Profit & Loss

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy

Yes, I'm afraid so. Remember, it isn't "Noah's Great Rainbow" that
arches over all here, it is the dead parabola of Gravity.  Ashes arch
to ashes; dust arches to dust; helpless bounded conciousnesses think
and feel between, making the best of it, comforted (or not) by wishful
thinking about an afterlife. We might all weep beneath the trees, which
speak only to the insane.  Pynchon presents the belief in the
continuity of our spiritual existence after death as just one more
shuck *They* feed the meek -- as a tool with which to convince others
to die in *Their* stead. 

We are all grease upon the skids of great moving stones. Make the best
of it. Try not to hurt anybody. "Be cool, but care."
Mark

--- Doug Millison <DMillison at ftmg.net> wrote:
> Is that what Slothrop does? Or is it possible to read Slothop's "end"
> as a
> breakthrough, as Bersani does in his article on Pynchon and paranoia,
> Slothrop leaves Their radar screen because he's dropped out (to use a
> 60s
> term that Pynchon would be familiar with) not playing the We/They
> game
> anymore. I expect it's also possible to read this as a "breakthrough"
> in the
> sense of that word as coined by the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart,
> breaking through the bonds of self into a higher realm of
> consciousness
> (what Eckhart calls the "godhead"), given Pynchon's liberal
> references to
> the mystic tradition in GR and his use of nature (the rainbow, among
> others)
> and religious imagery of the sort that's associated with "creation
> spirituality" (the Christian tradition of Meister Eckhart and other
> mystics
> as updated by Matthew Fox in his commentaries on Eckhart's sermons,
> in
> Original Blessing and in his other books).
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Wright AIA 
> [snip] He dissipates into nothingness,
> weeping at trees, as the structure he once almost understood
> continues
> to grow, invisible and monstrous above the clouds (as it were).
> Slothrop is never "saved", he collapses into idiocy. 


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