V.V. (12) Pynchon's letter to Thomas F. Hirsch

[CyrusGeo at netscape.net]

jbor wrote:

    > I think that, both in this letter and in his fiction,
    > this consciousness of "Christianity being a glaring exception" to     > the unified cosmologies of "religions all around the world" shows     > up over and over.

Christianity is not the only "glaring exception". This applies to all three major monotheistic religions of today, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam (in order of appearance). All three promote the idea of expansion and through conquest and of man's supremacy over the natural world. Pynchon reacts this way to the system of Protestant Christianity because this is his own background ? after all, one can only go against one's *own* tradition. Joyce did the same with Catholicism, and Rushdie with Islam. By the way, given the expansion of those three religions all over the world, one can hardly call them "exceptions". They seem more like the norm.

    > I think his point is that the Herero themselves had not
    > written anything down in terms of their own history, culture,     > motivations, and thus all he had to go on was the *biased*        > reportage of literate Western observers.

Yes!
Cyrus
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