History: Death Repression in Man

[David Morris]

Doug:  How would you relate what you've quoted to Pynchon's writing?

My answers right now to your question can only be very superficial and
inconclusive because most of the material in this book is very new to me and
because I've not yet even made it half-way through.  But again and again themes
and questions Pynchon "deals with" are explicated in a beautifully clear
presentation in _Life Against Death_.  Rather than jumping right into another
Pynchon novel after VV, I would suggest a group-read of this book.

I threw out this quote, even though it is only a snippet in a much larger
presentation, because it contains some very clearly Pynchonian concerns:

1.  What is the nature of History (an obvious Pynchon concern):  Brown presents
his synthesis of Freud's psychoanalytic understanding of man's nature as a
basis for understanding that all of history is a manifestation of neurosis in
the human animal.  He also braoches the question of whether mankind can be
"cured" and thus set free from Time and History,  but that's getting way ahead
of ourselves.  But the desire to transcend nature and human-nature is all over
GR.

2.  "Freud['s] suggest[tion] that the aggression  in human nature - the drive
to master nature as well as the drive to master man - is a result of the
extroversion of the death instinct, the desire to die being transformed into
the desire to kill, destroy, or dominate."  The existence and nature of this
aspect of man runs throughout GR.  No conclusions from me yet on this.

Upcomming I'll post what I'll call the "Gnostic Freud," wherein Brown examines
whether man's "sickness" is universal to and inextricable from all life, or
whether only man contains that sickness which makes him perpetually conflicted.
 This would have to be one of life's most basic questions.

David Morris

> Life Against Death, p. 102 (paperback)
> 
> Hegel [...] develops the paradox that history is what man does with death, 
along lines almost identical with Freud's. [snip]

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