In the name of the Rocket

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

For the record, I said- "older versions of sacrality," but that's
okay, *scarcity* might be as good given the rarity of its
appearances these days. I'm not all that sure that GR
comes down on the side of a "mystical conception of a
living conscious earth," however- although I would certainly
embrace such a vision- I'm afraid that reflex might be more
a function of my hopes and dreams rather than what the 
whole text offers us. When I plunge into it, GR seems neutral, 
and leaves the valuations to "you."

In a message dated 4/19/2003 10:07:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
lycidas2 at earthlink.net writes:

MC says:

> "...sweeping away all those older versions of scarcity, and,
> beginning to organize society around its own needs.
> 
> It's not so much that GR is anti-religious, or that the chaplains
> are guilty of manipulation, as that they are quaint- irrelevant. 
> They, and the older forms, have been passed over by a new
> form of The Angel, and the counter-force, for the moment at
> least, is in serious disarray.
> 
> GR, as fronted by Von Braun, is a seduction- not a put down 
> of religion- but an invitation to a new communion."
> 
> YES! 
> 
> This is Perfect. This is how Eddins sums it up. 
> 
> Opposed to the Rocket, opposed to THEIR religion and to Blicero's is
> what I think Gore Vidal complains about, it is Pynchon's Earth-religion. 
> 
> 
>    It is marked by mystical and supernatural manifestations on both
> sides,
>   by the presence of fanatical devotees, and by a drive for nothing less
> than
>   metaphysical dominance. The stakes are for far more than physical or
> ethical
>   control; they represent finally the right to define ultimate reality
> and to
>   decide what the individual's relation to this reality is to be.
> Pynchon locates
>   at the heart of nature the mystical concept of a living, conscious
> Earth, from
>   which all blessings flow and to which Gravity recalls these
> dispensations in a
>   benevolent cycle of renewal. The religious response evoked by a full
>   realization of this phenomenon is a variety of Orpheism that leans
> heavily upon
>   the assumptions of Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry in its identification
> with
>   natural process and its assimilation of life and death into a unifying
> lyric of
>   praise.
> 
> 
>      Dwight Eddins, Gnostic Pynchon
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20030419/c6028abc/attachment.html>