was Re: VLVL (6) Brock

Terrance lycidas2 at earthlink.net
Mon Sep 29 09:02:25 CDT 2003



> 
> http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html
> 
> The thing that strikes me rereading this essay, apart from the incorporation
> of some satirical Ben Franklin stuff left over from _M&D_, is that second
> last paragraph where he talks about "the state of our souls". It's not a
> conclusive statement of his own beliefs, but it certainly seems to be a
> sincere expression of tolerance and respect towards Christian faith.


I don't know about that. I don't think P is talking about his beliefs at
all. Or tolerance and respect toward Christian faith. This paragraph is
a very good example of 
Pynchon nostalgia:  modernist nostalgia for a quality of human
consciousness that a logos beyond human agency seems once to have
empowered. 

To insist that Pynchon  "satirizes the longing" Eddins
quoting Hohmann) that drives this process is to deny, in a
postmodern privileging of indeterminacy, the logos of that
well evidenced norm by which he condemns the betrayers of
the earthly and the human. GP.119

Reflections of a Moral kinda girl,  

Jane



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