Re Vl-IV: Chapter 10 - Krishna

[Robin Landseadel]

I'm looking at the underlying textual sources for Pynchon. I sense  
that Karma is a central concept in the later [Vineland & onward] work  
of the author. Krishna [the Vineland character] does what he can to  
facilitate the workings of 24fps. Frenesi does what she can for the  
cause, but eventually takes arms against her brethren. It is  
transparently clear that she took the wrong course. I do not know in  
what particular direction this thread will take us, but I know that as  
silly as Pynchon's name choices, puns and other varieties of joke- 
making are, they are always woven into the text for deeper and more  
complicated reasons than simply producing a punch-line. Krishna might  
seem like a silly name for a silly character in Pynchon's silliest  
book, but it is no accident that his name appears in a novel so  
wrapped up with the concept of karma. Family history becomes crucial  
starting with this novel. There is an echo of family history [and  
family betrayal] in Krishna's sermon.
On Feb 16, 2009, at 8:02 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Michael Bailey wrote:
>> and Arjuna bought that?  What a load of militaristic hooey! . . .

	They began as fur traders, cordwainers, salters and smokers of
	bacon, went on into glassmaking, became selectmen, builders
	of tanneries, quarriers of marble. Country for miles around gone
	to necropolis, gray with marble dust, dust that was the breaths,
	the ghosts, of all those fake-Athenian monuments going up
	elsewhere across the Republic. Always elsewhere. The money
	seeping its way out through stock portfolios more intricate than
	any genealogy: what stayed at home in Berkshire went into
	timberland whose diminishing green reaches were converted
	acres at a clip into paper-toilet paper, banknote stock,
	newsprint-a medium or ground for shit, money, and the Word.
	GR, page 28 [penguin edition]

http://www.moma.org/images/collection/FullSizes/50093031.jpg