Repost: "The Big One"

[malignd at aol.com]

<<There's a cadre of self-appointed critics that want to maintain a theory that there is essentially no moral center in Pynchon's world. I do not agree  with that viewpoint.. Those same critics maintain that Pynchon's pinnacle
is the profoundly pessimistic Gravity's Rainbow*. And so it goes.>>




I don't know who makes up the "cadre" you describe and it's hard to tell in what you write whether they are incoherent or you are, but pessimism and morality are not mutually exclusive.  GR is pessimistic, overall, but it is also very moralistic.  I'd argue that if there is a problem with Pynchon's moralism, it is that it is, for me, anyway, not terribly sophisticated.  He is fluid in sophisticated ideas, surely; but his moral judgements are black and white.  His paranoid connection of one thing to another--e.g., nazism to IG Farben to Royal Dutch Shell to Ciba Geigy--indicts everything and everyone equally. There's guilt to go around, but Royal Dutch Shell is not the third reich.

He is similarly unfailingly on the side of the underdog, as most times, am I.  But the underdog or oppressed, freed of oppression, can ultimately make your skin crawl, e.g., Mugabe.  Pynchon is not very subtle or insightful on such dynamics.







-----Original Message-----
From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 4:23 pm
Subject: Re: Repost: "The Big One"








   David Morris: 
   I suspect that you take magic/occult much more seriously that 
   Pynchon ever has.  Magic for you is like AF for Glenn.
 
   GR is and ever has been Pynchon's "Big One."  He might as 
   well have stopped there.  Everything since has been downhill.  
   For me, of the last three, Mason & Dixon was the best.  Still no GR.


Be that as it may, the Theosophists, the Golden Dawn,  a parody version 
of the O.T.O. [T.W.I.T.] and a parody version of Alistair Crowley [Nicholas
Nookshaft] have major roles in Against the Day, not simply pop-ups like 
Beli Lugosi or Groucho Marx. Again,as I have pointed out before, the
intersection of the Occult and the Encrypted is central to Pynchon's
writing. Think of it for a moment. You read the intro to Slow Learner?
Getting into the British history of spying [a Pynchon favorite] also leads 
us to the history of encryption and that leads us back to alchemists and 
others with antipodal relationships to dominant technological paradigms
and Governmental control.

It's all very well and good that you, like many others, see Gravity's Rainbow
as Pynchon's greatest work. I think it's rather like saying the "Inferno" is
Dante's greatest work and that "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso" are inferior
sequels. 

GR is a vision of hell. M & D is the purgatory of our country's north/south 
divide [among others, including Mason's personal purgatory.]  Against the 
Day has many reaching towards heaven and flying towards Grace. I happen 
to very much enjoy Vineland and Mason & Dixon and Against the Day.
There's a cadre of self-appointed critics that want to maintain a theory
that there is essentially no moral center in Pynchon's world. I do not agree 
with that viewpoint.. Those same critics maintain that Pynchon's pinnacle
is the profoundly pessimistic Gravity's Rainbow*. And so it goes.

As regards the "AF" reference, I don't see anything in Pynchon [save the 
worm ouroboros in GR] that points to that concept. Against the Day, 
Mason & Dixon, Vineland and Gravity's Rainbow are loaded with
references to the Magickal and the Occult. If you can't see them then
you have allowed yourself to be misdirected. The Ceremonial Magic 
themes in Gravity's Rainbow are expanded on in Against the Day.
If you can't see it then fine. But it's there alright—scrying and and 
Norse Myths and tarot cards and crystals, pretty much the whole nine, 
if you catch my drift. Of course, other spiritual systems might not be 
thought of as part of the continuium of what Lenny Bruce called 
"Rosicrucians and other non-scheduled theologies." But the 
Theosophists embraced the Buddhists, it's a major plot-line in AtD, 
remember?

Call me a crackpot all you like, but only after re-reading Weissman's Tarot.

*"Oh  see," sez Commando Connie, "it has to be alliterative. 
How about . . .discharge dumplings?"



 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20080709/fde6ee88/attachment-0001.html>