Pynchon's "knewspeak"

[jbor]

on 23/2/03 9:59 AM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> Sorry if this is not at all what you have in mind. I took the liberty of
> assuming not to put words or ideas in your head, but to reply.

No, that one was pretty much a good summary of what I had in mind. (Where
Pynchon has chosen to send his child to school is another
"biographically-based" question which might be factored in too.)

What I was getting at are the conflicting interpretations of Satan's
prominence in PL: i.e., which interpretation of Satan in PL is being
proposed as the analogy for the interpretation of Blicero in GR? C.S.
Lewis's, for example? And, certainly, questions about what type of a
Christian Milton was, whether there was a conscious/unconscious tension in
his faith, the way he chose art to manifest that faith, the way he was
interpreting the O.T. myths etc. None of it is clear-cut.

I can see your side of the argument too. I just don't think that the
allegorical format of GR -- if there is a coherent one -- conforms to, or is
circumscribed by, Biblical mythography or ethics, though these things are
certainly interrogated in and through the text. I think the crux of my point
is that Pynchon's work is very much post-Nietzschean -- "Modern", in a
philosophical sense -- whereas Milton's is not. It has to be so. Pynchon,
whether "Christian" or not, does not have the luxury of leaving Nietzsche
out of the mix.

With Melville I need to defer to you and others, but Moby Dick does seem to
be the important stepping stone between PL and GR, and I'm just not certain
about the first link in that chain either.

best