Pynchon & The Rapture

[Mark Kohut]

I just got a call from a friend, at a bar in Jersey City this Fri afternoon
who called to ask what he could say to a guy there, with lotsa people hanging 
onto
his every word, especially women, declaring The Rapture is
in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.................

check Google Search in M & D and remind
yourself of the four citations (as I had to do and of course all but one are in 
those M & D Caps so....looks so Real)

So, I told him that, Yes, P has characters speaking of The Rapture but that is
why it is set in the 18th Century----didn't happen then and won't 
now............

Can't find but it is around:   the OED etymology of rapture...........secular 
usage
from 1594 ---meanings around exuberant knowledge and not until around the
time of M & D did it take on religious leavetaking connotations......