TV v. God

[Dave Monroe]

>From J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to The Crying of Lot
49 (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994) ...

"H9.11, B1.10  spoke the name of God  This is the
starting point for a significant debate about the
novel's religious attributes.  Mendelson, whose essay
is almost certainly the best-known exposition of
religious themes in Lot 49, counts this as the first
of 'perhaps twenty'--actually, there are
thirty-three--uses of the word 'God' in the book. 
This 'quiet but consistent echo,' this 'muted but
audible signal' (126-27), is a component of the
novel's overall preoccupation with the sacred,
according to Mendelson, who insists that 'religious
meaning is itself the central issue of the plot'
(120).  Others either explicitly or implicitly endorse
this view [...].  Tanner, on the other hand, finds
little promise of teh sacred in Oedipa's appeal to
what has become 'an empty word' ('Crying' 179).  This
is the closest thing I have seen to a recognition of
the possibility that 'spoke the name of God' may be
mock portentous. [...]  'Oh, God,' or something like
it, scarcely seems like an excessive expletive under
the circumstances, nor does it seem endowed with
anything but commonplace secular resonances." (pp.
9-10)

Grant is here citing ...

Mendelson, Edward.  "The Sacred, the Profane, and
   The Crying of Lot 49."  Pynchon: A Collection of
   Critical Essays.  Ed. Edward Mendelson.
   Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978. 97-111.

Tanner, Tony.  "The Crying of Lot 49."  Thomas
   Pynchon: Modern Critical Views.  Ed. Harold Bloom.
   New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

I've omitted a list of references to a half-dozen or
so "religious" readings of the novel, but that's prety
much either end of the spectrum here.  Yes, yes, I
know, excluded middles, but who's doing the typing
here?  Huh?  Huh?  Okay, then ...

But might I point out that, not only can one read a
novel in light of its "religious" references without
necessarily reading it either as "religious,"
"irreligious" or "antireligious," but it's also
problematic to shrug off just about anything in
Pynchon as merely "commonplace," conversational,
whatever.  Esp. when those references keep piling up
there ...


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