Monk's motto or: Is Against the Day in favour of the Night?
Mark Kohut
markekohut at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 24 16:05:33 CDT 2007
I will turn on my couple-three torch lights...see it they illumine.
Light via Monk is just the usual metaphor: insight into darkness.....brightness around
ignorance...Genesis: Let there be light, etc.......shrouded by blackness/darkness,
"our lives rounded by sleep"--Shakespeare.
I think it is natural light that has almost all the value in Pynchon's world......man-made light
is already a confession of loss......see Telluride stufff....
I cannot see your argument against natural light....Pynchonj does not like the binary
Manicheans....wait until yoiu get to the under the sand chapter...
I think most of the expressed 'views' in Pynchon come from deeply flawed people---he is a satirist.....and most of their actions are.....flawed from their relationships (especially) on...
Those 'views' on women and sex are NOT Pynchon's I would argue.........see them thru
the Icelandic spar......
play with that spar conceit......I recently went back to a city where I used to be every week for days over 20 years ago........it looked as if thru a glass changedly....as if thru a Spar
refraction.......like events from my past do......
He, I say, has a very old (and old-fashioned) view of relationships....
My 2 cents,
Mark K
Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
.... krch krch krch ... Is this thing on? OK, here we go once more:
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" (Thelonious Monk)
>From the beginning on I had the strong impression, that Monk's motto and the
novel's title must be closely connected (not only because they follow
immediately after another). Yet I have to admit that I do not quite get it.
[I know there's a lot about the title itself on pynchonwiki but, as far as I
can see, nothing on the relation to Monk's statement; nor did I find
anything at all about the quote in the archives.] Let me ask you a couple of
questions:
If there's "always night", where would be the need to do anything "Against
the Day"?
And: In Monk's saying light appears kinda positive. But in the book itself
--- take photography, the destructive potential of electricity, the birth of
mass media, in total: industrialization --- light leads to developments that
tend to bring the world out of balance. Is this supposed to be dialectics?
Moreover: The gnostic Manichaeans (pp. 437f) are in their uncompromisingly
spiritual search for the light characterized rather critical (and Pynchon
is, as Eddins has shown convincingly, anti-gnostic in general). But then
again: The neverending night, Monk speaks of, would be unbearable for any
kind of unfolded human culture. And doesn't Monk's motto in itself sound a
little gnostic? I mean, the natural sunlight we're perceiving day by day
most def, would --- taken the saying for granted --- have to come from an
evil archontic entity, no?
So many questions and no answer at all. Can you help me?
And now some 'technical data' concerning my reading process: I've got
problems to make my way through this novel. In my linear read I'm on page
464, read a dozen of other books, and did put the fucking thing on a
far-away-shelf more than just once or twice. You know, neither for Westerns
--- except for singularities like Blood Meridian (btw, read "The Road" and
found it very good) or Little Big Man (the movie) --- nor for
boy-adventure-stories I have any special affection. "Over the ranges" I
still read fast (love Webb Traverse and his political thirst for justice),
but "Iceland Spar" found me clueless. Was the man left by all good spirits
when he wrote this? Especially the pseudo-Lovecraftian beginning turned me
off profoundly. But then I am perhaps just missing something crucial.
Anyway, I spend so much lifetime with Pynchon's books that I don't think I
can afford not to read the whole novel at least once. And since the text
seems to get better now, I hope to make my way through. Your mails help me
to always again take the book into my hands. Checking out the favourite
passages you people name (I don't believe in 'spoilers') helps me to get a
feeling for what I might be liking about "Against the Day" some day. If
Heaven allows. Up to now --- Don't stone me! --- there isn't much. I don't
like the ethnic jokes, I don't like the view on women, I don't like the
M&Dish humour. I haven't learned, up to now, new things about Anarchist
theory, the Tarot, the functional differentiation of science, or Shambhala
(issues about I, perhaps, know one or two things). So I would be grateful
for any hint that keeps me hanging on.
Best wishes to all,
Kai
---------------------------------
Get the free Yahoo! toolbar and rest assured with the added security of spyware protection.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20070724/5f993352/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list