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

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 25, 2009, at 1:16 PM, malignd at aol.com wrote:

> <<I've often wondered how seriously Pynchon takes that sort of  
> thing. Tarot in GR, ferrinstance. But writing occult-informed/ 
> inflected works, and satirising occultism, well, it's that sort of  
> duality that makes Pynchon Pynchon.>>
>
> I don't know if this is a rhetorical question or not but isn't it a  
> given that Pynchon doesn't--couldn't possibly--take this stuff  
> seriously?

He's a writer, not a psychic policeman. He can "believe" anything he  
wants to. What's Prospero to Shakespeare?

> That Pynchon's belief system includes card reading and Madame  
> Blavatsky and the Rosecrusians, et al?

Pynchon's knowledge base includes card reading and Madame Blavatsky  
and the Rosecrusians. Some say his knowledge of the Kaballah is  
limited. Seems like Pynchon is familiar with at least the "hippie"  
flavourings of these non-scheduled theologies, scryings and pyramid  
schemes.

> Does anyone--leave alone Pynchon--in his right mind, with a proper  
> education, with no emotional issues, believe in this stuff?

There's people in their right minds, with proper education—everybody's  
got emotional issues, so you can throw that out as "null"—who use the  
stuff. Some are famous musicians, some are writers, lots are poets.

> I think it suits his novelistic purposes.  It adds a color.

I think it was part of the milieu in which he lived. It's more than  
local color or grace-notes in his books, he takes it further.

> Hemingway said he liked Catholicism because the pageantry it  
> reminded him of bullfights.

James Joyce said a lot of odd things too, but he'd throw curses and  
spells in with the best of them. It's a well Pynchon keeps going to  
and one can't help but notice a certain innate attraction to the whole  
shell game. . .

	Looked into closely in her time both by Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir
	William Crookes, she had taken transatlantic liners to Boston to
	visit Mrs. Piper, traveled to Naples to sit with Eusapia Palladino
	(whom she was later to defend against charges of fraud at the
	infamous Cambridge experiments), could indeed be said to've
	attended some of the most celebrated seances of the day, the
	list of which was about to include one arranged by the
	ubiquitous and outspoken Mr. W. T. Stead, at which the medium
	Mrs. Burchell would witness in great detail the assassination of
	Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of
	Serbia, three months before it even happened. She was known
	to the T.W.LT. as an "ecstatica," a classification enjoying
	apparently somewhat more respect than a common medium.

	"We don't go off into ordinary trances," Madame E. explained.
	"More the ecstatic type," Lew supposed.

	He was rewarded with a steady and speculative gaze. "I should
	be happy to demonstrate, perhaps on some night less
	exhausting than this."
	AtD, 228