is sloth lost? (was: "underlying causative process")

[Eric Rosenbloom]

Terrance wrote:
> Eric Rosenbloom wrote:
> > Personably, I think Pig God Bodine is the most human presence (because
> > in the sham world of a book, humans are a race of gods) in Pynchon's
> > work, all the way back to Lowlands he's the one that saves your ass.
> > Mebbe Slothrop's got a sympathetic frequency there: Slather Up! (which
> > is to say, Spread it on thickly).
> Yeah, I have taken this position on Pig too, but he's none
> too simple, doesn't he get involved in, well some not so
> nice treatment of women and it seems to me that P is pretty
> progressive on the treatment of women so....I'm not damning
> him to hell for indulging his body, his will to get laid,
> but, well come to think of it, that would make him a more
> human if not humane character than most, but he does make
> love to that bike and his interest in Paola (all the men
> that lust after become pigs...a recurring trope in P if not
> in literature back to Homer.

Which brings back that ambivalence re: action. Like Jesus is willing to
take in all our sins but needs Judas to make the project into something.
Jesus is fiction, but Judas is a touch of real life, and by facilitating
the end makes it redemptive. (So now the scapegoat is worshipped and the
human actor is scapegoated. However much this is perverse in religion,
it is a nice metaphor in literature: James A Joyce tried to put all
human history into a book so he could (like finnegans) wake up from it;
and so does Thomas R Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow -- he tries to put The
System in so he can close the book on it. To be simplistic, Slothrop is
the vehicle, and Bodine kinda makes sure it works.

Yours,
Eric R)

P.S. Thank you for remembering the actual content of Pynchon's essay on Sloth.