The Jesuit Strain
Terrance
lycidas2 at earthlink.net
Fri Apr 5 10:03:33 CST 2002
David Morris wrote:
>
> >From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> >At 439 it appears that Mason is willing to pull off the jackass costume and
> >play another role, if only briefly. That is, the text circle back to an old
> >issue--Dixon reminding MR. Mason that he is "not a fucking Jesuit."
>
> >From the first Chapter of Ulysses:
>
> http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/29/61/frameset.html
>
> '"You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she
> asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it's
> injected the wrong way."'
And that's where it all begins, at least that's the first allusion to a
Jesuit in Pynchon--Stephen in MMV. But Pynchon wants Bloom and Stephen
(and I suspevt that the characters are conglomerates that include P's
friends and family and actors and literary charaters and historical
figures and ideas--like Adams on history and the like), the Jesuit and
the Jew. So we get both. Next, we get Benny Profane, a half Roman
Catholic Italian and half Jew from Brooklyn and from MMV the same
robotic mother figure, red headed don't you know, and we keep getting
these again and again.
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