Spiritualism v. Secularism

[jbor at bigpond.com]

>>> But it's not merely Christian, or
>>> for that matter, monotheist, or even specifically
>>> religious.
>
>> Definitely none of the above.
>
> Well, I'm not willing to dismiss any of those things
> whole cloth just yet.

Yes, I don't think you could ever characterise Pynchon's texts as 
fundamentalist anything, even "secularist" or "atheist", whatever his 
personal beliefs might be. There are equal servings of respect & 
tolerance and scepticism & irony towards all sorts of different belief 
systems. There are probably a few topics (environmentalism, Civil 
Rights ... ) upon which the texts are unequivocal, but there's a lot on 
which they're not.

best

> What about the last (or is it?)
> appearance of Slothrop? "And now, in the Zone, later
> in the day he became a crossroad."  That seems like
> pretty blatant Christian symbolism to me.  Though true
> to form, it's a symbol that also admits its opposite,
> since crossroads are where one goes to meet and
> bargain with the devil, at least according to Robert
> Johnson.  And to be fair, he follows this with a
> passage about a "rainbow cock" that is about as pagan
> as one can imagine.
>
> But what are we to make of this?
>
> "6:43:16 BDST - in the sky right now here is the same
> unfolding, just about to break through, his face
> deepening with its light, everything about to rush
> away and he to lose himself, just as the countryside
> has ever proclaimed... slender church steeples poised
> up and down all these autumn hillsides, white rockets
> about to fire, only seconds of countdown away, rose
> windows taking in Sunday light, elevating and washing
> the faces above the pulpits defining grace, swearing
> this is how it does happen- yes the great bright hand
> reaching out of the cloud..."
>
> (I'd give you page numbers, but I don't have a copy of
> the Penguin edition.)
>
> Now let me finish with the caveat that I'm not saying
> that GR is some kind of (shudder) religious allegory,
> or Slothrop some sort of Christ figure (though I do
> enjoy the irony that such a figure could spend a good
> chunk of the novel chasing skirts and hashish.)  Just
> that Pynchon seems to focus a lot of attention on
> these kinds of oppositions: Christianity v. Paganism,
> Religion v. Science, phallus v. rocket.  And though
> his characters may stand on one side or another, I'd
> submit that the narrator stays right in the middle.
> In the v period, as it were.
>
> -Chris
>
>
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