V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case

[Michael Bailey]

 alice wellintown  wrote:

> Other..blah blah. Pynchon is always, even young P, close to Been Down
> So Long, the Priest, like on SNL, is not some flying Nun or Confession
> Master Bates, he's always an idea. The biographical speculations seem
> a waste.
>
>

yes.

In Pynchon's novels, there's more of a rhizome than a Line on the
church: Bigfoot's been in a small role on The Flying Nun; in GR "Going
My Way" is described as "horrible"; Fausto notes with what seems like
a bit of disapproval Elena's willingness to follow "any fluttering
soutane"
Father Avalanche, despite his fearsome name, appears to be a positive
force.  Father Fairing, of course, is off his nut...
In Chapter 9, Foppl invokes the Redeemer - easy to see that as ironic,
but how about the reference in the Long Sentence to "a Keetmanshoop
that could in no conceivable iconology be any part of the Kingdom of
Death" (Keetmanshoop having begun as a mission)?
in AtD, I seem to remember that the acoustics of the church where Lake
and Deuce marry are wonderful (the minister also his a droll Swedish
sense of humor), among other ecclesiastical references (also there's
the "wolvering" church organ that inspired Cyprian's moody meditations
in his youth, and don't C and Y and R do something rather inspiredly
naughty in a church somewhere?)

So Fausto's confession might be the most extended meditation in the
books that comes close to dealing with issues of conventional faith
(and its loss). Suggesting that priest, politician and engineer are
the 3 major fields of endeavor.  Yet all 3 of the "class of '37" (and
is that '37 meant to refer to entropy the way it does in "Entropy"?) -
all 3 are also, and perhaps more importantly, poets, aren't they?