Gorman ("The Specter") Takeshi & Neo-Freudian Revisionist Quackery

[Ghetta Life]

>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>
> >
> > In Pynchon’s novels this illness is the default state of being, and 
>Gnosticism is but one model of explanation for this default state that 
>Pynchon flirts with.
>
>Not sure what you mean by a default state of being.

It is the condition of all human beings after "The Fall" (consciousness).

>I don't think that Pynchon flirts with Gnosticism.

I don't think he embraces Gnosticism, but it is a useful model as a religion 
that points to a fucked-up world that is unavoidably so, one inherently 
structurally "flawed."   And, unlike traditional Xianity,  it questions the 
"goodness" of the god which created it, which seeems an honest appraisal 
rather than a whitewash for the god.

>What we see, time and again, is that the Crew (TWSC of V., All the people 
>Oedipa and Slothrop and Prairie and Dixon and Mason meet, are sick, but 
>their sickness is treated tenderly, they are and YOU are admonished, 
>laughed at and with,  by the text, because there is simply no way out. In 
>fact, they are bond together with their oppressors, the henchmen,  who able 
>to "synthesize and control" because they are useful switchmen at the Firm.

Yes, but when using these terms it is very easy to forget the micro in favor 
of the macro, and devolve into political arguments which ignore the 
fundamental issue: being human.

> >Freud’s explanations are also flirted with.
>
>No, I think that Pynchon goes directly to Freud (and Marcuse) setting these 
>against the neo-Freudians.

OK, but there's that big leap between micro(Freud) and macro(Marcuse) again. 
  I'm not saying you're incorrect, but wouldn't Marcuse come up with a 
prescription for a viable way out of the "sick" society?

>>But EVERYBODY is sick, and living in an inescapably sick world.  Some, 
>>however, seek ways out, escape or redemption comes in small doses.  But 
>>these are not cures, only palliatives.

>No one is saved. There is no way out. In fact, the struggle is only
>going to make matters worse for everyone. Sooner or later the System
>will collapse of its won weight and a new one will take its place. There
>are moments, spaces in time, when all is as flat an Argentine hill side
>and a white horse passes, when Germany is lawless anarchy, when America
>is off the map, off the grid, but Zoyd Wheeler comes rolling into town
>after Frenesi Gates and a band of outlaws came riding into his, and the
>subjunctive is the here and now, as DL tells Ralph, and Brock comes
>screaming across the sky.  These voids, (see Tony Tanner's wonderful
>essay, "The Rubbish Tip for Subjunctive Hopes)  are quickly filled with
>the follies of men and the Waste that incest lays in the cradle slouched
>toward by the rough beast (see How Thanatoids are related to the Law).
>[...]
>Freud is not quite as influential as Adams, but add Marcuse and its a
>close match.

Good synopsis above!  I've not read much Adams, and almost no Marcuse,  but 
I think your take on Pynchon's works via these guys in the structure you 
describe above makes a lot of sense.  I know he was heavily influnced by 
Norman O. Brown when he wrote GR, and Brown was a great synthesizer of Freud 
(and I think Marcuse too).

Ghetta

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