The Recognitions and V.

[Mark Kohut]

"All that is numinous looms as sanctuary"

Can I have that phrase for titling my blog? 



----- Original Message ----
From: cfabel <cfabel at sfasu.edu>
To: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>; Paul Mackin 
<mackin.paul at verizon.net>
Cc: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>; pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Mon, June 13, 2011 2:54:16 PM
Subject: RE: The Recognitions and V.

Could we say that incoherency plagues everyone but especially Wyatt ;  the
incoherency all about him? That he is connected, integrated, as is his
social and cultural milieu, only fragmentarily and by the flotsam and jetsam
of American history? So, he cannot act meaningfully, cannot develop ideas,
cannot be in any sense genuine? And perhaps, in this atmosphere, all that is
numinous looms as sanctuary? But the decay and counterfeit that is extant
religious experience is resisted mightily still? 
  
C. F. Abel
Chair
Department of Government
Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, Texas 75962
(936) 468-3903




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Ian Livingston
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 11:49 AM
To: Paul Mackin
Cc: alice wellintown; pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: The Recognitions and V.

Well, I continue to disagree with Alice's reductionist approach to Pynchon,
and V. in particular, though it is a fair enough chord s/he plucks, it is
certainly not the only one admissible, given the text.
Still, as I said earlier, my reading of complexity, in which the violence of
history and the world's history of violence play a role in the text, may
well be merely what I bring to the reading. I'm okay with that. No matter
how I try, I cannot see V.W. reduced to the archetype. Instead, I see her as
a refutation, and satire, of the contemporary attachment to the archetype.

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 6:12 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
wrote:
> On 6/13/2011 6:31 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
> Love ya, Alice.
>
> P
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>>
>>> P
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>  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
>>>>>
>>>>>
>
>



-- 
"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