rubrics (I like that word), wrecking crews and hugfests

[Mark Kohut]

OK...we seem to differ. Cases made. 

I think he has some ambiguity toward some of his "occult" subjects. If the phrase "the other side" counts, as i wrote, then he points to and rejects within the same novel it seems to me. 

I do see an alternative to "rationality" in his texts. 

Later,

mark

--- On Wed, 11/25/09, Ray Easton <kraimie at kraimie.net> wrote:

> From: Ray Easton <kraimie at kraimie.net>
> Subject: Re: rubrics (I like that word), wrecking crews and hugfests
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 11:53 AM
> Mark Kohut wrote:
> > 
> > I would argue the 'duality' thus: TRP likes most of
> the occult ways of trying to get us out of the linear mental
> structure of scientific cause-effect YETdoes not himself
> necessarily like many "occult" conceptual options he puts in
> his works. Some, though? 
> >   
> 
> 
> Does Pynchon offer us a critique of "the linear mental
> structure of cause and effect"?  Yes, with that I
> agree. 
> 
> The occult provides an elaborate and esoteric view of the
> world, as does modern  physics.  Some human beings
> use the world view offered by the occult in an attempt make
> sense of the world, just as some others employ the rational,
> scientific view in the same attempt.  Does the author
> endorse any such alternative to rationality?  I see no
> evidence for that in the texts.  What I do see in the
> texts is a critique of the occult world view, and other such
> alternatives, as trenchant as the one he offers of
> "rationalist" thought.
> 
> 
> My only small contribution to the AtD read was the
> observation that the actual content of the mathematics in
> AtD is irrelevant to the novel.  There's no secret,
> hidden, below the surface meaning to fact that the
> characters discuss the zeta function, say, rather than some
> other obscure and esoteric bit of modern
> mathematics.   Any mathematical concept will
> do, so long as it is obscure and esoteric, so long as it is
> the sort of thing that can be obsessed about, so long as it
> possible for human beings to see it as the sort of thing
> that can hold some most secret and important meaning. 
> What matters in AtD is not the mathematics, but that the
> characters are doing mathematics and the way they go about
> doing it.  Pynchon does not write about
> mathematics.  He writes about human beings doing
> mathematics in an especially obsessive way.  There is
> no hidden meaning to the mathematics.  Everything is on
> the surface.
> 
> 
> In an entirely similar way, it seems to me that Pynchon
> does not write about the occult, he writes those obsessed
> the occult.   He does not write about
> conspiracy theories, but about those obsessed with
> conspiracy.  There are no hidden, "deeper" meanings in
> these cases either.  Everything is  on the
> surface.
> 
> 
> The notion that these hobbyhorses are anything but
> hobbyhorses, the idea that Pynchon writes about such thing
> in order to point us towards some truth  in which he
> believes -- this is, to Richard Fiero's description, a
> trap.  A trap deliberately laid for us by the texts, to
> be sure, but still a trap.
> 
> 
> Ray
> 
>