Mary as sea goddess

[Henry Secularpeturbations]

An interesting subject. In those Pynchonian texts, 
Mary is often the sea goddess and the earth goddess. 

Kind of what we find in Graves, Adams, Hemingway,
Eliot ... and so on ... and in Catholic myth. 


In The Small Rain Hemingway and Eliot may be the
primary sources and Influence, but the Anxiety seems
to be closer to home. Lardass is a wandering Jew. The
wandering Jew, so the story goes, is condemned to
wander the earth until the Day of Judgment for having
mocked Jesus on the day of the Crucifixion. Lardass
returns to his base after plowing Little Buttercup and
harvesting the dead. His mechanical harvesting of
stiffs, his passionless plowing of the flower, his
yo-yoing or anti-Bildungsroman (this is probably not
the right term, but like Profane/Benny Catholic/Jew
Jesuit/Shlemiel, Lardass doesn't "learn a goddamned
thing"....)  his mixing of boyish sexual desire with
death, his conflict--"where to put his loyalties", are
all manifestations of the Virgin become Dynamo, or the
Street of the 20th Century, the Wasteland. WHile
Lardass returns to his base hardly aware that he is,
or  if he is,  returning home or wandering, Flange,
like a Prufrockian Odysseus, doesn't even plow or
harvest. He is not Prince Hamlet nor was menat to be.
He doesn't ask the Philosophical questions, he only
asks about asking them and fears the reply. What if we
had had children. Flange is the communications officer
who can't communicate, who can't procreate because he
is still in the womb (great stuff in Lucky
Pierre--reminds me of when Slothrop goes into his own
Penis, LP in Cleo's womb). Womb of sea, womb of earth,
but where is the birth? Birth of a rat? No Birth, no
Passion, no Death, and no Resurrection. Flange is
afraid of life/wife/child/home/ and in this he is
Prufrockian. Odysseus doesn't want to leave his son
and his wife and his plowing and go to war. So he
pretends to be insane. They toss his infant son before
his plow to test his sanity. The cunning man can't
plow his son into the earth and so he goes off to war.
He wanders after pissing of the sea-GOD and is tempted
away from home by all sorts of lady-like creatures. 

I guess Flange's plas are already pigs so...



The sirens don't even sing for Prufrock, they sing
only for themselves.  

Flange will hear the song of the Siren, will see the
sea girls in the gypsy eyes and heart.  He loves the
sea songs.  But, if it is not the Sirens that wake us 
in Prufrock's Song, but human voices that wake us and
we drown, in Low-lands the voice that calls to Flange
is (well, P kinda screws this up, but...) is more like
that of the Sirens drawing Flange into shore (another
womb, an under the earth womb or Grave). He will stay
for a little while, he is after all, married. But he
has no child, no son. What flower will spring from his
stay with the gypsy? Hyacinth? A Rat? 





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