IVIV (8): An Occasional Certified Zombie

[Robin Landseadel]

The mind is a terrible thing. In any case, I removed the offending  
repeated word.

My other thought about "Preterite" is Captain Beefheart's "The Past  
Sure Is Tense":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot5Ho7dXSNc

Lots of space in Pynchon's novel's is taken up by things certifiably  
in the past. Like a lot of Pynchon's favored words and phrases, this  
is a concept that goes in many different directions. Preterite, in  
addition to being Calvinist doctrine, the word Preterite is also a  
tense and pastness—glorified in Against the Day—is always on Doc's,  
I'm sorry, Pynchon's mind.

Claiming that there is a "right" or a "wrong" reading of Pynchon  
misses that "misdirection" has always been a core tactic of Pynchon.  
If it feels dense and confusing and misleading at times, it's because  
it is, it's supposed to feel dense and confusing. If one is led on a  
literary snipe hunt it is because that's an essential part of the  
novel's design.


On Sep 29, 2009, at 5:23 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> On Sep 29, 2009, at 3:49 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>> the "since he is not a Calvinist" argument doesn't make any
>> sense.
>
> Seems like Pynchon inserts some family history into the mix from  
> time to time. I'd say that ancestor William Pynchon of Springfield  
> Massachusetts figures  pretty heavily in the author's thoughts. TRP  
> is certainly aware of and comments on the Calvinistic view about  
> entitlement and ownership, who's in the club and who's not. William  
> Pynchon's public opposition to Calvinist dogma concerning atonement  
> resulted in "America's" first book to be publicly burned for heresy— 
> in Boston to boot.
>
> And just in case you didn't notice, Pynchon is coo-coo for heresies.
>
> I think that Pynchon's ideas about them's that got and them's that  
> not is pretty consistent whether or not he's using any given  
> specific & particular one-sided transaction to illuminate a core set  
> of Calvinist beliefs or simply to demonstrate Vegas odds.