TPPM: Dante and Sloth; Hamlet and Sloth; Barthleme.

[Glenn Scheper]

I gotta think Pynchon knows the deep meaning of sloth
is that same melancholy that may follow autofellatio,
and converts the mere Puer Aeternus, like Barthleme,
into the metaphysicist and curmudgeon, like Bierce.

Here is the unbitter one who has not been transformed,
always relenting, sadly watching the advantage of the
wordly, only emitting back a passive-agressive satire:

 Wise satirical practice requires the sensitivity and skill
 of a fugu chef at controlling toxicity,
 that is,
 knowing how long to suffer,
 and how gladly,
 and when to give in to rage,
 and the pleasure of assaulting at last the fools in
 question.
 Barthelme's timing in this regard was flawless,
 though unfortunately he was prevented from becoming a
 worldclass curmudgeon on the order of,
 say,
 Ambrose Bierce,
 by the stubborn counter-rhythms of what kept on being a
 hopeful and unbitter heart.
 Much of this journeyman impatience with idiocy concealed a
 tenderness and geniality which always shine through
 whenever he drops the irony,
 even for a minute.
 That,
 and,
 of course,
 his inescapable sadness.
 That elegaic voice:
 'The wives of the angry young man are now married to other
 people--doctors,
 mostly.'

However, after the metamorphosis, when time is out of joint,
when you are your own father making Dad adulterous with Mom,
when awareness of the immanence, and also, imminence of God,
causes "Instant Karma": the fall from freedom, from a grace
of not knowing every action, every thought is instant known
and judged by God; Then, you are affected by accedia, sloth,
as it affected Kafka, Hamlet, Kierkegaard, Dickinson, other
saints, one and all.

This sloth recalls something I think I saw in a Luther text,
how that sloth is as the rejection of the goodness of God;
In that the direct awareness of God has frozen one in fear.

I planned to surf accedia, but am in the course of writing
a better version of Surf, and it is broken now, but I am so
attached to the new version, that I don't surf with the old.
(Does that parallel; contrast that men prefer "old wine"?)

Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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