Pynchon as propaganda

[jbor]

on 11/4/03 12:25 AM, s~Z at keithsz at concentric.net wrote:

> "No, it isn't."
> 
> http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_pictures/grail/bknight4.jpg
> 

Hilarious. But before you get too carried away in your gloating and baiting,
and as it is important enough to persevere with, let's just recap, shall we.
You said at one point that the text "remains silent" (which I agree with, by
the way) on what happened to the soldiers after death, is agnostic in other
words, but you flatly refuse to acknowledge that this is any different from
what the chaplains, who are not silent on this issue at all, are preaching.
It is, of course, quite different. Agnosticism, which countenances the
non-existence of God, redemption, salvation &c (i.e. it countenances
*atheism*) as a possibility, is *not the same thing* as Christian belief,
which does not countenance such possibilities. Ergo, the way the text tells
it is quite at odds with the chaplains on the subject of what happened/will
happen to the soldiers, and this is the discrimination upon which the tone
and the semantic content of the passage hinges.

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)