re MDDM 35 Christ and History

[Terrance]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> >Chapter 35 opens with an excerpt from the Rev'd Cherrycoke, Christ and
> > History.
> 
> > I'm curious, and maybe this has been discussed already, but how do these
> > excerpts get into the story?  Surely the Rev'd isn't reading them in...
> > but they have been added later...by who? Cherrycoke?
> 
> The author of the novel, Thomas Pynchon, wrote those bits, along with the
> rest of the book.

No? Really? I thought maybe Ford Madox Ford wrote those bits ;-)

It seems to me that RC is very much a man of his day. Why wouldn't he
write these bits, keep a Spiritual Day-Book, a collection of Unpublished
Sermons? Why wouldn't he keep a notebook and why wouldn't he consult it
while he tells his tale, even read from it? Why wouldn't he have access
to Mason's journal? He was there. How about four different journals? A
foul one? Well, sometimes he wasn't there and sometimes it seems Pynchon
is playing a game with the scholarly types. but why should that stop him
from entertaining the listeners? 
 All of the critical stuff I've read and frankly
this historical jesus stuff and the american exceptionalism stuff, makes
little sense to me as I read the book and what Pynchon wrote in it. It's
not only History, but **Christ** and History. The RC is a religious man
living in a time of great awakening and new light and all that, isn't
he? If you want to believe Pynchon wrote these little bits in his book
because he is or was thinking just like the RC, I guess you can, but I
doubt you can support that reading with the text and I doubt you want to
attribute most of Wicks says to Pynchon. RC has been read as both the
deconstructing postmodern anti-historian and a mouthpiece for the
Christian Values espousing mystic, TRP. Both readings make little sense
to me. What about the book? M&D? Sam asks a very good question. What are
these little bits doing here in this book? Is RC reading these bits to
those listening to his tales or are we reading some things the others
are not hearing? The conversation that
follows seems to suggest that RC has read or recited this bit on Christ
and History to the listeners.