IVIV, more lost innocence. Is IV a Paradise Lost? p.38

[alice wellintown]

Influenced by Freud’s notion of the Death Instinct, Denis De Rougemont:

No passion is conceivable or in fact declared in a world where
everything is permitted. For passion always presupposes subject and
object, a third party constituting an obstacle to their embrace - a
King Mark separating Tristan from Iseult - the obstacle being
social(moral, conventional, even political) to such a degree that we
even find it identified, at its limit, with society itself, though it
is generally represented by a dramatis persona, in accord with the
requirements of narrative, the rhetoric of romance.

Pynchon, a fan of Wagner, loves this formula. He introduces the Baby.
The Family. The Manson Family. The Brock Vond Reagan Family, the Zoyd
and Prairie and Frenesi Family and Traverse and Vibe Family . . . so
on ...in other words marriage. But what's the fun in that? Where's the
Passion? Rommance?

What is Larry working for? Is he, like Hector, some kinda cupid? Or is
his desire to work to put a family back together a new kind of
American Passion?