atddta: The Girl of the Golden West (Puccini)

[Dave Monroe]

On 5/19/08, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> Rossini. I'm thinkin' Gravitys Rainbow, but I'm also noting how, Post GR,
> Pynchon takes the Force of Love, of the love that forms familes, and the
> sorts of magic and stories that come out of families---he spoke of the
> plots of Barber and Thieving Magpie as demonstrations of the force of
> love, its power. Kinda like Shakespeare's Tempest, Love and Family
> trump High Magicke. Like it's the glue that holds the universe together.

"An army of lovers can be beaten."

Love. So simple and yet incalculably profound . . . what great works
fail to grapple with "love's bitter mystery?" For Pynchon, love is a
vital force, a transforming essence that runs through his work like a
scarlet mesh of life-giving arteries. Pynchon is not afraid to
proclaim Love a transcendent power, a mystical state that elevates us
from the chaos and filth of the world and which has the capacity --
even if only for a fleeting moment -- to transform us into radiant
beings. Like Gabriel García Márquez, whom Pynchon admires, he is not
afraid to stand at the edge of the abyss of his irony and cynicism,
turn his back to its well-brooded depths, and reach out for a holy
flame, as if to say, well, yes, I see what my back is against, but
hey! this makes a difference. . . . Love is something that even They
can experience despite Their attempts to bring it under control;
something that may even offer Them a brief glimpse of redemption. It
is something that We can also experience -- indeed, something that We
must. Love is omnipresent in Gravity's Rainbow; but not just spiritual
love, or carnal love, or romantic love . . . the prism of Gravity's
Rainbow refracts the whole spectrum contained in the white light of
this central enigma, from the infrared heat of carnal lusts to the
yellows of jaded decadence to the unseen ultraviolets of Satoric
communion. . . . There is room for all: soul love, divine and painful
in its flaming intensity; erotic sorcery, green and verdant as the
Spring equinox; physical love, painful in its immediacy, the
unexplainable wiring of the flesh to the aching heart; the broken love
that binds together dysfunctional systems of mutual need; casual but
tender couplings that affirm life and stave away the night; Freudian
desires that rake the heart with talons confused guilt . . . even the
simple touch of one stranger to another in the dark, to reassure, to
say that I am not alone. . . . If the dynamic between Us and Them
provides Gravity's Rainbow with a polarized tension, love is the
current that flows mysteriously between both systems -- sometimes
binding, sometimes destroying -- but always electrifying. To quote one
of Gravity's Rainbow's most memorable -- albeit warped -- characters:
"I want to break out -- to leave this cycle of infection and death. I
want to be taken in love: so taken that you and I, and death, and
life, will be gathered inseparable, into the radiance of what we would
become. . . ."

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_grintro.html

Love

[...]

Looking for themes for the upcoming International Thomas Pynchon
Conference on Malta in June 2004 on the rare celestial occasion of the
cyclic return of the "Transit of Venus," I decided to reread the
novels of Thomas Pynchon focusing and concentrating my attention on
the word "LOVE." Mythologically, astrologically, and by Pynchon
himself, Venus is after all referred to as "The Goddess of Love."

I had noticed that the word/term LOVE was not included on the Index of
V., GR, and M&D so that "ever-expanding" spirit struck me once again
and I decided to mark the word LOVE in all its variations I could find
in Pynchon's novels, starting with GR. As my other editions were so
full of multi-colored markings, I bought a fresh copy (my fourth) and
with an orange marking pen noted the word and its variations (lovely,
lovable, loving, amiable, amore, Liebe, Liebling, Liebchen, etc.) as
often as I could. Cover-to-cover it took two months to compile this
list which I did do in "love."

In some points I do admit to certain exaggerations, but being only
human I most certainly overlooked, missed, or left out some entries —
thus this list is definitely incomplete. In the ever-expanding spirit
of this Site, I too would gratefully welcome further additions,
corrections, omissions and other contributions.

May this list be of some personal use to Pynchon scholars, fans,
enthusiasts, or just those curious....

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/love.html