AtDTDA (8): The Processing of Souls 210

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

              So Reef passed beneath enormous wing-shadows, 
       down the grim colonade, which, judging by the numbers, 
       hadn't been that much of a deterrent. "No, quite the 
       contrary," cheerfully admitted the Reverend Lube Carnal 
       of the Second Lutheran (Missouri Synod) Church, "we 
       attract evildoers from hundreds of miles around---not to 
       mention clergy too o' course, like you wouldn't believe. 
       You'll notice there's more churches here than saloons, 
       making us unique in the Territory. Kind of professional 
       challenge, get to their souls before the Governor gets to 
       their necks."
              "The what?"
              "It's how he likes to be addressed. Thinks of this as 
       his little state within a state. Whose main business you 
       could say is the processing of souls."

Of course, we are being given a guided tour of Hell here, what with 
"wing-shadows", "the Reverend Lube Carnal ", "we attract evildoers from 
hundreds of miles around", "processing of souls" and so forth, but the 
"Governor" is a notably specific Satrical Caricature of a well known, 
currenty active political figure:

http://tinyurl.com/2u7ktk

Charles Hollander has already given his take on Pynchon's take on Dante's 
Inferno: . . . 

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

. . . . noting elsewhere how TRP's essential M.O. is satire, after all. . . .

But let's move away from these potentially divisive "topicks heritical" for just 
a moment and move on to note the even more black and fowle heresies 
about to be committed to print after the next 10 pages---oh yes, ten is a 
mighty important number 'round these parts, we're pretty firmly in Quaballah 
Qountry now. The Beast who reveals himself on page 220 is (in the 
imaginations of the locals being described the Jesimon episode), the very 
Devil himself, absolute counterpoint to the Governor. Seeing the references 
to "Fresno" and "Clovis" in the characters placed in this general locale of AtD 
points to where these folk's offspring eventually planted themselves. The 
Central Valley of California being the "Red" enclave within an otherwise 
mostly blue state. There's yet another typically Pynchonian negative depiction 
of "Christian" fundamentalism in these pages, and the Central Valley is
an epicenter for fundamentalism in the USA right now. "Maybe it's not the world, 
but with a minor adjustment or two it's what the world might be."