M&D or It's about Religion

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> > This isn't a challenge to you in particular, Richard,
> > but every time posts something here along the lines of
> > "_____ is not about _____," I gotta axe, what, then,
> > IS it about?  Or, rather, what do you think it might
> > be about?  And so forth ...
> >
> > Am genuinely interested in what anyone might have to
> > say along such lines, esp. as, among the many, many
> > things which do NOT seem to occur here, we never
> > really seem to get to any sort of Final (no matter how
> 
> Hope this doesn't sound like too flippant an answer, but can't we say
> with some assurance and finality that,  in certifiable postmodern
> fashion,  p-text is invariably about itself? Or, as George Costanza
> would put it, about nothing.
> 
> P.

Only problem is that there is nothing at all POST modern about  a text
being about itself or nothing.  It is one of the hallmarks of Modern
fiction. So, it can't very well be a POST - modern thing now can it...?
(I did notice that P also employs what was Dixon's inflection mark
(...?) with some Irish characters at the end of the novel. Although, it
could be Mason or an editor. 

Moreover, the irony of the text is quite Modern. Much of it can be
attributed to Wicks and the other narrative agency. What they portray is
a story about what is ultimately meaningless. Again, a very Modern idea.
All of the activities of Dixon and Mason, including the Driver
intervention, are in large part futile. 

What's more, it seems that human nature is inherently given to
self-deception and illusory beliefs. 


And,  just as in GR (THEY/THEM) and VL (Reagan/Brock & Co.) characters'
actions eventually go awry or are subject to the various wheels,
hammers, karmic adjustments, Laws of  Murphy the Great  and produce the
opposite affect to that intended. The result is comic and tragic. The
comedy is rather black, the  tragedy, very Irish and Catholic, is a
satirical view of humanity, its pretensions, ideals, institutions.....

Did someone say Carnival?