Interregnum

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I haven't been following the reading all that closely for a few 
weeks. I'll read the posts here, and if a post sparks my 
imagination or curiosity I'll pursue it, sometimes with great 
enthusiasm. It's not as if I'm off-line, but I'm allowing myself a 
bit of perspective, allowing the two and three-quarters 
readings---more than I've had the chance to experience 
with Mason & Dixon.* Not to mention:

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/ , 

I've spent as much time on my single reading of Proust
as I've spent on nearly three readins of Against the Day, 
and yes---one is better and at the same time, considerably 
harder to get through. The Prisoner and the Fugitve are
No Fun, but also the pivot point of the story. I wouldn't say 
that Proust is as absolutely central to Pynchon as 
T. S. Eliot or Dante or [I am told, sorry but I haven't read 
any] Henry James [far too busy reading Pynchon]. But 
there's plenty of Mauve Toques to toss around through 
Trieste, Venice & Paris so let's not deal the poor asthmatic 
boy out of OBA's personal Tarot deck.

With all due credit to Charles Hollander [hereafter OBD], 
Dante figures in Pynchon's work in a big way. I realize that 
I toss out occult correspondences like they're goin' out of 
style but frankly, I'm just tossing back the stuff that OBA's 
pitching. However, at the end of the day the Dude's a writer, 
and in order to understand the essentially poetic intent of 
Thomas Pynchon it doesn't hurt to understand his overt 
political intent. When I tossed out the concept that our boy 
has clear concepts of good guys and bad guys [of course, 
Pynchon excels at the excluded middle, those lost sheep 
that only require the slightest hint of charisma to wander 
off G-d knows where] I wasn't reaching for some simplistic 
explanation of what goes on in Pynchonland. Dante is the 
probable loadstone, a very complex and politically astute 
subdivision of certain well-known public figures into vivid 
and poetic depictions of their karmicly justified afterlifes.

So, the big three novels can respectively be subdivided [in 
my overwrought and fevered imagination] into the inferno 
of Gravitys Rainbow, the purgatory of Mason & Dixon and 
the paradise of Against the Day.

As regards Mason & Dixon I want/need to read it again. 
I'm sure there's loads of Illuminati material goin' on that 
my radar was not prepared to track when I first read it 
and allowed it to completely blow my little mind [OUCH! ! !]. 
But I sense Pilgrims Progress and plenty of other indications 
that free will is a biggie in Mason & Dixon, not to mention 
overindulgence in coffee and hemp. I know that alchemical 
stuff in Against the Day Illuminates/is illuminated by 
Mason & Dixon. 

If it wasn't for Gravitys Rainbow, I might not have persued 
Tarot cards or the works of A.E. Waite and fellow travelers, 
like Nicky Nookshaft. I described Weissman's tarot to a 
customer at the "gift shop"---that brilliant reading is the summa, 
the punchline of Gravitys Rainbow. The customer said hearing 
me say these things gave her the chills. As you might remember, 
Weissman's reading essentially said the "Whiteman" uber alles
thing was moving over to the upper echelons of Washington D. C.,
that Our Country's engagement with with I. G. Farben and a host 
of other interlocking corporate empires over in the Fatherland all 
hooks up to the folks currently in the White House and otherwise 
in power.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

There's the White Vistation, table-tappers, tea-leaf readers, 
previously residents of Chuxton Crescent. . . what's echo and 
what's pre-echo here, how long has this been cooking in OBA's 
brain? But there you are, these two books are clearly linked.

After Geli Tripping casts her black magic spell on Tchitcherine 
there is the paradoxical result of the good lord G-d's best and 
most hoped for results managing to come out of Geli's 
little bit of joyous physical arousal plus invocation. After this 
demonstration of how it's done, there is a series of failed 
magical operations, nowhere near as joyous. And in that lack 
of joy, there is your hell. And so, Gravitys Rainbow ends with 
the depiction of a series of hells, mostly personal but it's all the 
same rilly, hell's hell, ain't it?

And Against the Day ends with a series of paradises, culminating 
with G-d's own stash, Lord Overlunch being a bit of a Maxwell's 
Demon hisself, what with his constant pursuit of Cinderellas and 
other Philatelical impossibilities. There's heaven everafter from 
here on out---sure, a few shoot 'em ups, a nice plot resolution or 
two, but mostly people spontaneously erupting into Grace, allowing 
the Way/Tao to work through them, learning to ride it, to take it as 
it comes. Call it Hippie Heaven[s] if you like, The Unitarians are in 
on the action in a big way and that brings us back to the reason 
why I think the true motor, the motivation for Pynchon's writing is 
coming from William Pynchon and the heresy that everybody is 
going to get to heaven anyway, one time/way/religion or another. 
Heresy---allsorts---is the motor here/there and everywhere in the
land of reversible cups and sanitary pedestals, here in the land of &. 

*Read Mason & Dixon twice, go back to certain 
passages all the time. After we complete Against 
the Day I'd like to follow up with Mason & Dixon.
It's incredibly fine writing by any standard and 
funnier 'n shit in plenty of places. Though a two 
month jog-trot through The Crying of Lot 49 would be great 
fun for me, if only to demonstrate the density of occult 
allusion that unfolds within and throughout like a midnight 
mushroom reaching for the moon.