GRGR 1,4 rethinking Slothrop's mistake

[Cometman]

In one of Philip Roth's books, there's a scene with the narrator's Dad,
where he gives the narrator a collection of silver coins with
likenesses of great authors stamped on them.  

Roth immediately makes the character have all kinds of self-doubts and
self-flagellation about his unworthiness, and segues into an anal sex
routine.  (maybe Roth is also into AF - bears thinking about (-:

For the magnificent family values scene to coexist with the X-rated, in
the same book, demands some kind of writing power, something Roth's got
in common with Pynchon.  Wouldn't it be a mistake to think about
Pynchon's genius arising from dope, or to see Roth's writing ability as
just a sign of being oversexed?  

In fact, one could read cautionary tales into a lot of this literature,
and make a different mistake (perhaps) of considering Roth completely
anti-sex and Pynchon completely anti-drug.  Nabokov frowned on drugs,
and yet his prose contains amazing phantasmagorias, proof (as if proof
were needed) that compelling visions need not always spring from the
use of controlled substances.

What's all this got to do with Slothrop?  Broderick Slothrop has given
his son some kind of collection of coins too, but Slothrop isn't going
to go around flashing it all over the place (might get stolen, might
get misunderstood, and he's got a particular way of displaying it,
maybe) 

In fact, the detente (25, ln 3) he's reached with his family's vision
of Providence may want more from him than the simple, may be expecting 
- in fact demanding, in the nicest possible way - that he depart from
the conventional.

"London the secular city instructs him: turn any corner and he can find
himself inside a parable" (25, ln 6-7)

Parable, parabola, parabellum, chime the bells of St Tyrone's

Not only is he being instructed, it's a life-and-death matter, the
great enlightenments he's been taught to seek confronting him
forcefully (Tantivy sent him out in the field to good purpose,
apparently, after all) and pointing toward the ultimate enlightment
lying (or is it?) beyond the Zero