Totalizing Postmodernism

Robin Landseadel robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Mon Dec 1 11:04:56 CST 2008


Pynchon's most obvious critiques of master-narratives come in the

form of Sister Rochelle's anecdotes. . .

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: cleardot.GIF
Type: image/gif
Size: 44 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20081201/ae1b13ce/attachment-0002.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
"Back then, long ago, there were no men at all. Paradise was

female. Eve and her sister, Lilith, were alone in the Garden. A

character named Adam was put into the story later, to help men look

more legitimate, but in fact the first man was not Adam — it was the

Serpent . . .


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: cleardot.GIF
Type: image/gif
Size: 44 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20081201/ae1b13ce/attachment-0003.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
"It was sleazy, slippery man," Rochelle continued, "who invented

'good' and 'evil,' where before women had been content to just be.

In among the other confidence games they were running on women

at the time, men also convinced us that we were the natural

administrators of this thing 'morality' they'd just invented. They

dragged us all down into this wreck they'd made of the Creation,

all subdivided and labeled...." (166).

On Dec 1, 2008, at 7:41 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> Totalizing Postmodernism: Master-narratives in Pynchon's Vineland
> By Bruce A. Sullivan
>
> http://www.themodernword.com/Pynchon/papers_sullivan.html

I wandered over to find Mary Daly's "Beyond God the Father", the overall
flavor of Sister Rochelle's myths suggest that the good Sister has read
Mary Daly---at least her early stuff. On page xvi of "Beyond God the  
Father"
there's  this little passage that reinforces Pynchon's demonstration of
Television as a negative force of social control, a central theme of  
Vineland
and very close to "Gravity's Rainbow"'s big theme of movies and those
illusions we all bought into, thanks to the movies:

           As foretold in this book, television has become a major  
instrument
           of this ritual reinforcement of self-destructive  
mechanisms, so that

            . . .the majority, drugged by the perpetual presence of  
the politics
           of rape on the TV screen, sees it all but sees nothing. The  
horrors
           of a phallocentric world have simultaneously become more  
visible
           and more invisible.

I'm not saying that OBA agrees with everything Ms. Daly wrote but I'll  
bet
he's read feminist authors prior to writing Vineland. There's a  
decided tinge
of eco-feminism and animism in TRP's particular brand of magical  
realism.
TRP whilst living up in Aptos probably was plugged into the local  
leftist scene.
At that time a lot of the Left's focus and energy was on the ongoing
clearcutting of the vast forests within the green triangle.

Anybody who's read "A Journey into the Mind of Watts"

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html

and checked out both John Ross' "Murdered by Capitalism" & OBA's
"Against the Day,"*---know that OBA knows his way around leftists.
And the leftist scene in, around, up and down California's "Green
Triangle" was the first big cluster of "Green" types who were working
with the Wicca of eco-feminism. That's where your tree-huggers come  
from.
FWIW, one of my [really too many] bumper stickers sez "Tree
Hugging Dirt Worshiper." Wanna bet that TRP is a tree-hugger?

Now look at your cover of "Vineland."

*and actually spent any actual time with them pesky radical leftist  
types, like my mom.









More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list