TRTR(I.3) Hidden Profits [Epigraph]

[Paul Mackin]

Something (probably not God) has denied Esther and Wyatt the ability to 
make a "good" choice with regard to their marriage, because they have 
made quite an "evil" one.  Reason was of no avail.  It served only to 
conceal.  Deconstruction was not yet a fad, but the first couple 
paragraphs sound very much like an undermining of life choices.  The 
logocentricism of it all.  And no Savior to come.

P

On 4/29/2011 11:38 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> First congealings around this post:
>
> All the Idols--Francis Bacon---are corrupt; all the gods--Frazer---are
> contingent;
> there are no heroes in post-war America, therefore we have to be---
>
> discover [rediscover?]----- our authentic selves....(don't ask me to
> define..yet....
> I just think of authenticity--see Trilling, et. al---as a Major Theme in
> literature)
>
> And so, self-love in TR is, perhaps, akin to Emerson's Self-Reliance? ....
> esp. since as WG scathingly documents, we can't rely on about anything
> or anyone's words (at least) in The Recognitions......
>
> So we better 'love' ourselves,since self-hatred or its watered-down bro,
> self-defeat,
> might not get us through life?
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Jed Kelestron<jedkelestron at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l<pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thu, April 28, 2011 7:17:27 PM
> Subject: TRTR(I.3) Hidden Profits [Epigraph]
>
> The epigraph further conceals what God has concealed but Peter reveals
> in Book 3 of the Clementine Recognitions:
>
> Chapter LIII.—Self-Love the Foundation of Goodness.
>
> “First of all, then, he is evil, in the judgment of God, who will not
> inquire what is advantageous to himself.  For how can any one love
> another, if he does not love himself?  Or to whom will that man not be
> an enemy, who cannot be a friend to himself?  In order, therefore,
> that there might be a distinction between those who choose good and
> those who choose evil, God has concealed that which is profitable to
> men, i.e., the possession of the kingdom of heaven, and has laid it up
> and hidden it as a secret treasure, so that no one can easily attain
> it by his own power or knowledge.  Yet He has brought the report of
> it, under various names and opinions, through successive generations,
> to the hearing of all:  so that whosoever should be lovers of good,
> hearing it, might inquire and discover what is profitable and salutary
> to them; but that they should ask it, not from themselves, but from
> Him who has hidden it, and should pray that access and the way of
> knowledge might be given to them:  which way is opened to those only
> who love it above all the good things of this world; and on no other
> condition can any one even understand it, however wise he may seem;
> but that those who neglect to inquire what is profitable and salutary
> to themselves, as self-haters and self-enemies, should be deprived of
> its good things, as lovers of evil things."
>
>