Partial Faiths

[Dave Monroe]

On 3/18/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> McClure, John A.  "Postmodern/Post-Secular: Contemporary Fiction
>   and Spirituality."  Modern Fiction Studies 41.1 (1995): 141-163.
>
> http://english.rutgers.edu/faculty/profiles/mcclure1997.html
> http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v041/41.1mcclure.html
>
> McClure, John A.   Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction
>   in the Age of Pynchon and Morrison.  Athens: U of Ga P, 2007.
>
> http://www.ugapress.uga.edu/0820330329.html
>
> John A. McClure
> Professor of English
>
> http://english.rutgers.edu/faculty/profiles/mcclure.html
>
> Monday, March 17, 2008
> John A. McClure's Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of
> Pynchon and Morrison
>
> http://politicsandreligion-danny.blogspot.com/2008/03/john-mcclures-partial-faiths.html

McClure, John.  Late Imperial Romance.  NY: Verso, 1994.

http://english.rutgers.edu/faculty/bookshelf/content/lateimperialromance.html

"Pynchon is writing back, in other words, against traditions of
thought that reproduce Western biases by isolating mere colonial
struggles from the great events of the times.  And he is writing back
as well against the familiar Western representation of the great wars
of the century as isolated events of mysterious origin.  'We're at
peace,' proclaims a character in Gravity's Rainbow, as World War II
ends. 'No, we're not,' thinks another character.  'It's another bit of
propaganda.' ..."

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0212&msg=73847

"But what sets V. and Gravity's Rainbow apart most dramatically from
the novels we have been studying is Pynchon's relentless critique of
the most fundamental elements of Western romance.  Conrad, Didion,
DeLillo and Stone all represent political romances as dangerous
things.  But Pynchon rejects the opposition they draw between these
romances and the individual spiritual romances they celebrate.  Both
forms of romance, he argues, are derived from the Christian West's
master narrative of redemption, with its valorization of ascetic
self-management, its celebration of inner essences and transcendental
possibilities, its scorn for imperfection, for mere surfaces, and for
mere survival.  And both have served to sponsor the West's voracious
and ultimately unsurvivable expansion."

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0212&msg=73856