epitomizes.

Terrance:
[snip]
>TRP's "Feminine Nature" carries the great American tradition
>of the
>"feminine" Earth. She is "scatterbrained" because she is
>progenitive and is permeated by randomness, qualities
>celebrated by GR because they are not only unacceptable but
>transgressive to those whose religion (Weissmann/Blicero
>being the gnostic high priest and god of this cult) is the
>consciously
>sterile Discipline of Control and Service to the Rocket. The
>text makes explicit, that the  desire of the Cartel
>scientist/priests is to defeat nature's entropies. They
>practice and preach absolutism, their gnosis is of a
>determinism that seeks a "divine" stasis beyond entropy.
>
>So while  particular rockets are ultimately defeated by
>gravity, or by the humor, irony, the faustian arrogance that
>TRP ridicules, THE ROCKET symbolizes
>a constant metaphysical rebellion against such natural
>defeat.


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