Pynchon's "knewspeak"

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> on 22/2/03 5:22 AM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> > Yes and no. Milton's Satan, as Milton made him (at least on the purely
> > Christian level, if no the political level)  is pathetic.
> 
> Some critics argue that Satan becomes the "hero" of _Paradise Lost_
> precisely because "evil" is always intrinsically a far more interesting
> category and prospect for the artist than "goodness". That Satan's character
> captured Milton's imagination -- almost unconsciously, despite his devout
> faith. 

Yes, it's become something of a cliché to say that Milton was in the
Devil's camp without knowing it. 

The same sorts of arguments crop up in some of the critical
> interpretations focusing on Blicero in _GR_, but I don't buy the analogy
> because I don't accept that Pynchon's worldview is circumscribed by
> Christianity. I know we disagree on this point.

The analogy (Eddins) can be read at least two ways. I read it as a
compliment. I think you read it as an insult and a misreading. I don't
think Pynchon was in Blicero's camp without knowing. I think, comparing
him to Milton is a great compliment. Like Shakespeare, like Milton, like
Melville, one of Pynchon's greatest achievements is the creation of a
complex and beautiful villain. Pynchon's Blicero lacks the rhetorical
skills of these others (Iago, Richard III, Macbeth, Satan, Ahab) but is
put together and made complex and beautiful in that unique Pynchonian
method of layering, doubling, loading up flatness with ideas.  As I
recall,  you read Eddins' comparison as an insult because it suggests to
you that Pynchon was not in control of his creative faculties, not
aware, and/or that some religious (Catholic perhaps, is what Eddins
hints) guilt or subconscious thing is responsible for Blicero's evil
magnetism. I agree with you that this is not the case.  I think it's
fairly obvious that Pynchon's worldview is not circumscribed by
Christianity. Certainly none of his novels are. I'm quite convinced that
Eddins never argues that Pynchon's novels are circumscribed by a
Christian worldview. Perhaps Eddins should have cut that comparison out
during the editing of his book because he never develops the idea that
Blicero is like Milton's Satan or that Pynchon is somehow like Milton or
that the cliché (Milton/Pynchon was in the devil's camp...) applies to
Pynchon. What he does (I don't have the book in front of me, but I have
it up in the library so ...) is to argue that Pynchon's fictions develop
toward the ideas of Eric Voegelin's studies of political gnosticism. 
Recall that Eddins admits that he can not say with any certainty that
Pynchon read Voegelin. Same goes for Nietzsche. However, his readings of
Pynchon, specifically his reading of GR as "Modernity without
Constraint" and Blicero are the best I've come across. I think there is
a lot of confusion about Pynchon the Gnostic. Eddins and others do not
argue that Pynchon is a Gnostic (not even Bloom argues that he is).
Nazism, according to Voegelin, was political religion. Blicero is both a
Nazi and a god and a Gnostic.  

PS  I'm looking for a test (an efl or esl assessment test) to place
students.  Any suggestion would be much appreciated. 

OK, Yoga time, Big brick today.