Pynchon as propaganda

[jbor]

>> If there is a life after death then the chaplains were right, the dead
>> soldiers are all up there shooting pool with Peter and Paul, and the passage
>> is pointless.

on 8/4/03 8:19 AM, s~Z at keithsz at concentric.net wrote:

> The pool hall doesn't open until Resurrection Day. In betwixt and between,
> they's dayid.

Not quite how I remember it from Sunday School. Not quite what I'd imagine
the chaplains'd be preaching to the soldiers either.

But let's run with this idea of a temporary state of "nothingness" between
death and Judgement Day which you're proposing as a mainstay of Christian
theology. If it's what the chaplains are preaching to the men, and if it's
what's happened/happening/going to happen to the dead soldiers, then what's
the point of the passage? It seems a very long-winded way of saying only
that "soldiers died". (No offence meant either, Paul.)

best

    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)