MDDM Christ & History

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 4:10 PM
Subject: Re: MDDM Christ & History

>
> Otto, you know I'm just playing the Devil's Advocate here, in the Jesuit
> sense that is.
>

Which is best I can imagine. If nobody says I'm wrong I have no reason to
think further, to look for better arguments.

>
> Otto wrote:
> >
> > Christ is only insofar mentioned as the "Manifest Destiny" rests upon
the
> > Christian belief.
>
> How do you know this?
>

Latest from the website I've read about it, the url I've posted. Isn't it
the point that the USA is *God's Own Country*  "(...) which Providence has
given us" that has made America a greedy nation in the 18th and 19th
century, like all the European imperialist nations too. "Providence" is God,
is Christ, or not?
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/E/manifest/manif1.htm

> >
> > When I said "textpiece" I meant that and not headline or postscript.
>
> Fair enough, postscript. Nevertheless, it's there. Christ! Why try to
> sweep Christ under the carpet? This is, after all, the REVd's writing.
>
> >
> > History is not mentioned? I read it twice.
> > general What goes for history in
> > of course goes for American history as well -- mostly myths and
>>  fairytales.
> >
> > Otto
>
> I did not say History was not mentioned. I said, American History is not
> mentioned in the passage. My point being that RC has written something
> about History and Christ and not Manifest Destiny and American History.
> This is clear from the postscript and from the passage itself.
>

American history hasn't to be specified if all recorded history since
Herodotus is meant.

>
> Is History in general (and that would include American history)  mostly
> myths and fairy tales?
>
> If history is mostly myth and fairy tale, is this a good thing, a bad
> thing?
>

It is ok if it is admitted, but it is a lie if it is claimed as truth.

>
> Romance?
>
>
> More importantly, does RC agree with this?
>

At least he says so in talking about lawyers and historians. Is RC really a
Reverend? Did he ever had a church to read his sermons to the parish or are
they all unpublished?

>
> If so, what is he saying about Christ and History?
>

I'm still looking for Christ in the text.

>
>  What of the Chapter that proceeded this one? The History in that
> Chapter, of a massacre?  Pynchon now goes to Mason's historical
> record--his field record, as does RC. It's clear that RC is reading from
> the field record here (perhaps the most important historical text
> Pynchon employs and plays with in the book) and it's significant, I
> suspect, that it is Ives who raises the question about Mason going alone
> or with Dixon, in other words, he questions, as has been the habit of
> the listeners, the RC's tall-tale telling or Stencilization from the
> recorded facts. RC disputes Mason's account with his own remembrance of
> a conversation he had with Dixon. (This is all beginning to sound more
> and more like DQ, isn't it?)   We read that there are feuds going on,
> people killing the grandfather of one family as revenge upon another. We
> read that there is a forgetfullness in the Americans that the
> Astronomers think of as Hellish, the river of time that runs around
> America is Lethe waters and after Mason is guiltily reading his Ghastly
> Fop and Dixon has contemplated falling to his knees (his Quaker
> Conscience not yet asleep) or taking revenge himself, and of Flight,
> they begin to wonder what part they are playing in this Drama Inferno,
> who they are working for, and they move along the line as if on rungs of
> a ladder, a ladder ascending.  Does remind of Jacob's ladder and
> Remembrance.
>

Are the Paxton-Boys national heritage and how are they treated in history
lessons?

>
> "Behind,--below,--diminishing, they hear, and presently lose, a Voicing
> disconsolate, of Regret at their Flight."
>
> Has Pynchon or RC inverted the universe again? Yup!
>

In a way, yes.

> Isaac, the son of Abraham, married a woman named Rebekah.  (Couldn't
> resist)
>
> When Isaac was 60 years old, Rebekah gave birth to twin boys, Esau and
> Jacob. (Geminus)
>
> John 1:51 And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
> Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and
> descending upon the Son of man.
>

Great ideas, those are the twins we forgot.

Otto