AtDTDA: [38] p. 1085 They fly towards grace.

[Mark Kohut]

What great stuff, Robin. Thanks and more Thanx.

Pynchon exfoliates, meanings are layered, as we are always saying. But some meanings are more equal than others, to allude. 

I see the ending most like this from my reading---with my goggles off:
TRP has given us, in AtD, a definition of Grace that is, yes, religious, but is distinctly contrasted with the Western Christian Protestant (Puritan) understanding of grace. TRP gave us (thru Lew B.) a new, more
Buddhist-influenced definition: an acceptance of things as they are. 

I see TRP embedding this paradox in the ending: we have to accept "things as they are" to have any grace, those things including Death and the evils
of History. Here, in a book that ends in historical time after WW1, shortly after Fascism entered Time, but while peace reigned among the major Powers, but before the V-2s of GR and WW2 are launched (but the contamination of the air corridor fills AtD), is when the Chums and families 'fly into grace'.

Later,
Mark




--- On Wed, 8/13/08, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: AtDTDA: [38] p. 1085 They fly towards grace.
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Wednesday, August 13, 2008, 1:12 PM
> The final sentence of Against the Day—"They fly
> towards 
> Grace"—contains an unresolvable paradox or two.
> 
> Grace has a number of meanings, though local context in the
> 
> tale's final page nearly singles this line into a
> specific Christian 
> meaning. This review from "The American Prospect"
> points to
> primary puritan meanings of "Grace":
> 
>           From his Puritan ancestors Pynchon learned that
> grace 
>           comes to some of us and not others according to
> God's 
>           inscrutable wishes. What we do does not affect
> our salvation. 
>           We who believe in a gospel of success cannot
> easily imagine 
>           a people convinced of its irrelevance. But
> suppose corruption 
>           had thoroughly rotted a society: a God
> indifferent to worldly 
>           opinion might grow in popularity. If officially
> virtuous people 
>           were really villains, maybe publicly despised
> people were 
>           really saints. If everything you heard was a lie,
> perhaps 
>           only God could winnow truth.
> 
>           Early in Against the Day Pynchon reminds us of
> this idea and 
>           expresses it graphically: "Many people
> believe that there is 
>           a mathematical correlation between sin, penance,
> and 
>           redemption. More sin, more penance, and so
> forth... 
>           [But t]here is no connection.... You are redeemed
> not through 
>           doing penance but because it happens. Or
> doesn't happen." 
>           The salvation story we might like -- we do good
> and we get 
>           rewarded -- implies a line whose equation we
> could plot. But 
>           the arbitrary Puritan God robs us of plottable
> lines. Grace 
>           comes when He pleases and at no predictable
> moment.
> 
> http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=12356
> 
> But the Buddhist concept of Grace seems to apply 
> here as well, Karmic awareness that lets the light in.
> 
> From:
> Buddhism and Christianity: Interpreting A New Testament
> Passage
> 
> by Alfred Bloom Emeritus Professor of Religion University
> of Hawaii
> 
>           The principle of grace which permeates the New
> Testament 
>           was singled out as the  singular focal point for
> Christian 
>           theology by the German reformer Martin Luther 
> (1483-1546). 
>           Sola Fide, faith alone, was proclaimed as the
> witness to the  
>           acceptance and trust in God’s grace.
> 
>           However, 200 years before Luther, Shinran
> established the 
>           paradigm of true  entrusting endowed through the
> gift of 
>           Amida Buddha’s compassion and wisdom as  the
> paradigm 
>           for salvation in Pure Land Buddhism. Where
> Christianity 
>           taught that  salvation is not by works but by
> faith and grace, 
>           described as God’s unmerited  favor, Shinran
> taught that we 
>           cannot attain enlightenment through
> self-inspired,  self-striving 
>           practices. Rather, we can attain salvation only
> through trust and  
>           reliance on Amida’s unconditional compassion
> expressed in 
>           his Primal Vow.  Consequently, trust in God’s
> grace or trust 
>           (shinjin) in Amida’s unconditional  compassion
> became 
>           watchwords in the respective traditions.
> 
>           Shin Buddhists can look upon the principle of
> grace in Christianity 
>           and Shin  Buddhism as significant evidence for
> the universality 
>           of trust in human  experience. Faith is the basis
> for living and 
>           meaning in everyday human  existence. A measure
> of trust and 
>           faith is involved in every dimension of life, 
> especially in human 
>           relations. Religious faith and symbolism opens
> our eyes to  
>           the fact that our everyday life rests on the gift
> of love and 
>           compassion shared  by family, friendships and
> community.
> 
>           Nevertheless, this parable, so influential in
> Christianity, is 
>           essentially  Buddhist in character. The sheep did
> not rebel 
>           against the master or shepherd.  Rather, it
> wandered off 
>           from the flock and lost its way. It was, by
> implication,  in 
>           error and ignorant, but not sinful which is
> viewed in the 
>           Bible as rebellion against God.
> 
> http://www.shindharmanet.com/writings/b&c.htm
> 
> . . . .or the abattoir. . . .
> 
>           Soon they will see the pressure-gauge begin to
> fall. 
>           They will feel the turn in the wind. They will
> put on 
>           smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to
> 
>           part the sky. They fly toward grace
> 
> If I plug "the glory of what is coming to part the
> sky" into Google,
> the very first thing to come up is an article on the
> "Second Coming",
> the Rapture. Of course, there's also a review of
> Against the Day as well:
> 
> from: Thomas Pynchon and the myth of invisibility
> by Sophie Ratcliffe 
> 
>           The Chums are the most important characters for
> Pynchon, 
>           for two reasons. First, they have ultimate faith
> in invisibility
>            their own existence in the narrative depends on
> their state— 
>           of perceived, altruistic absence from the world.
> The second 
>           reason becomes evident in the closing pages of
> the novel, 
>           when the Inconvenience, “once a vehicle of
> sky-pilgrimage”, 
>           is transformed into its own destination. It is a
> place “where 
>           any wish that can be made is at least addressed,
> if not always 
>           granted” . . . .
> 
>           This sounds like classic Pynchon, but there is
> something newly 
>           visible. The cadences are so lulling that it
> would be easy to see 
>           this as, if not celebration, an endearing closing
> sentimentality. 
>           But on a closer look, the final scene has
> disturbing resonances, 
>           as if a crew of Boy’s Own suicide bombers were
> setting out on 
>           a self-effacing mission to destruct. Of all the
> attempted explosions 
>           in the book, this is the biggest. It is Thomas
> Pynchon’s attempt 
>           to explode the myth of invisibility. It speaks of
> now, as well as 
>           then.
> 
> http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25339-2477997,00.html
> 
> Like Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach
> Zarathustra", Against the Day 
> ends Bi-Tonally:
> 
>           One of the major compositional themes of the
> piece is the contrast 
>           between the keys of B major, representing
> humanity, and C major, 
>           representing the universe. Although B and C are
> adjacent notes, 
>           these keys are tonally dissimilar: B major uses
> five sharps, while 
>           C major has none.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Also_sprach_Zarathustra_(Richard_Strauss)
> 
> Touched as I am by the sense of the story lines
> "singling up", I am
> also aware where exclusion of options ultimately leads.