NP William James

[Doug Millison]

I've read William James's Varieties of Religious Experience and recommend it
-- I quoted some passages of it, re George Fox founder of the Quakers, back
during MDMD -- and I find it interesting that Pynchon brings it into his
work by direct reference and quotation. James affirms the reality of
religious experience in the book -- as does Pynchon's work overall, in my
opinion, in the sense that the world that Pynchon depicts in his fiction is
one in which religious belief and experience is taken for granted as part of
our lives as human beings, and a world that encompasses experience on both
sides of the life/death interface.

Dave Monroe:
"Just happened to have read this in Thomas Moore's The
Style of Connectedness: Gravity's Rainbow and Thomas
Pynchon (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1987).  "A
footnote in William James's Varieties of Religious
Experience [snip]"

That list of animal categories from Borges' reminds me that this listing
device is very old and was well-developed in the Heian period (784-1185). of
Japanese literature; it's prominent in the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (pix
at
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/hyaku-nin-isshu/set2/print_2-2/display
_print_2-2.html and http://www.taleofmurasaki.com/shonagonpage.htm).
Japanese speakers (if we have any out there any more) will know better than
I, but I believe this device may be called "monozukushi" which in Japanese
means "cataloging of things." Here's an example from
http://www.taleofmurasaki.com/pillowbkpage.htm

"Things that appear to disadvantage when painted: 
Dianthus, cherry blossoms, yellow roses. Men or women who are praised in
romances as being beautiful. 

"Things that appear to advantage when painted: 
Pines. Autumn fields. Mountain villages and paths. Cranes and deer. A very
cold winter scene; an unspeakably hot summer scene."

Read her list of Hateful Things at
http://www.bianca.com/shack/bedroom/hate/shonagon.html 

Cataloguing is a favorite technique of Pynchon's, too, although he doesn't
give us numbered lists. The catalogue of things on Slothrop's desk early in
GR is a well-known and often-cited example.