pynchon-l-digest V2 #1610

[Terrance]

jporter wrote:
> 
> The more important question, I think, is whether or not the books themselves
> support the notion that there is some underlying causative process for all
> these events, that they might be inevitable on a deeper level than just the
> intentionality of the usual suspects conveniently blamed for them, or,
> whether the books suggest that those events could have been avoided. That
> would include events of a similar nature in the future, and, what role the
> books themselves might be playing w/r/t to such avoidance.

Yes, a very important question. 
Is there an underlying causative process? 
Is this process something in nature? 
If so, what is it? 
Is the process God(s)? 
Some force that keeps dividing exponentially? 
Is it Man? 
Is it mind? Language, written, oral? 
Is it anti-human? 
Anti-life?
Anti-earth? 
Anti-death, even? 
Is it a process that humans have introduced or evolved to?
Is it Death? 
Is it something that has been repressed, something pushed
below, now underlying the real, and returning slowly? 
Is it Sin or some Jive Ass Mother Fucker's formula for SIN? 


Interesting questions to dive deep into. 

The Ionian thinkers dove deep into these question.  We might
frame it
thus:

Is the world, it's events, the manifestation of some
underlying process or substance?

Are the contents of consciousness the manifestation of
unconscious or Material forces?

Do the manifest meanings of texts at once conceal and reveal
subtexts and latent meanings? 

Thales, I think it was Thales, said that the substratum of
the world must be water, Anaximenes (I get these mixed up
sometimes) said it must be air, while Anaximander claimed
that the indeterminate was what underlies all things. 

I think the Pythagoreans treated numbers in the same way. 
Protagoras and Democritus set us on the road to these
questions. 
P frames these questions not with the dusty old Greeks, but
with  Modern Science and Modern Philosophy. 

Other questions related: 

Is what is perceived not the world, not real, but an
interaction of the perceiver and perceived? 

Is there a way, not by perception, or perception by sense,
sight, hearing, touch, to know the real? Here, I think P
turns East or maybe to American philosophy. 

Is the world we may know,  the surface and sign world, the
mundane world of words as in Nietzsche? 

Or has it more to do with the case being all that the world
is? 

Newton says that the Time and  Space, Motion and Place we
walk about talking about are not the real, absolute and true
time, space, motion, and place, because these do not conform
to the
axioms or laws of motion and gravitation.

There is a force, or process in Pynchon's fiction, that may
be in control or may
be causing things to happen, some not so benevolent Prime
Mover, some indifferent Unmoved Mover perhaps. 

> 
> If such horrors and mistakes could have been (or might still be) avoided- by
> what means? 

Well, what draws his characters into such horrors? P has not
written a post Rocket novel, after the big one blows it all
up, Planet of the Cyborgs, although that Duck in M&D and his
comments in "Is it OK...."  


Is "keep cool but care" gonna do it?

Nope! 

> 
> p.s.: Pitt and Pliny say, "Why use bait when you can lob grenades?"
> 
> "...And you too."

The Sophists were infamous for baiting with bigotry and
fishing with dynamite.
In Greek, Modern Greek, men frequently call each other
"jerk-offs", it's kinda like
the way Americans call one another "asshole", "stop playing
with yourself asshole," or  "stop fishing with dynamite,"
it's a euphemism, Also see F. Goya's "Two  Laughing At a
Man"). 

Oh, gotta go pick up my green eyes and our little
cockroaches and rug rats now. 

Aloha, adios, bye-bye,