GR 'Streets'(was ...

[s~Z]

>>>I don't think the text embraces what the
chaplains were preaching at all.<<<

I agree. I don't see the text embracing anything. Simply describing. In a
way that captures the gravity of the situation.

>>>I think that Christianity is very important in Pynchon's work, as are
other
theistic and non-theistic belief systems, as also is atheism.<<<

I agree.

>>> You mentioned the opening motto and the closing hymn. I'd say that the
novel's title
(ardently secular in all of its denotations and connotations) precedes the
von Braun quote, and that there is enormous irony (to the point of outright
antagonism) in Pynchon's appropriation of old hypocrite Wernher's words.<<<

I agree.

>>> At the end, there is that "Now everybody-" address to the
audience/reader which
comes right after the hymn lyric, and for mine it is similarly drenched in
bitter sarcasm. <<<

I agree. Same for the end of M&D.

>>>I'm not sure that the moon, the "rattlesnake buzz" (a sound image) or the
"thirty-year-old wood" in the opening paragraph really have any specific
religious connotations, but I'd be happy to hear what you think these might
be.<<<

I'm not ready to say that my associations for those opening images have any
validity as connotations in the context of the section.

>>>When he discovers the fragment of newspaper he identifies the
mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped onto Hiroshima as having "the same
coherence, the same hey-lookit-me smugness as the Cross does". This doesn't
seem to be a particularly positive connection at all, especially with the
way it's also associated with a huge white penis fucking the Japanese
city.<<<

The Christian belief system as raper and destroyer of worlds.

>>>What, for example, is that apparition of "the pale
Virgin ... rising in the east", and what is the significance of the angle or
latitude (?) measurement of 17" 36'?<<<

This is evidently what the astrological chart reads at the time of the
explosion.

>>> The text seems to foreground the fact that Japanese people are
non-Christian. I have trouble getting a handle on what the point is here.<<<

In general, I still believe the section is portraying the dark underbelly of
the Christian belief system.