The Recognitions and V.

[alice wellintown]

Paul is correct, again. For Adams, the Virgin was a force of
fecundity. The American Puritan, ahamed of her power, covered her up;
the Americans came to worship shit, money, and the word. The force of
the Virgin, a mysterious force, a power eneffable, is a moral foce,
but it is unknown to the Americans. This is the key to understanding
Thomas Pynchon's works. I thought you guys got this. Damn.

>
> It wasn't the Virgin's being virginal that Adams' admiration and maybe
> Pynchon's too was based upon.
>
> The Virgin was a Goddess , whom the people virtually worshiped.
>
> It was one of the things people agreed upon, and were inspired by.
>
> It's true, Goddesses were traditionally virgins, but that was never their
> main claim to fame.
>
> Just thought I  ought to put in a good word for Victoria Wren.
>
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> P
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>>  If there is a unity implied in V. it
>> seems to me it is the illusory unity of the node of the v such as that
>> of parallel lines intersecting at the horizon. The unity is only
>> apparent to the readily deceived senses of one perspective, the lines
>> do not in actuality meet, and everything continues as it always has,
>> in dependence upon everything else, yet subjectively discrete, alien
>> from any sort of integrated totality. And Malta? Malta echoes the
>> knights for Pynchon, not the Goddess. It is the nexus of dynamic
>> activity in the Med, though not causally related to any of its
>> conflicts. It echoes the violence of the times, not their integrity.
>>
>> Of course, I must stick to my guns, too, about imputing intention to
>> an author. Pynchon was brilliant, but young at the time he was writing
>> V. He may have had only glimpses of the complexity evident in his
>> later work; may have been drawn like an eye along those converging
>> lines, still in pursuit of a unity the search for which he came only
>> later to abandon. All this anti-lapsarianism may have more to do with
>> my own delving into theism and paranoia as linked intuitive attitudes
>> than with Pynchon's intentions, perspectives, or attitudes.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> There is Malta as a still-strong echoic embodiment of Adams'
>>> Middle Ages, the Virgin before the Dynamo.......
>>>
>>> Adams Virgin is one of the major meanings of V....and his
>>> world, lost to Pynchon, as to Gaddis, is a thematic foundation, I say.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----
>>> From: Richard Ryan<himself at richardryan.com>
>>> To: Ian Livingston<igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>>> Cc: Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon -l<pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Sent: Sun, June 12, 2011 2:05:42 PM
>>> Subject: Re: The Recognitions and V.
>>>
>>> While I would agree there's nothing in V to suggest a belief in a
>>> prelapsarian paradise (as village culture, hunter gatherer societies,
>>> whatever) - it also appears that Pynchon - at least the early Pynchon
>>> - sees the centripetal forces of entropy and mechanization
>>> *accelerating*; the depersonalizing, disintegrating aspects of human
>>> history grow more and more ferocious as the powers of techno-violence
>>> trend upwards - or downwards, as the case may be.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 1:04 PM, Ian Livingston<igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hm. Do ya think? I haven't read The Recognitions yet, but V. seems to
>>>> me to suggest that it has always been a fragmented world. Pynchon
>>>> represents history as an Ariadne's thread through an ongoing
>>>> Armageddon in which individuals seek ever more tenuous connections as
>>>> complexity becomes more evident. The unifying element is memory
>>>> itself, rather than recollection of a better unity.
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Fragmentation and loss as the overarching meaning of the modern world.
>>>>> Both.
>>>>> Belief that the world was once unified and that that was/is felt as a
>>>>> basic
>>>>> Good
>>>>> Thing.
>>>>>
>>>>> (Of course, other books, writers, too, I'm sure. Who?)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>>>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>>>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>>>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>>>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Richard Ryan
>>> New York and the World
>>> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
>>> Thanks to all who saw VTM's new production!
>>> "Brilliant!";"Superb!" - NYTheatre-wire.com
>>> www.kingstheplay.com
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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