why I am not a Hindoo

[David Morris]

--- Swing Hammerswing <hammerswingswing at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Most religious peoples I know are not confused at all. You might say they 
have what seculars have repressed,  a positive paranoia, everything is
connected, and I am part of the everything that flows, "we are blessed by
everthing and everything we look upon is blessed" (Yeats),  that is,  looking
East, Enlightenment is a blessed state.

>From the context above "religious positive paranoia" refers NOT to Xianity
(neither Protestant nor RC).  All except maybe the most mystic forms of Xianity
believe this world is conflicted at its core and being directly ruled by an
evil force with only itermitent help from a God who lost possesion at the fall.
 Remember the old song "This World is Not My Home?":

"This World is Not My Home
JR Baxter, Jr. 1946

This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through 
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue 
The angels beckon me from heaven's open door 
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore."

> For the seculars, everything is either chaos-anti-paranoia-or everthing is
connected but not benevolent, not blessed, but cursed, some unseen force of
evil, some dynamo turns the hands of time and there is nothing in the stone but
coal, oil, plastics and products, and waste, this is presented as a plethora of
religious doctrines, the dualistic Manichaeism alluded to here in V. for
example. Now David Morris asked about the two types of Roman Catholicism in the
novel V.

Well, no...  You posited a perverse type of RCism in the text exhibited by the
force/character "V" (and others).  I asked (jokingly) if there was any other
kind.  I take it you posit an earth-mother based RCism is the pure kind that
you feel Pynchon promotes here in V.

> You tell me, anyone show me where I am wrong on this. Please, I would love to
here anyone talk about this. It's as clear as bell, it's right in the novel.
Show me how it is deconstructed. This living earth, this womb of rock, this
Virgin Mary, Mara, marks a radical shift from P's short fiction (where btw, the
Catholic allusions are so many and so transparent), a shift that once made,
drives all of his works.

There is something in what you say here, but I don't believe P is so simple as
to pit religion against secularism and let it sit.  God, would that be boring. 
And I think that part of the problem with the novel "V." (which is rescued in
GR), his not pushing the edges of these conflicts and exposing their inherent
relativisms.  In GR he digs muc deeper.

David Morris

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 
a year!  http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/