Christianity and Pynchon

[Terrance]

> 2. I don't even see this fact. Facts are just the playthings of lawyers. I
> know he's got a protestant father and a catholic mother who, according to
> Jules Siegel, was an anti-Semite. But contrary to you I don't draw from that
> info that TP was raised an anti-Semite.

It seems, according to Jules,  that he was raised by an anti-Semitic
mother. Although there is nothing at all in her biography to support
this. One certainly needs give her the benefit of the doubt and bear in
mind that when the alleged jab was delivered,  Tom was a young college
boy come home with all his youthful "open-minded" rebellious arrogance.
This is also  evident in his short tales and in his first novel, not to
mention that mediocre novella, TCL49. 

All this doesn't make him an anti-Semite.  In fact, it seems that young
Tom, who grew up on the gold coast of Long Island, a part of America
more privileged than most other parts,  but where lots of affluent Jews
lived and live, did not manage to avoid the common anti-this- or
anti-that influences so pervasive in his neighborhoods, or the
stereotype views of America and certain Americans that are an
embarrassing flaw in his fictions. Recall that he admits to his youthful
prejudices in The Slow Learner Introduction. It's all pretty clear to an
objective reader. I have to say that although P tries (too hard in fact,
and this is so very obvious to an American reader) to shed his
prejudices and his ignorance of so much of America (labor, woman, the
south, African American life, city life, Italian Americans, this list
goes on and on.....and it's quite amusing that Jbor or Kai or yourself
would call us Americans when we critique the author for his ignorance
and his prejudices--granted the ambitious young man tries to cover the
world with his first novel!!! ), he doesn't succeed even as he matures, 
as both a novelist and as a man.  In M&D, a novel written in part in his
youth,  he tries to clean it all up. I'm not sure he suceeds. I guess in
the postmodern "beyond" that you credit the author with he can't fail,
everything is a game and a play or some mirror held up to the reader's
own prejudices, but I can't buy that. He tries much too hard and he
doesn't do a very good job at times. He can be funny, but at times he's
kinda like Stig. That is, he's looking around to see if anyone is
getting the joke, but it's pretty obvious that Tom is a bit like Woody
Allen, only he never takes his own advice to write  about his own
experience. 




> 
> 3. The most important fact of his biography seems to me that he's got very
> puritan forefathers.

Why is this fact more important than the fact that he was raised a
catholic?