AtDTDA (8): The Processing of Souls 210

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Messed up my link, sorry:

http://tinyurl.com/2b6voz

Tore's linking of Jeshimon to "High Plains Drifter" is also quite on 
target. But this is far from the first time that Pynchon has expressed
remarkably discouraging words about Republicans, in particular those
with deep links to the "Military Industrial Complex." As I recall, the 
I. G. Farben material in GR all points directly to Herbert Walker and 
Prescott Bush, along with Dulles, Harriman and the creation of the C.I.A.
Again, this link is provided to demonstrate how "The Governor" is a 
Satrical Caricature of "W".

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: 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."