ATDTDA - grace

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 08:14 -0500, Mark Smith wrote:
> Yes, I agree that the term "grace" has been secularized... but would
> go further and suggest that releasing this notion from secular
> limitations is not enough.  I do not get any kind of material notion
> entailed in the word, no sense of betterment in earthly matters, no
> notion of afterlife rewards (or punishment), but a release from
> expectation.  The loss of hope that Lew feels when he discovers that
> things are "exactly as they are" is in fact a liberation, though
> perhaps Lew is not ready to receive it as such.  How, actually do we
> interpret this quote? 
> 
> P. 42:
> "One mild and ordinary work-morning in Chicago, Lew happened to find
> himself on a public conveyance, head and eyes inclined nowhere in
> particular, when he entered, all too briefly, a condition he had no
> memory of having sought, which he later came to think of as grace." 
> "He understood that things were exactly what they were. It seemed more
> than he could bear."
> 
> I see this as a realization of self.  He has briefly and temporarily
> come into the state of fully inhabiting his true nature.  Call it
> realization of atman, if you will, or "peak experience", a la Maslow,
> or whatever other label you are comfortable with, but it is a deeply
> inexpressible experience, which  Pynchon somehow expresses, or hints
> at, through  words.  


I meant to respond to this in my previous post.

I interpreted the sentences as Lew's seeing the world with all its
warts, without illusion, which leaves him in a profoundly unhappy state
of mind. (unless "more than he can bear" means more HAPPINESS than he
can bear, which doesn't seem right)

My interpretation is probably too simplistic to match up with Lew's
psyche as presented to us--so detached as it is from any kind of normal
connection to his social existence.






> 
> On 2/11/07, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
> In other words, 'Grace' has been secularized--it is no longer 
> ecclesiastical or theological, but has become strictly concerned with
> things of the world, the temporal.
> 
> This shift from Heaven to Earth does not obviate the basic thrust of
> the
> word. Grace imho still implies the hope, if not much of an
> expectation, 
> for some kind of betterment in the life of the dispossessed of the
> world, some change from the status quo.
> 
> While AtD does not take a theological view of what Salvation from the
> injustices of the world might  entail, it nevertheless refuses to draw
> a 
> strict line between the Sacred and the Profane. There is obviously a
> lot
> in the book that is quite spiritual, mystical, and, of course, even
> magical.
> 
> 




> 
> 
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