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

[Bekah]

I see it a bit differently, Mark.   I thought that when the Chums and  
families "fly toward Grace,"  it meant that the Chums had abandoned  
Earth and there was very little evidence of Grace left here  
(especially at that time just pre- WWII).  But it was a good ending  
because Grace was somewhere and we can look toward it.   Grace has  
not abandoned the Earth but much of Earth may have abandoned it and  
is heading toward more a technologically oriented existence with  
horrendous warfare.  The Chums have gone.   :-(

As Eric Rauchway said in his review:   http://www.prospect.org/cs/ 
articles?articleId=12356  -
"The bulk of the book plots a terrestrial narrative of conflict  
between the line-drawers and those who resist them, personified in  
two families: the plutocrat Vibes and the miner-anarchist Traverses.  
For this part of the tale, Pynchon controls his language and keeps it  
conventional, almost subdued: because the line-drawers must win, even  
against love. In Pynchon's history you can plot a vector from the  
accumulation of capital and colonies to the Great War and the clash  
with Islam. It is inexorable: as in the Puritan drama, the larger  
part of humanity is Hellbound, and even the Chums can't save them.

"In a universe of such sure damnation, what hope abides? Perhaps an  
effort to resist the vector of inevitability, to cooperate instead  
with the ineffable logic of salvation (maybe allied to a Quaternion  
mathematics defined against "the traditional triangle") can save --  
not humanity, but a few individual people, and can even maybe save a  
country. If only the U.S. could recall its stand for freedom! But for  
now the country exists uneasily with its alternate self: "the boys  
could almost believe some days that they were safely back home.... on  
others they found an American Republic whose welfare they believed  
they were sworn to advance passed so irrevocably into the control of  
they evil and moronic that it seemed the could not, after all, have  
escaped....." Meanwhile they fly, chaotically, toward grace."


Bekah



On Aug 15, 2008, at 4:37 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> 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.
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