TP stops worrying and lovesdabom, was:Re: GR 'Streets' (death and/or afterlife)

[Prsamsa at aol.com]

   Yes'm, this talk about deChardin and Rapier sounds better.  I've held out 
of this
discussion basically because it digressed:  it really doesn't matter whether 
Pynchon is writing as an atheist, an agnostic, a pagan or snake-handling 
Christian; Or Whether he's a monkey's uncle.  Because Pynchon is writing as a 
Houdini;   He writes only for effect, only to convey (in this section, in a 
fragmented way) what he feels or wants us to feel.
   I could express this better if you could see through my eyes El Greco's 
portrayal of St. Peter, looking up, with keys in his clenched hands, as I 
viewed yesterday (art uber church) at the Phoenix Art Museum.   Does it 
matter if El Greco believes as a Catholic;   was raised Orthodox, being a 
Cretan;  or has dropped traditional ideas about God?   Not really.   All that 
matters is that we feel St. Peter's crisis
and even if we didn't know a person named El Greco painted this,  (think a 
few hundred years from now) we'll be able to feel it.  Unashamed, I must say 
I teared up looking at this painting.  
    Here's a theory what the paragraph about army chaplins is doing stuck 
here.   A character like Slothrop might have these thoughts as he's wandering 
around "the streets"....interesting, since the Slothrop sections are almost 
100% through his eyes and his actions, and not through his thoughts...unless 
we count the down the toilet
section, Beyond the Zero...maybe he has started to disentegrate here, 
physically...
mentally too?   Temporally, we know for sure.  There's a Kenosha Kid section 
when he goes "crazy" early on and a mention of Kenosha a few pages after "the 
streets", pov undetermined...have wondered too if Pynchon could be commenting 
on all the "preterite, foreign" Hiroshimans who never had a chance to make 
their peace before the A-bomb struck...first tested at the "Trinity" site in 
New Mexico...Hitler kicking or chasing out the Einsteins and others (Ed 
Teller, etc) who helped create the bomb...ironies abound.  
    The tone of the chaplain section makes me think the author is talking 
tongue
deep in cheek, or just surrealistically juxtaposing a traditional faith with 
Tyrone's fate...    
    If therefore, the rocket is one of the heros of the story, (don't 
discount it if Byron the Bulb is seen as a character) the A-bomb seems a true 
if trite "deux ex machina", or diablo con cielo, if seen that way, forcing a 
climax to the narrative and leading to summing up or tieing up some loose 
ends...the last of the last section being as close to TP's true thoughts as 
anywhere in the novel..using direct address and forgoing any humor or song 
breaks...pretty grim stuff.   I don't think, after much thought, Pynchon 
wants this to make any kind of sequential, linear sense.  The rocket shifted 
one paradigm and the A-bomb, soon after, has shattered all previous ideas of 
form, time and control.  


Regards,
Perry Sams, "samsa"
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