some loose ends

[Terrance]

Otto wrote:

> 
> Couldn't agree more of course. The "religious writer" is the box they put
> him in, but it makes him small.

I recommend you take the time to read this essay. 

Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 41, number 1, Spring 1995,
141-163. 

Postmodern/Post-Secular: Contemporary Fiction and
Spirituality 

John A. McClure



> First Terrance says "maybe the term "religious writer" is a box we can't
> use. It's too big and too small at the same time" and later "Pynchon is, I
> submit,  our most important religious writer." But at least there's a
> serious question: "What is a religious writer in the postmodern world?" --


Religion in Pynchon, we might define it as:

 a totalizing commitment to a
particular construct of ultimate reality, including
the nature of humanity, the significance of history,
and the governance of the cosmos; not ruling out of course
the existence of spiritual forces both malign and
benevolent. 

Will this work? 




> Answer: no religion without binaries, sinners and saints, above and below.
> No postmodern novel without the topic of religion possible imo 'cause
> religion, pre-Christian religious rites like the 'Sacre de Printemps' lie at
> the foundation of our culture.

But Pynchon doesn't simply write about religion or
deconstruct it (thanks too for the definitions) or show and
tell how religions lie at the foundations of culture. 

I hope to continue the dialogue with Thomas E. on the
Wasteland because this will provide us with a very good idea
of what Pynchon is up to, but let me say, I have noticed
that neither of you have touched on  the Catholicism
(obviously foregrounded in the Chapter under discussion and
in the novel overall). You can not make sense of the
Classical allusions w/o the Catholic. So, they do not add up
to nothing, the rug is not pulled out, but the Roman
Catholicism and how V. has inverted it (see my definition of
religion above)  must be accounted for. In the same short
paragraph as Sirius we have the Black Mass. We are told that
the lady is in fact the Lady V. We are told to look back to
Victoria. The excommunication here, from the
Catholic/Tourist Church is owed to her lordliness, her
colonial catholicism, the inversion of the Virgin Mary and
to the fact that Stencil, we are told by the narrator, gives
here some humanity.  The most important religion here, is
RC, the religion Pynchon was raised in. And the way in which
Pynchon brings it and religion as defined above into this
novel is no less important than  Henry Adams and history. If
M&D can be called a historical novel, why can't I call it a
religious novel? I know, don't tell me.