Zoyd [IV spoiler]

[alice wellintown]

Where is the Church?

Long before VL and M&D were published I argued that P writes about
Religion and Work. Other things too, but these are the easy one to pin
on my donkey.

The Church?

Well, it's all over V. for starters, but I like to start with Hugo's
famoust quote: Book Fifth
Chapter II. This Will Kill That.

"Our lady readers will pardon us if we pause for a moment to seek what
could have been the thought concealed beneath those enigmatic words of
the archdeacon: 'This will kill that. The book will kill the edifice.'
"

The Church, the edifice, as Henry Adams discovered, was killed by the text. GR

To America (M&D) where the Virgin is covered up (V.). Her sexual power
is stripped and invested in the machine (GR).

A little V.:

Pynchon loves the Jesuits, they are so damned
interesting.  In V. Pynchon has a RC priest down in the sewer
converting rats to christianity. He is probably mad and it's
only a story Benny has been told, but we see the
inscriptions on the wall as the sewer is transformed (Fate is the word
written on the wall that opens Hugo's HD), as we
know when Pynchon begins one of these historical journeys the
allusions become quite important. FAIRING's artifacts
end up at the vatican. On one level, it's perfect symbolism,
Benny--the son of Job is hunting below street level through
the blessed waters of the parish with a dude named angel who carries
the light. Angel gets drunk and Benny has to carry
his own flashlight and a shotgun and being a son of Job he screws up.
Earlier Benny pretends he is god the creator and
attempts to change one person into an angel, he fails. Down in the
sewer, the rats--the major church fathers and mothers
discuss marx--this being the depression and father fairing has been
sowing up ripped souls at street level, but has
decided to teach the rats--the inheritors of the world from his
baltimore catechism. They discuss the creed--the
superabundances/indulgences of the saints and mary and argue about
this.  The jesuits have had a very rocky history with
the RCC. Pynchon knows this.

This is all annotated in the Guide Book to V..

Amd, he just keeps working stuff in from work to work so the Church
stuff, even in Farina's novel, is there from the start.

Doc uses a Princess Telephone. So does Grover Snodd's Mother. She uses
it to make threats and frighten blacks out of her real estate.

The Princess Telephone

Princess telephone

Dreyfuss, Henry

 b. March 2, 1904, New York City
 d. Oct. 5, 1972, South Pasadena, Calif., U.S.

U.S. industrial designer noted for the number and
variety of his pioneering designs for modern
products.

At the age of 17 Dreyfuss was designing sets for
stage presentations at a Broadway motion-picture
theatre. In 1927 a store commissioned him to study
its merchandise from the standpoint of
attractiveness and to make drawings indicating
improvements that the manufacturers could make.
He made the study but refused to undertake the
design because he felt that the proper way to
approach design was to work directly with the
manufacturer from the start rather than to try to
improve a design after the product had been made.

He opened his first industrial design office in 1929.
At the same time, he was an active and successful
designer of sets for the Broadway theatre. In 1930
he began designing for Bell Telephone
Laboratories, an association that resulted in the
design of a series of telephones. Other notable
designs include the interior of Super G
Constellation aircraft for the Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation and the interior of the ocean liner
"Independence."

Dreyfuss designs stress the user of the product. He
said that "when the point of contact between the
product and people becomes a point of friction,
then the industrial designer has failed." His book
The Measure of Man (1960, rev. ed. 1967)
contained extensive data on the human body and its
movements. His approach to industrial design is
described in his book Designing for People (1955,
2nd ed. 1967). From 1963 to 1970 he was
associated with the University of California at Los
Angeles. On Oct. 5, 1972, Dreyfuss, along with his
wife, Doris, died of carbon monoxide poisoning in
a car in the garage of their home.