who's mystic?

[Thomas Eckhardt]

lorentzen-nicklaus schrieb:

<snip>

Yeah, right, but we wouldn't be able to discuss any of this without
over-generalizations. Most postings to the list contain off-hand statements whose
relative applicability to P's texts it would take a PhD-thesis to examine.

>   in his non-fictional texts, the author thomas pynchon now & then hints
>   at things like esp (sl-intro: "... i swear i had the strange esp knowledge
>   ...") or the magical revival ("... long-practiced, all-out,
>   contrary-to-fact, capital m magic, ... in this very world we're struck with
>   ...", from trp's introduction to the lousy "stone junktion"). in passages
>   like these i cannot perceive any irony.

Yes, developed fully as one side of a perhaps false binary opposition in M&D. "Die
Entzauberung der Welt" durch das rationale Denken. See also "Die Dialektik der
Aufklärung".

>   sloth' psycho-spiritual "de-armorment" can be understood as a psychotic
>   development (this would be the observation according to so called
>   "scientific materialism"), or as a journey into bliss ... it's our
>   choice!

Just a few random thoughts: This would refer to the notion of late Romanticism and
early Modernism (Baudelaire etc.) that the madman is not mad but a genius
overflowing with creative juices who is put into prison or Bedlam by a restrictive
and rational society that cannot bear his or her transgressions. It also fits in
nicely with Foucault's "Überwachen und Strafen" (sorry, I can't remember the English
title), a brillant historical examination of the development of the distinction
between sane and insane in Western civilization.

Generally, and especially as far as M&D is concerned, I think you are quite right,
although I believe Pynchon does not give mystic thought priority over rationalism.
He seems to be saying that  mysticism, alchemy, religion - a sense of wonder,
perhaps? - were violently excluded by the forces behind the development of
technology, industrialism and so forth. Nevertheless, I cannot resist to quote
Rainald Goetz on this subject, a contemporary German author who spent some time as a
doctor in a psychiatric institution and later wrote in his first novel "Irre": "Die
Irren sind nämlich irr. Die sind keine Künstler oder Revolutionäre. Die sind einfach
nur irr." Which would translate into English as something close to: "All the insane
really are is insane. They're not artists or revolutionaries. They are just insane."
A necessary antidote to the Romantic view of insanity (which was also the attitude
of the progressive 70s towards mental instability that Goetz was reacting to), I
believe.

I agree with the rest of your posting. The binary distinction between immanency and
transcendancy, of course, is closely related to the distinction between
anti-paranoia and paranoia as developed in P's fictions that I attempted to say
something about in my reply to Michel's post. I am very well aware of the fact that
the notion of discerning a "Weltanschauung" or, as I would bull-shit-lit-critically
call it, the POV of the implied/applied author, is very problematic as far as P is
concerned. But I certainly agree that there is a spiritual dimension to his
writings. Perhaps, as I believe Terrance indicated before, it is all about the
struggle. I haven't been able to find any solution or Kierkegaardian "leap into
faith" yet in these novels. But then, Cherrycoke quoted from memory, "Doubt is of
the essence of Christ".

Thomas