GR 'Streets' (death and/or afterlife)

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchonoid" <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 5:53 PM
Subject: Re: GR 'Streets' (death and/or afterlife)


> --- David Morris <fqmorris at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Please don't tell me we're discussing a sement of
> > 200 pages (somebody's typo?).
>
>
> Oh, just go for it, fq -- this way your hammer is
> bound to hit a nail somewhere.
>
> -Doug
>

I think it's inevitable to jump in Pynchon's novels. You've started the
thread with p. 693, it went on to p. 317-323 (Enzian's hero-pattern, herero
vs christian religion), p. 539-40 (Father Rapier and "They"), now p. 747
(Weissmann's Tarot) which "is 'covered' (...) by the Tower" that reappears
in the closing poem on p. 760:

> > "Others see a Gnostic or Cathar symbol for the Church of Rome, and this
is
> generalized to mean any System that cannot tolerate heresy: a system which
by
> its nature, must sooner or later fall. We know by now that it is also the
> Rocket."

"Till the Light that hath brought the Towers low
Find the last poor Pret'rite one . . . "

An absolute or totalitarian system cannot tolerate heresy in order to avoid
changes or questions about its legitimacy. It's a closed system and thus
bound to fall through its own structure, because it doesn't allow any
feedback questioning the system per se. But control only works with
feedback, correct feedback. So after a while the system inevitably gets
wrong information which leads to its decline.

Any heresy has the potential to wreck the system, therefor heretics normally
are being burned, hanged or have to go into exile.

Otto

Daß das weiche Wasser in Bewegung
Mit der Zeit den mächtigen Stein besiegt.
Du verstehst, das Harte unterliegt.
http://www.ottosell.de/brecht.htm