Pynchon as propaganda

[jbor]

on 4/4/03 5:26 AM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:

> The question now is surviving the war. Surviving it
> either in the sense of surviving it alive, or very possibly "surviving"
> it dead. Either is a difficult burden. Religion may ease this burden for
> some. A key phrase in the passage is "[h]olding on to what they could."

The other interesting phrase is that list of concepts which the clergymen
talk to the soldiers about:

    " ... God, death, nothingness, redemption, salvation ... "

I could imagine that the chaplains might have broached the idea of
"nothingness" after death as a scarifying tactic to win over the agnostics
amongst the doomed flock, but Pynchon's text doesn't really spell that out
at all, and so the term and concept remains somewhat anomalous and
conspicuous in the list. The fact that it's there (and thus admitted as a
possibility by the text, if not by some of Pynchon's readers) is
significant, I think. In fact, it might be taken as implying that
"nothingness" is central to Pynchon's religious vision after all.

    There were men called "army chaplains." They preached
    inside some of these buildings. There were actually
    soldiers, dead now, who sat or stood, and listened.
    Holding on to what they could. Then they went out, and
    some died before they got back inside a
    garrison-church again. Clergymen, working for the
    army, stood up and talked to the men who were going to
    die about God, death, nothingness, redemption,
    salvation. It really happened. It was quite common.
                                        (GR 693)

best

PS Loving MalignD's parody of the p-list spam-peddlars. Bravo!