some loose ends

[Otto]

I like what Thomas E. says about the "shift" from "epistemological to
ontological questions" in the, how shall I put this to end this
definition-discussion, postmodern department of Modernism.

The chapter opens with the notion that not even time is stable, but is a
construct according to different needs, machinery needs (Belgian train
time). So terminological elements are confused: 'Le Sacre de Printemps'
during the Dog Days.

>
> 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?
>

Only insofar as it is a description of metaphysics in general. I've said:
> > 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.
>

Yes, of course he doesn't do it 'simply', but complex, different myths
(Christian and pre-) interwoven. He tells about the fictionality of
religions.

> 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.

I can't help but the way you tell it sounds as if he is promoting Christian
values, as if he tells it's possible anymore to rely ontologically on
epistomology in this secularized world. I don't even buy that he's been
raised in Catholicism. I think V. tells how Christian myths are rooted in
elder stories. Therefore the necessary inversion of the Virgin Mary myth.

I don't call M&D a historical novel, which brings me back to Thomas E. and
Fausto, and I see a lot of Fausto IV in Cherrycoke. Sorry Thomas, no textual
evidences to prove that you're wrong, but a lot supporting your point in
Pynchon's fiction after V.

Otto

"Everybody's gone surfing, surfing USA."