BDSL,1- Genetic Therapy for Inherent Vice

[alice wellintown]

The scene in Farina's Been Down So Long, where  Heffalump and Gnossos steal the
Virgin and she loses her Head is very funny, but I love the scene when
Hef calls the priest who "anoints/heals" the sick and dying Gnossos.
Actually, it's Miles Davis that cures him. Anyway, like Pynchon,
Farina demonstrates a keen knowledge of things Catholic. He includes
jokes, puns, and parodies that only a knowledge of the changes
instituted after Vatican
Council II, for example, that the rite was called "extreme unction" or
last anointing and referred principally to the anointing which took
place when a believer was close to death, prior to Vat II, but,
changed as the priest says. The sacrament was restored to the role it
had in the Apostolic Church.

One of Joseph Campbell's best lectures (see also Mythic Image) deals
with Virgin Births.

In one story, can't remember, it could be Iroquois, the god avoids the
birth canal by being delivered through the Virgin Mother's arm pit. Or
maybe I made this up?

"Whoever drinks from my mouth shall become as I am...."

GGAT 98:28-30

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> not that it isn't foggy.  my impressions of BDSL are foggy because I
> haven't read it in a long while.
> Foggy is also the impression we're left with at the end of IV.
>
> But the shape of what I mean, somewhere in the fog, is that although
> Gnossos in BDSL is pre-feminist -
> heck, he's even pre-Vatican-II so at that point all non-Catholics were
> going to Hell -
>
> and therefore neither the character nor the book has, oh, what would it be
> called, something like "conspicuous irony concerning the "dominant male" role",
> or "certain redeeming touches that have become necessary in portraying a hero"
>
> but there's enough sensitivity in the book to make reading it something like
> reading V. - "cast my mem'ry back then/sometimes I'm overcome thinkin'
> about it"
> (as Van Morrison wrote in "Brown-eyed Girl")
>
> and to know that this talent would've incorporated cultural seismic
> changes in later books that
> we do not have due to the accident of the author's mortality: and
> that's the thing
> that can't be cured and must be endured, and we all are aware of
> various attempts
> at cures for that - channeling, seances, belief in the Resurrection...
> literarily, perhaps, simply reading, rereading, recommending, speculating on
> influences ripping through it and out into, well, V. for one...IV for
> another (that would be an interesting comparison...)
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 6:27 AM,  <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
>> I think it's still pretty foggy. How does "the text" take "that"
>> into account, in either book? Needs some explaining. The
>> desire to cure, and the evolving means to to effect a cure, are
>> also inherited. A- and who's doing the enduring? And when
>> the latest "cure" becomes available, who gets access?
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -----------
>> but isn't it pretty clear the text takes that into account in both books?
>>
>> "what can't be cured, sure, must be endured, sure" (Joyce, in Portrait,
>> right?)
>>
>> also that Sailing to Byzantium has something about that too, doesn't
>> it? (not the famous part, the ragged cloak and so forth, but one of
>> the lines nobody remembers...)
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 5:55 AM,  <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I think we've been sold a bag of shit regarding Original Sin.
>>> Unfortunately, alpha male Gnossos, eventually to under-
>>> go beta decay, is as much a part of the problem as he is
>>> a cure. I've returned both IV and BDSL to the library- I no
>>> longer buy books if I can avoid it- so this idea, as
>>> developed in a comparison of the two, may take a little
>>> while. More, whenever.
>>
>