Pynchon as propaganda

[s~Z]

I wouldn't argue against an atheist reading of this sentence:

"Out here, they wanted to dive between the worlds, to fall, turn, reach and
swing on journeys curved through the shining, through the winter nights of
space--their dreams were of rendezvous, of cosmic trapeze acts carried on in
loneliness, in sterile grace, in certain knowledge that no one would ever be
watching, that loved ones had been lost forever. . . ." (p. 723)

Compare that to:

"There were actually soldiers, dead now, who sat or stood, and listened."