hope happily ever after

[Otto]

>
> http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/cm/features/cm15_borges.html
> "There exists a tendency among secular literary critics today to
> uncover and reveal a humanistic vision behind even the most
> apparently Judeo-Christian literary works and their authors. In
> criticism of early American literature, witness the majority opinion
> that Puritan Anne Bradstreet grew beyond the allegedly narrow-minded
> religious focus that characterizes her early poetry, advancing in her
> later poems (published posthumously) to more earthly, personal
> concerns; the latter poems, of
> course, are viewed as by far Bradstreet's best poems, according to
> most purveyors of this assessment). In more recent literature of the
> Americas, writers such as Emily Dickinson, or the twentieth-century
> Argentinian short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges, display throughout
> their bodies of work an ostensible interest in and search for
> spiritual truth; however, to describe what such writers do, with such
> terminology, seems to make the average secular critic uncomfortable,
> as it also might his or her secular audience. So instead, Dickinson,
> Borges, and other writers display a fascination with eternity, or
> some similarly safe, de-Christianized euphemism for what the writer
> really displays. Secular literary critics of twentieth-century
> literature seem consciously reluctant to admit that a modern writer
> such as Borges is searching for Christ, much less making anything as
> certain as a statement, much less a statement of truth."
>


----------schnipp----------
"he's intelligent and innovative and thus, not religiously narrow-minded"
----------schnipp----------

It's this kind of statement that give the author away.
As if some postmodernist critic ever had stated this - but no one has. At
least Harris gives no evidences for this when he cites McMurray and
Aizenberg in his essay. I miss some secular critics supporting his point, he
himself supports it only by trying to prove that these two he quotes,
representatives of Postmodernism in his reading, are wrong.

----------schnipp----------
a tendency among secular literary critics today
----------schnipp----------

"secular literary critics" set opposed to what other critics? Bible
exegetics? Interpreting the Bible is one of the oldest forms of literary
criticism, no doubt about that. Postmodernists turn the whole thing upside
down of course, learning from it that the Bible is fiction, a myth, a
meta-narrative.

But coming back to Pynchon this essay shows me that our man got his idea for
the Jesus vs. Judas binary in GR from Borges:

"William felt that what Jesus was for the elect, Judas Iscariot was for the
preterite. Everything in the Creation has its equal and opposite
counterpart. How can Jesus be an exception?" (GR 54, 555)

I cannot say if Borges is supporting or opposing Christian values in the
texts mentioned in the essay but definitely this says nothing about Pynchon
and Postmodernism, but a lot about the Christian belief where literary
criticism, as the author of the essay does, is defined to be only a tool to
support assumptions, paradigms and dogmata which may not be questioned.

042:001 Then Job answered the LORD, and said,

042:002 I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can
        be withholden from thee.

042:003 Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore
        have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for
        me, which I knew not.

042:004 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee,
        and declare thou unto me.

042:005 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine
        eye seeth thee.

042:006 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.


Oh no!
Who has said that an atheist cannot enjoy the literary qualities of
religious texts? Since when is scepticism a crime?
I guess many of us enjoyed the beauty of the Bible, the Qu'ran and Buddha's
teachings, the I Ching, Tarot interpretations from Waite to Crowley, the
Tibetan Book of the Dead, Laotse, have read Suzuki, Govinda, Sheldon B.
Kopp, Sam Keen, Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Castaneda and various others, just
to find that there isn't one truth but as many as there are scriptures.

Therefore Harris' final conclusion doesn't work. Just by bringing the Bible
to attention and expressing that it's worth reading doesn't make a Christian
writer of Borges - again, I'm not saying he is not - but Harris doesn't
deliver the proof.
Personally I think that Borges' treatment of metaphysical things influenced
Pynchon and believe he's an agnostic like Pynchon.

Interestingly both in the essay mentioned writers, Borges and Emily
Dickinson, can be found in GR too.

We find Dickinson at p. 27: "Because I could not stop for death / He kindly
stopped for me" -- obviously as with the Borgesian Jesus/Judas opposition,
Pynchon again is interested here in the turning of the poles "I" / "Death"
and  "not stop" / "stopped."

Borges at 264, 26-27: "Look at Borges."

383, 20-22: "Borges is said to have dedicated a poem to her (...)" and
Weisenburger tells us that the lines in Spanish are not by Borges, but an
invention by Pynchon who copies Borges' style: "The labyrinth of your
uncertainty / detains me with the anxious moon."

Labyrinthine uncertainty, not certified truth.

Borges in an interview with Maria Esther Vázquez:
"Nun möchte ich wiederholen, daß ich keinem philosophischen System anhänge,
außer, und hier könnte ich mit Chesterton übereinstimmen, dem System der
Ratlosigkeit. Ich stehe ratlos vor den Dingen (...)
Für mich ist die Welt eine unaufhörliche Quelle von Überraschungen,
Ratlosigkeiten, von Unglück auch, und manchmal, warum soll ich lügen, von
Glück. Aber ich habe keine Theorie über die Welt. Meine Leser haben
allgemein gedacht, ich verträte dieses oder jenes System, weil ich die
verschiedenen metaphysischen und theologischen Systeme für literarische
Zwecke verwendet habe, aber tatsächlich habe ich sie einzig und allein dafür
benutzt, weiter nichts. Wenn ich mich festlegen müßte, würde ich mich als
Agnostiker bezeichnen, d.h. als jemanden, der nicht glaubt, daß Erkenntnis
möglich ist."
(J.L. Borges, "25. August 1983 und andere Erzählungen," Edition Weitbrecht
in K. ThienmannsVerlag, Stuttgart 1983, Goldmann paperback ed. 1989, p. 92
und 99)

Otto