BDSL, 1- DiVineland

[bandwraith at aol.com]

Well, not exactly Vineland the Good so much as
somewhere (over the rainbow?) sans the bad, and
maybe beyond the good, as well. But there is, isn't
there, a big difference between the current culture
with it's arbitrary origins about the time of the
discovery of the square root of negative one, and,
those less technologically bewitched, more
ecologically integrated cultures, which, uh, we have
displaced?

So what, I beg, is the true nature of evil? And, subjectively
speaking, if there is no difference twixt "we" and "they,"
than why are we here and they are not?

There is, at least, the deeply conservative notion of
feedback, through which all the myths and rituals of
those passed over peoples came back to ground, like
that mega-watt toad sitting in the bottom of the porcelain
bowl, smiling up at the major, who still, it seems,
assumes he has everything well in hand.

Just before Gnossos receives his "final annointing"  the
morning after he has finished raping his would be
landlady, Pamela May West, he stumbles awake,
disheveled, and we see him scratching his post-
debauche scrotum in the presence of his octoroon
companion, Heff. The "extreme unction" scene that
follows is a joke- his scrotum is not annointed- but the
question of  the nature of evil will continue to haunt
Gnossos through-out his run.

And I think that the question of evil, and how disparate
cultures answer it, is one which unites the work
of Farina and Pynchon, and continues to animate the
work of Pynchon, including his most recent,  which,
given the gist of this rambling post might be called:

                          Inherent Device.
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