Let's think about Byron the Bulb

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

             Jill:
             I'm still not sure I get the preterition thing. 
             I can honestly say that's one huge Pynchon 
             element that escapes my grasp or lies just 
             outside of it.. as soon as I think I "get it" I 
             admit I really do not get it.

Teacher! Teacher! I get it, always did. All you have 
to do to understand "preterite" and "preterition" in 
Pynchon is to understand the "Elect". The Elect is a 
Calvinist concept [dem W.A.S.P.s agin], this seems 
to be a variation on "The Chosen People". The preterite 
are all the rest. Also, preterite is a condition of being in 
or of the past tense. Of course, that condition of being 
in or of the past points to older, perhaps discarded, ways
of living and belief systems.

http://tinyurl.com/5cbdeh

Having spent a fair amount of time in Watts right after 
the "Insurrection" [1965], I find "A Journey Into The Mind 
of Watts" very much to the point, particularly illuminating 
as regards Mason & Dixon and The Crying of Lot 49.

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/watts.html