IVIV (8): An Occasional Certified Zombie

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 30, 2009, at 6:06 AM, David Morris wrote:

> I certainly agree that compassion for the doomed is central to all
> Pynchon's writing, and is a part of his interest in the concept of a
> preterite.  Equally, Pynchon likes to identify cruelty and villainous
> power structures, and BINGO, a predestined preterite bespeaks and evil
> predestinator.
>
> Pynchon also loves logical conundrums, and has rightly found one in
> Calvinist theology.  We also know that Pynchon is obsessed with the
> nature of history, especially its being a series of choices which are
> irreversible.  Predestination and choice are logically very hard to
> marry.
>
> I would say a more direct connection to VL would be his identifying
> koans as everyday phenomena, and something valuable to examine.
>
> David Morris
>
>>> [*The term "preterite," is a Calvinist theological reference  
>>> meaning "those passed over by God, or those not elected to  
>>> salvation or eternal life." Thus, a preterite is anyone living  
>>> life with no promise of redemption -- the true condition of  
>>> everyone who faces life honestly. Pynchon's compassion for these  
>>> universal losers is central to his work.

But do an online search for a definition of the word "Preterite" and  
this is what you get:
	Definitions of preterite on the Web:

	• preterit: a term formerly used to refer to the simple past tense

	wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

	• The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also
	preterit, simple past, past indicative, or past historic) is the
	grammatical tense expressing actions that took place in the
	past. It is similar to the aorist in languages such as Greek.

	en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterite

	• Showing an action at a determined moment in the past
	en.wiktionary.org/wiki/preterite

	• Belonging wholly to the past; passed by
	
	theland.antgear.com/use.html

The same is true of the American Heritage Dictionary. My copy,  
cosmically enough, is the 1973 edition. With the word "Preterite" we  
get the condition of being in the past tense. "Preterition" refers to  
Calvinism, but the word "Preterite" has more to do with being past the  
sell-by date than anything else.

On Sep 30, 2009, at 7:06 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>
>> Death is easy, comedy is hard. Pynchon's writing is becoming more  
>> comic over
>> time.
>
> This doesn't makes sense.

What part doesn't make sense? The old actor's adage that comedy is  
harder to pull off than tragedy? Because that's true—try it sometime.  
Or is it the idea that Pynchon's style has become lighter, more comic  
over time? I've been dipping into Gravity's Rainbow quite a bit since  
Inherent Vice showed up on my doorstep. The joke-to-text ratio is  
higher in IV than GR. Of course, when GR is funny it's milk shooting  
out of your nose funny, but I still find much more darkness in  
Pynchon's earlier work than his later work.

On Sep 30, 2009, at 7:06 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> This is a total misreading of the critical history. There are several
> book length studies of P's satire and humor. Hundreds of published
> reviews, articles, journals, chapters, dissertations on P's humor and
> his deliberate efforts at humor and how and why humor is essential to
> his project.

Yep, that what I specialize in—total misreadings:

	Methodological sophistication is especially imperative for
	unpacking Winnie-the-Pooh, because the book's symbolic
	locus is curiously dual. Instead of directly treating the British
	Empire and the brutalisation of its subjects, Pooh introduces us
	to anthropomorphic animals who mind· one another's business
	in some sylvan backwater of Albion. But as soon as we open
	the book and confront a map-the signature icon of predatory
	colonial "expotitions"-we know that we'll be watching what Homi
	K. Bhabha has called "the colonial space played out in the
	imaginative geography of the metropolitan space."B And this
	means that a critic must stay alert for the faintest cryptic hints of
	East-West polarisation, immigrant-emigrant chiasmus, and
	subterranean struggle between the Colonial and Colonised
	Unconsciousness.
	Frederick Crews: "Postmodern Pooh"