Pynchon & Sartre & Existentialism

[Terrance]

Charles Hohmannn claims GR is gnostic/existential, there is no
  way out, all attempts to escape or transcend only exacerbate
  an already intolerable situation, Eddins and Bloom agree,
  but Eddins takes a different view of Rilke's function in GR
  and the function of music in GR, and most importantly,
  claims that in GR Pynchon shifts away from the
  existentialism of his earlier works. This step Eddins
  calls Pynchon's "orphic naturalism." 



"As for Voegelin in particular, those already familiar with
  his political philosophy--a philosophy with admittedly
  reactionary implications--will probably be shocked to hear
  his ideas linked to those of a novelist who outlook seems to
  derive in so many ways from the anarchist currents of the
  1960s; but ... demonstrate a selectively reactionary streak
  in  Pynchon and show how it colors the vision of humanity at
  the heart of his norm."

   "We have, then, with Adams and Nietzsche, a
  common prognosis of a nihilistic future, and two diverging reactions
that may be
  roughly characterized as Apollonian rejection and Dionysian embrace.
Both
  reactions are incorporated into Pynchon's work, where they correspond
roughly to a
  humanity-centered norm without effective defenders and to the
dehumanizing forces
  and/or conspiracies that besiege it. Yet another antithesis that
correlates with
  these reactions is that between the scenario of an existential
wasteland that
  is prey only to a growing spiritual emptiness and entropy's
indifferent
  ravagings, and the scenario of a world in the grip of fanatical cabals
that
  seek control of the historical process. It would not be an unfair
summation of
  Pynchon's development to say that he moves from the scenario in his
early short
  stories to the most urgent consideration of the second in Gravity's
Rainbow. In
  between, the two possibilities form, in various mixtures and guises,
the
  onto-epistemological cruxes that have fascinated critics.

These considerations constitute the parameters that generate
the complex religious dialectic of Pynchon's fiction: a fluctuating
tension between nostalgia for cosmic harmony and commitment to amoral
power worship, superimposed
upon the fluctuating tension between the notion of a neutral,
structureless universe and that of a universe infiltrated by insidious
structures of Control.

  'The Gnostic Pynchon'  Dwight Eddins Cutter's University
  Press (sorry I miss the quarry) 1990

The sadist's triumph is not and never, for even when he
  thinks to explode into victory some implicit unavoidable
  defeat rises: his victim looks up and makes of him an
  object. The sadist then, is compelled to realize that it is
  not an object but a subject he has possessed and this moment
  is a failure for sadism but a failure for masochism as
  well,  for an epistemological and ontological chasm
  separates self from self, freedom from freedom, and each is
  left to choose themselves within the system of the closed
  circuit of solipsistic history. 

SARTRE AND LOCAL AESTHETICS: RETHINKING
 
                    SARTRE AS AN OPPOSITIONAL PRAGMATIST
 
                                  by
 
                             PAUL TREMBATH
 
                       Colorado State University
       Copyright (c) 1991 by Paul Trembath, all rights reserved
             _Postmodern Culture_ v.1 n.2 (January, 1991)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.191/trembath.191

See Dave Monroe's comments and Notes on Sartre in V. and the J. Kerry
Grant Companion and follow the critics. TV, say, maybe that identity
stuff in VL too?