AtDTDA: General thoughts

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I go along with both Gaddis & Pynchon: the magic was never lost, it's 
always accessible to those in the know, but with all the attendant 
aspects of the magical acts along for the ride, including [potentially] 
the very worst in human petulance. Karma's a motherfucker, Jim.
When the magic is ultimately from the right place---Geli Tripping? 
Amanda?---It works as described:

          When she was a small girl Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old 
          rotten tree trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs 
          all around them, they just about beat their brains out trying to get 
          at the clock. Years later, Amanda used the woodpecker experiment 
          as a model for understanding capitalism, communism, Christianity 
          and all other systems that traffic in future rewards rather than in 
          present realities.
          Tom Robbins: Another Roadside Attraction

http://www.chrisbrauer.com/weblog/2005/03/ode-to-greatest-heroin-in-fiction.php

. . .coming from a Wiccan place, one can easily see these two characters 
as aspects of the Goddess, becoming the Goddess and being the channel 
of work for Goddess in the way they flow with nature. It's all very Gaian.

          Mark Kohut:
          It is all the Magic the world has lost, which has been 
          replaced by Science, inevitably tied up with Power.... 

          Me:
            . . . . As far as I can tell, Pynchon's primary obfuscation is in his 
          relation to "Big Science" [hallelujah, yodel-lay-de-hoo], looking 
          [like R. Crumb] at the older stuff, finding the newer stuff somehow 
          lacking. He knows enough about science and math to make it 
          appear like these are his central concerns, when [capital "M"] 
          Magick was his central concern from the get-go. Now, there's 
          your misdirection, right there. "This is magic. Sure---but not 
          necessarily fantasy."

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