who's Christian?

[Terrance]

Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
> 
> Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> > It's clear to a demonstrably broad spectrum of observers (I provided a
> > glimpse of that spectrum in some posts yesterday) that Pynchon deals in his
> > writing with serious religious questions and introduces into his fiction
> > material from many of the major world faith traditions, that he grapples
> > with many of the issues that have animated debates, schisms, and violence
> > throughout the history of religion. As far as I can tell in this thread so
> > far, nobody seriously questions this fact.
> 
> Wouldn't know about the others, but I certainly don't.

There is a character named Slothrop in GR. 

Nobody seriously questions this fact. So what? 

> 
> > How would you define "religious writer" to distinguish it from "a writer who
> > writes about religion"?
> 
> What we are dealing here with is the attitude of the author towards religion. As
> I noted before, by "author" I do not mean the real life person, about whose
> ethics, by the way, I couldn't care less, but the "implied author", that is, the
> idea of the author's moral point-of-view we get from reading his or her
> fictions, regardless whether there is a first- or third-person narrator whose
> stance we may or may not identify with the implied author's point-of-view. Of
> course, often - and mostly in inferior fiction - the implied author's POV can be
> easily detected and the reader may rightfully assume that it doesn't stray too
> far from the real author's views - that is, if he or she is not a
> Deconstructionist. In major fictions like, say, "Moby Dick", "The Brothers
> Karamazov", "The Magic Mountain", or all of Pynchon's novels, it is very
> difficult to come to a conclusion about the implied author's POV who probably,
> as Joyce once wrote, hides behind the stage paring his finger nails.

Agreed. 


> 
> This said, the term "religious writer" to me seems to denote that the fictional
> text at hand expresses an endorsement of certain religious values or ideals.

Does the implied author of M&D have a positive attitude
toward the religious value that 
says that "Men"  are "brothers" and that it is important to
love one's  neighbor? 




> This is quite clearly the case, as Terrance said, in "The Divine Comedy" and
> "Paradise Lost". 

Yes, as Otto said, I asked an honest question, what is a
religious writer in the postmodern age. I suggested McLure's
essay. McClure says that Pynchon is a religious writer. I
also recommended Eddins, He argues that Pynchon's religion
is what Eddins calls "Orphic Naturalism" and I think Eddins'
book, published prior to both VL and M&D 
is the very best study of religion in Pynchon's novels up to
GR. I also suggested the recent Dewey essay and I pointed
out where I disagree with both Dewey's Eastern (re)solution
and McClure's postmodern (this is where, ironically, I see
Doug's reading). 

 


The phrase "a writer who writes about religion" to me seems
to
> refer to texts which contain references to religion, whose structure may even be
> modelled after concepts or patterns taken from a specific religion, which may
> even include religion and man's relationship with the metaphysical world among
> their central themes, but do not necessarily endorse the values of the religion
> or religions they write about. James Joyce was a writer who wrote about
> religion. John Bunyan was a religious writer.

Right, this is one way to define it, with pairs, for
example,  Milton is, Shakespeare is not.  But this is a big
spectrum and we could have thousands of pairs and if we did,
at some point one author or implied author would be both. 
Tolstoy would have to be between Joyce (No) and Bunyan
(yes). And we could say that Tolstoy is while Melville is
not. Melville is and Joyce is not. 

> 
> The starting point of this strand of the discussion was the notion that Pynchon
> was a "religious writer", perhaps even a writer who at heart endorses Catholic
> values (at least that was how I understood Terrance; it is sometimes difficult
> to discern the actual meaning of what he is saying, but that's fine with me). 

I don't think this is how we started on this, but that's OK.
I'll go along with this. 
I must be saying something like this, but I can't tell. 

Let me ask this question. How does Geli prevent the half
brothers from murder? 
The religion may be for good or evil in P's world. I find
that he does not endorse Catholicism or catholic values, but
the claim that he condemns the church or christianity is not
supported in the texts. Remember Thomas, I argued that
Pynchon could not even be called anti Puritan. His treatment
of religion is very complex. For this reason alone, he is an
important writer, religious or postmodern or whatever. Well,
I guess I can still say he is an American. 

I
> argued against it and pointed to a specific example of a reference to the RC
> tradition right at the beginning of Chapter 11, namely to St. Augustine's
> "Confessions", and tried to demonstrate that at least the
> first-person-narrator's POV is fundamentally opposed to the attitude towards God
> and memory as well as towards the ideas of a linear progress of historical time
> and of the continuity of personal identity implied in the allusion to St.
> Augustine. Whether the first-person-narrator's view, which is obviously the POV
> of a Modernist sensibility, here does coincide with the implied author's, I
> don't know.


I don't think so.