re Re: MDDM Gershom's Intervention

[Paul Mackin]

Monte Davis wrote:

(cuts of commentary which I agree with)

>
> To me, the strongest recurring theme in Pynchon is a passionate
> cultural/historical version of Haldane's "the universe is not only stranger
> than we imagine; it is stranger than we *can* imagine." There are wider,
> wilder, barely-dreamed-of possibilities of human connection -- both in the
> everyday (in any sailors' bar on any Street, in any mailbox in San Narciso,
> in any burned-over hippie haven in Humboldt County) and in the Big
> Historical Moments (in the brief equipoise of forces in the Zone, in the
> about-to-grow-rebellious colonies).

This seems to say to me that an awarness of the strangeness of the universe is
a  better approach to Pynchon than the awareness of the awfulness of the
universe. Of course we know full well that earthly  existence (not exculding
American existence) is indeed fairly awful a considerable portion of the time
still we don't need to be told so by our author.

>
>
> Of *course* we fail to see and realize the best of those possibilities. Then
> the next generation tells itself in a comfortable Philadelphia parlor that
> the lame, lying, historically constrained version they got instead was (a)
> just swell, and (b) inevitable anyway. Where Doug and I differ is that he
> seems to think that's a peculiarly American condition, while I think (and
> suspect Pynchon thinks) it's the human condition.

A realization that Pynchon's  aim may be to universalize human history, so to
speak, might help soften the ill ease I sometimes feel when he freely conflates
20th and 18th Century concerns and attitudes. The latter would surely cause a
bothersome distortion when applied to a specific historic context such as
American history.

Interesting commentary, Monte.

P.