MDMD: What is this junk?

[Tiarnan O'Corrain]

> From: Terrance [mailto:lycidas2 at earthlink.net]
> We see in M&D, that the characters appear to be in prisons, often
> circular, this is the condition of Gnostic man. 

And circular also like the intellectual prison we built for ourselves
in the Dark Ages. Or Ptolemy built for us, with Plato's doctrines
of circular motion and uniform speed as his Dekalog. To compensate
for the manifest falsity of the axioms, we built edifices as
baroque as any fugue, epicycles, the sun bounced from sphere to
sphere with little respect. Wheels, indeed, within wheels.

> And in Pynchon's novels,
> the Gnostic drive to the light, to the all, to the chamber, 
> to the West, to a way out of the Gnostic Prison, is the cause of great 
> suffering and pain, but it is a condition that in Pynchon's novels can't
be escaped,
> it can only be subverted by paradoxical agons, music, murphy's law, the
> spinning of yarns....love, limericks, magic, children's games,
> brotherhood, marriage...

Joyce? Finnegans Wake, eternally returning to itself, always rearriving.
The Ballad of Perse O'Reilly, the perce d'oreille, the ear piercer, earwig,
the song sung to the pierced eardrum, the music of the deaf.

> The father, god, is a transcendent, he is hidden from all 
> creatures and
> is unknowable by natural concepts. 

Except that he exists within all of us. He is intellect, reason, wisdom
(Sophia being the mom). This spark of divinity is what unites us with
the divine.

However, this is exactly what Pynchon sets himself against so often,
hubris, pure intellect, ratiocination. Pynchon's father god may be
a blind alley, or death.

> This is anti-gnostic. Just like GR.

Huh?

Tiarnan