Monk's motto or: Is Against the Day in favour of the Night?

[Mark Kohut]

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




       
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