Snappycrossdresser

[Otto]

>
>
> I better cut the colloquy short and concentrate on just one instance of
> what I see as needed improvements in Otto's thinking. No offense
> intended because I also see Otto as a fine fellow whom it is fun to talk
> to. However there are other more interesting discussions going on at the
> moment.
>
> >  The
> > > appearance of the supernatural in P is part of what might make him a
> > > pomo writer. You seemed to imply the reverse.
> > >
> >
>
> > It is rather the deconstruction of the supernatural than its appearance
in
> > Pynchon's novels that makes him a pomo writer. He's following Rilke in
> > turning the Guardian Angel into a terrible angel: "Beauty is nothing but
the
> > beginning of Terror" -- 
thereagainyouhavethebinaryopposition.Butthe
> > supernatural (which includes every religion and other superstitious
belief)
> > is only one of those logocentric Master Narratives (God, History, Truth)
> > that is deconstructed in postmodern literature. Take the first sentence
of
> > Gaddis' "A Frolic of His Own" for example:
> > "You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law."
> >
>
> What kind of work would deconstructing the supernatural be for a
> postmodernest? That was something the Enlightenment did and without the
> help of post-structuralism. If P is the kind of postmodernist he is
> often assumed to be wouldn't he be on the side of at least mildly trying
> to counteract the rationalism of modernism by introducing some modicum
> of enchantment back into the world?
>

It is Enlightenment, more precisely its promises, that is deconstructed by
the novel. It's the story of how those promises of Enlightenment, the
mathematical formulas that should have helped mankind were used to betray
the idea. The Two Rockets.

See Lance W. Ozier's "The Calculus of Transformation: More Mathematical
Imagery in *Gravity's Rainbow*, Twentieth
Century Literature, 21 (1975), 193-210

> For me Gravity's Rainbow is just about pure enchantment though I'm not
> really sure why. It's more than the angels.
>

Pure enchantment about a race that has fallen in love with its own death?

> My motivation in starting and carrying on this discussion was to try and
> get someone to say something fresh about Pynchon. I admit that I can't
> say anything.  Didn't want us to go back to list making.
>
>
>

Nothing wrong about list making as an intermezzo. But I agree.

Otto