TRTR, Pt 2, C 2 "does there exist such a thing as mermaids, sar?"

[Mark Kohut]

Yeahp. I may be wrong, of course. I may be reading too....narrowly. I was trying to base it on the text, the author's
expressed comic vision. Tough to do that whole. I may be projecting from later in the book as well, in fact, maybe even from the end but
no spoilers here..............
 
Just read a good Blake couplet in a work of religious theology, or post-theology, if that phrase has meaning, that
I cannot not now find. Relevant, maybe.
 
A...And Susan Sontag once said something like (Most) Great fiction differs from non-fiction because, if it expresses ultimate (metaphysical?)
truths it also contains their opposite....
 
So it goes...

From: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 7:06 PM
Subject: Re: TRTR, Pt 2, C 2 "does there exist such a thing as mermaids, sar?"

Gaddis could have been (like Elliot) intensely aware of the social and
cultural origins of organized religion and also (like Elliot)
intensely spiritual. I don't think, based on what little I know about
Gaddis's personal life, that he *was* intensely spiritual.  But my
point here is that there's no contradiction between having a skeptical
or materialist approach to organized religion and also having an
spiritual outlook on life as its experienced.

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> And, I read the sympathies below as sympathies for the character, Wyatt.....
> yes, he may be the test case. Things are yet to happen to him

>
> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> To: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
> Cc: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>; pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 5:50 PM
> Subject: Re: TRTR, Pt 2, C 2 "does there exist such a thing as mermaids,
> sar?"
>
> It's not only that Gaddis WROTE those supernatural sections into TR,
> it's that he seems sympathetic to those sections, to their having
> "really" happened in the world of this novel.
>
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 4:32 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
> wrote:
>> On 7/27/2011 4:45 PM, Richard Ryan wrote:.
>>>
>>> If we think that Gaddis is an atheist and a materialist, how do we
>>> account for mystical/magical events in The Recognitions?  I.e, Wyatt
>>> seeing his mother's ghost on her death; Wyatt's recuperation after the
>>> sacrifice of the Barbary Ape; the supernaturally evil power that Brown
>>> has over Wyatt, etc.?
>>
>> Also there's no inconsistency in an author's writing about supernatural
>> goings-on and also not believing they could happen?
>>
>> Also the reverse is true.
>
>
>



-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround
him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself.
All progress depends on the unreasonable man." - Shaw
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