Chapter 11

[Thomas Eckhardt]

A reading of the first paragraphs of the "Confessions of Fausto Majistral" with
particular consideration of references to RC ideology and religion in general:

The title tells us that we are about to hear confessions. Perhaps Fausto has
committed some sins he wants to tell his daughter about (it later turns out that
Paola is the adressee of his confessions, his mother confessor, so to speak; for
confession in Pynchon compare "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna").  Also, one of
the most famous books in all of literature is entitled "Confessions"
("Confessions, the title. Confessions of Fausto Majistral." (303, Picador, final
page of the preceding chapter)) That St. Augustine's text is indeed a point of
reference here becomes obvious to me in the first paragraph: After the first
person narrator has said that the room "simply is" he goes on to tell us: "To
occupy it and find a metaphor there for memory, is your own fault." (304) This I
take to be a direct reference to the tenth chapter of the "Confessions" in which
St. Augustine searches for God in his memory. "I come to the fields and spacious
places of memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it
from things of all sorts perceived by the senses." is how that wonderful
meditation starts. We may know that the metaphor is a commonplace which has its
source in the Greek legend of Simonides (see Frances Yates, "The Art of
Memory"), and that there is a long tradition based upon the notion of a topical
memory, but at the beginning of chapter 11 of V. the mentioning of a relation
between a room and memory clearly points us to the "Confessions", and I suspect
that St. Augustine's book is a very important background text for the chapter.
But the whole thing is difficult: First, whereas Augustine compares his memory
to a room, Fausto is talking about a real room which the mind relates to memory,
a room, as Fausto says, that IS the past. Secondly, St. Augustine does
eventually find God within his memory, but he does not find him in his topical
memory: God does not reside in one room or space, yet he is there.

Fausto says that it is the individual's fault to perceive a room as a metaphor
for memory. In reality - that is HIS reality, the reality of Fausto IV, if I am
not mistaken - the room "simply is", and emotional responses to it are merely
projections of the human mind. This, of course, is the major theme of V.,
pervading all those episodes: The world is inanimate, and history, identity,
soul, continuity, cause-and-effect etc. are only constructions that allow
mankind to go on. The "big quote" that can be found on p. 325-326 in my edition:

"Living as he does much of the time in a world of metaphor, the poet is always
acutely conscious that metaphor has no value apart from its function; that it is
a device, an artifice. So that while others may look on the laws of physics as
legislation and God as a human form with beard measured in light-years and
nebulae for sandals, Fausto's kind are alone with the task of living in a
universe of things which simply are, and cloaking that innate mindlessness with
comfortable and pious metaphor so that the "practical" half of humanity may
continue in the Great Lie, confident that their machines, dwellings, streets and
weather share the same human motives, personal traits and fits of contrariness
as they. (...) It is the "role" of the poet, this 20th Century. To lie."

This is a wonderful passage. Ruskin's "pathetic fallacy" here is elevated to
philosophical dimensions. Metaphor is a means of wrongfully projecting human
qualities on the inanimate world, and poets - novelists as well, we may assume -
just serve the function to perpetuate the "Great Lie". This poet here has
learned "life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can
ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane". (320-321) Things just are, things
just happen. No reason, no God. We now seem to know what Fausto thinks about
this. The important thing is: What does the (implicit) author think? Are
Fausto's assertions disqualified in any way?

Apart from the poetological significance of Fausto's statements for Pynchon's
writings in general, it seems clear to me that if we believe the narrator's
attitude is the same as the author's everything points to some kind of
existentialist POV. On the other hand: We have seen that Pynchon in V.,
especially in the case of Foppl, is able to a rather disturbing extent to assume
points-of-view which are hardly  reconcilable with what we think about the
(implicit) author and his opinions about, for example, genocide. This could be
the case with Fausto and his view of the world as well. If it is, I would like
to be pointed to passages in which it becomes clear or is implied that the
(implicit) author does not share Fausto's POV - that is, if I have described
Fausto IV's view correctly.

Thomas

P.S. And please, Terrance, don't talk to me as if I was a student in one of your
classes:

> OK, now we are cooking with gas, great! We have the question formulated
> right. The question is now, not about
> christianity or definitions of Christianity or Orthodox Christianity or
> what we think P has done
> despite what he has written, our new question is about RC and syncretism and
> this is in fact what we find in the novel V.