C of L49:

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Oedipa sums it up best:  "I'm not sure I understand."  It implies that she thinks she *might* understand.  Glimmerings of understanding, just on the edge of consciousness, that give you a headache or disappear when you try to ferret out their meaning (like sitting in a philosophy lecture after pulling an all-nighter).

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>

>
>Great post, Mark! 
>
>Oed realizes that she could have seen God many times (ie in the seizure-like moments) but forgotten. I'd argue that she hasn't. I think the book shows Oed going thru several "failed" revelations. This is the 3rd? 
>
>First on page 1 with the tube staring at her, she tries to feel drunk and speak the true name of god but it doesn't work. 
>
>Second time, this scene is repeated when (a few pages before the seizure scene) Oed's with Thoth (and again with a TV) and the moment crystalizes and she says "My God" but the scene seems to collapse into a who's-on-first misunderstanding. 
>
>Now the seizure is the 3rd failed revealing vision?
>
>We'll see more close calls, I think--including the closing lines--but do we ever see Oed break thru?
>
>> Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:55:22 -0700
>> From: markekohut at yahoo.com
>> Subject: C of L49: "Destroying its own message irretrievably" Or, the Immanence of Transcendence
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> 
>> 
>> p. 95 "She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like that, as the epileptic is said to----
>> an odor, color, pure piercing grace note announcing his seizure. Afterward it is only this signal, 
>> really dross, this secular announcement, and never what is revealed during the attack, that he remembers.
>> Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too
>> might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the 
>> central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; 
>> which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving 
>> an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back. In the space of a sip of dandelion wine
>> it came clear to her that she would never know how many times such a seizure may already have visited,
>> or how to grasp it should it visit again. Perhaps even in this last second---but there was no way to tell.
>> She glanced down the corridor of Cohen's rooms in the rain and saw, for the very first time, how far it 
>> might be possible to get lost in this."
>> 
>> Wonderfully written, seemingly VERY THEMATICALLY IMPORTANT paragraph. Let's unpack some layers. 
>> 
>> [Misc. Dostoevsky is the most famous God-obsessed writer who experienced epilepsy. Dick may have had temporal lobe epilepsy. I may send misc. words on the phenomenon in another post]
>> 
>> I'm going to throw out a reading, one I've hinted at in my posting: O. can 'at this stage of things', i.e. in what she is learning in her quest, recognize 'signals'.......'pure piercing grace note"---Notice Pierce's name and another important P word....
>>  
>> I suggest that this is one of P's most direct 'statements' that the Word [of God], the revelation [of God] is not known to us in this world as anything Transcendent IF He exists as a Transcendent Being....Or, postmodernly maybe, we have
>> to live in the uncertainty of any certainty regarding Transcendence.....
>>  
>> Clues; A 'secular announcement' ---like Gabriel to Mary; like a Rilke angel---that could come from beyond the secular?
>> Clues: 'at the end of this (if it were to end)...suggesting this is our constant daily fate (since the uncertainty never ends
>> by the end of the novella)...
>> Clues: "never the central truth itself".....Stelliforous Meaning, Transcendent Certainty........reminds of p-listers who have
>> harped on the theme (in later works) that Paradise [Shambala], What Makes It, is only pointed to, never fully articulated.  
>> Also, reminiscent of Wittgenstein's thoughts on religious belief, in some ways. We know TRP has read him. 
>> Clues: 'when the ordinary world came back. Again, I'm going to argue that one of P's key beliefs is that, whatever Truths might be Transcendent (if any) , they also must exist in 'the ordinary world"....
>> Clues: So, such everday transcendentals, so to speak, have been happening, always happening, we don't even know
>> how many there might have been and are, since they 'blaze out'.....
>>  
>> Also, 'blaze out' remind of some merging of rocket apocalypse [in GR] and God-as-Light-filled experience? 
>> 
>> 
>>       
>> 
>
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