cookin with gas

[Eulenspiegel7646 at aol.com]

lycidas2 at earthlink.net (Terrance) wrote:
    


"I never hesitate to indulge in reading Pynchon with the bible and all manner 
of religious texts  close to  hand. His Muchness is our narrator and his 
knowledge of biblical/historical events  is surpassed only by the author's.  
Although tempting, reading this passage as a statement by the author, above 
and beyond the narrator, I submit, is a mistake. Several critics have done 
just this. But why?  There is nothing in the text, as far as I can tell, to 
justify this.  There are times when Pynchon addresses the reader directly, he 
comments on Wicks or on Wick's tale, but this is not one of them. This is 
Wicks and we can't simply discount the biblical allusions of the Reverend.
Maybe I'm misreading you here?"

Ummmm--it's a possibility

--Bugs Bunny


"The Cross and the Virgin  in Pynchon's V. is replaced by the Dynamo (we
can attribute this directly to P's reading of Henry Adams--

'As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines , he
began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much
as the early Christians felt about the cross.'

"Adams, continues to be, the most important text for understanding
Pynchon."

Lose the commas, dude!

"In GR the cross is replaced by the Rocket (with a capital R).  Here it is
the Gallows, another machine of Death, constructed at Munden's fort,
like the Rocket,  with Slave labor.  The Crusade is now a global Commerce
that includes the selling of men, women and children.  St. Paul's as a 
gallows, I am reminded of St. Paul's in Hardy's Jude The Obscure. 

"In any event, you've got me reading Foucault again."


"To late to type it up just now, but see The History of Sexuality, Volume I."

" 'IT WAS LIFE MORE THAN LAW that became the issue of
        political struggles, even if the latter were formulated through
        affirmations concerning rights. The "right" to life, to one's
        body, to health, to happiness, to the satisfaction of needs, and
        beyond all the oppressions or "alienations", the "right" to
        rediscover that one is and all that one can be, this "right" -
        which the classical juridical system was incapable of
        comprehending - was the political response to all those new
        procedures of power which did not derive, either, from the
        traditional right of sovereignty' "

        (Foucault 1976c: p.145).


"Pynchon returns again and again, to the bible.  Far more important than
Foucault, I think, is the story of Abraham and Isaac."

Amen 




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