V-2nd, Chap 7

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

This makes sense for "all these books" you named plus Gravity's Rainbow.

But also for CoL49 or V?

In both of them nature does not exactly come over as "Gaia" or your 
latest acid dream with
sparkling galaxies in every blossom.

It's more like the author wasn't interested much in nature at that time.

And IF Pynchon makes nature a "character" in those early books, it's not 
necessarily a
benignant one:

Check out the "waterspout" in V's final paragraph!

I guess that there is no 'intelligent design' on this planet.

KFL

PS: Just had another look at CoL49 and found Oedipa's meditation on the 
Pacific ("the
umimaginable") in chapter three which is foreshadowing the 
surfer-cosmology from
VL and IV, but in V (or the early stories) these traces of 
Californication cannot be found,
as far as I can see. So what's young Pynchon's attitude towards nature?

On 27.09.2010 21:50, Robin Landseadel wrote:
> Consider, if you will, the when and where of Thomas Pynchon.
>
> Inherent Vice gives a few clues. Gaia seems to be major backwash of 
> the "Acid Experience." Just ask Sortilège. One can argue as much as 
> one wants concerning the intellectual validity of the LSD experience. 
> But when you see the trees breath, when the concept of "the gnostic 
> experience" in all its dubiousity and gloriosity inundates your 
> senses, sense and sensibility takes a back seat to the vision.
>
> As to "What Happened????" a lot of that wound up in Pynchon's books. 
> But look at Vineland closer, look at Inherent Vice closer, look at 
> Against the Day and Mason & Dixon. Those shamans, those drug dealers, 
> those -- Yes -- witches. They didn't wind up in those books by 
> accident, they certainly didn't land there because TRP was building an 
> intellectual argument concerning the Romantic tradition of American 
> literature in the middle of the 19th century. Earth, one way or 
> another , is a living being in all these books, one of the characters. 
> Post Acid, Post-Moonshot, Post-World War II. Post-"The Bomb."
>
> If anyone was/is a creature of the times, it's Pynchon.