Is this Book just a book? (was re: Religious Fundamentalism in Orwell and Pynchon)

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

                              David Morris schrieb: "This passage is just fine 
                              as a paragraph in a fictional world."


    this mail of yours is just fine as a posting in a consumer world ... damn,  
    dude, we're not talking about grisham or such: this is the rainbow, this is 
    radical art! since the avantgarde stepped on the scene around 1910, 
    authentic art is always up to dissolve the barriers between beauty and our 
    every day life ... in 1973, when gravity's rainbow came out, you'd probably 
    have been arguing that the war is south east asia plays no role in it cause 
    you cannot find the word "vietnam" anywhere in the novel ... kfl

    ps. going to the movies this afternoon: "city of god".

> This passage is from a NOVEL, a work of FICTION, which has conspiracy and
> paranioa as major themes, so it makes sense in that context.  Dows anybody
> think Pynchon meant for them to be taken as NON-FICTION?  This passage is just
> fine as a paragraph in a fictional world.  Some people are looking to make
> Pynchon their personal guru and passages of his fictions as words to live by,
> reality be damned, which is truly laughable.
>
> David Morris
>
> --- Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > 
> > Can you imagine a journalist actually trying to get this passage into any
> repectable newspaper or journal? Not that it isn't one of my favorite passages
> from GR, but geee wiz.....
> >
> > > "Don't forget the real business of the War is buying
> > > and selling. The murdering and the violence are
> > > self-policing, and can be entrusted to
> > > non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is
> > > useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as
> > > diversion from the real movements of the War. It
> > > provides raw material to be recorded into History, so
> > > that children may be taught History as sequences of
> > > violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared
> > > for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a
> > > stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to
> > > try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still
> > > here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of
> > > markets." (Gravity's Rainbow, p. 105)
>