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

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

Eric Rosenbloom schrieb:

> 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.

   damn, he's a gnostic ... kfl

> 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.
>