ATD: "against the day"

[Paul Mackin]

On Jul 21, 2006, at 11:46 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> The acronym ATD is possibly the least pleasing of all the Pynchon  
> acronyms.  Too reminiscent of sexually-transmitted disease( Though  
> STD is also the acronym for Bellow's Seize the Day).
>
> In GR, Pynchon took the biblical concept of the wrath of god from  
> above and translated it to the very real wrath of the rocket.  All  
> of this bible-quoting is making me wonder if people actually think  
> he'll do the reverse in the new book.  I certainly hope not (I've  
> had my fill of bible-quoting from the post-election Democrats).
>
> Laura

Not to worry, I'd surmise. Day of Judgement has plenty of  secular  
implication and meaning, It can rather easily, it seems to me, be  
seen as fundamentally a natural phenomenon.  The thing is that there  
are natural consequences  (and it doesn't even have to be anyone's  
fault)  of the fact we dwell in a material, decaying universe  
(decaying on both the macro and micro level). and that these  
consequences are annihilation, extinction, ruination. Both as  
individuals and collectively we experience this as Death--slow, fast,  
or somewhere in between.   So, the Theology of the New Testament  
merely tacks on a supernatural solution to a perfectly natural  
problem. According to Christianity, If we pass  muster morally or  
other possible ways at the end of the world we will be Saved from  
Death. If not, nature will simply take its course. Secular writers  
use the Christian imagery to express these ideas because if was so  
influencial in forming the Western mind and civilization, applying  
itself to  believers and nonbelievers alike.

We used to have a guy on the p-list named Terrance who was always  
saying something to the effect that Gravity's Rainbow was about  
religion.  That's when he wasn't saying Vineland is about work.  
Terrance,  I was always fairly certain, was  just trying to bait  
certain p-listers and was as secular as any of us. Of course,  we'll  
never really know. If if he should return.


>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Michael=20J.=20Hu=DFmann?=" <michael at michael- 
>> hussmann.de>
>> Sent: Jul 21, 2006 10:19 AM
>> To: Pynchon-L <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Subject: Re: ATD: "against the day"
>>
>> Otto (ottosell at yahoo.de) wrote:
>>
>>> Checking the German translation of John 12 I see that this  
>>> "against the
>>> day" is meant precisely the other way round: for the day:
>>>
>>> "Mag es gelten für den Tag meines Begräbnisses."
>>
>> This fits the obviously intended reading of "against" in this context
>> (and in 2 Peter 3:7), namely "in anticipation of".
>>
>> - Michael
>>
>>
>> Michael J. Hußmann
>>
>> E-mail: michael at michael-hussmann.de
>> WWW (personal): http://michael-hussmann.de
>> WWW (professional): http://digicam-experts.de
>>
>>
>
>