Pynchon as propaganda

[jbor]

on 10/4/03 1:47 AM, s~Z at keithsz at concentric.net wrote:

> The word *just* isn't in the text.

I haven't said it is in the text. What is written in the text is that the
soldiers die. As opposed to what the chaplains said was going to happen.
They *just* die, nothing else. You seem to be arguing that the only proper
interpretation of a text is an exact rewriting of the text, which is absurd.

Death and what happens after, as presented by the chaplains, is *different*
to the death that the soldiers experience, as represented by the text. It's
a simple point. You don't see it, fine. No big deal. (But I'm happy to see
that you're apparently over it now and back to your usual one-line
put-downs.)

By the way, I never did hear any credible evidence to support the bizarre
claim that "nothingness" is in there with God, death, redemption and
salvation as a central principle of Christian preaching about the passage of
the human soul from life into life after death. Or the notion that the
chaplains would suddenly've started talking about the void from which "God"
supposedly created the earth in that situation.

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)