Against the Day after Inherent Vice again

[Paul Mackin]

On 2/19/2012 3:15 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Is the Inherent Vice, Original Sin, as was discussed during the read?
>
> Twice in the first 225 pages of AtD, Original Sin is in the 
> text...Most interestingly maybe on p 223:
> When the Gand Cohen is talking to Lew about the concept of the 
> Psychical Detective----who by the
> way asks if he talks too much, bloviation itself asking, we can laugh:
>
> "Suppose there were no such thing, after all, as Original Sin. Suppose 
> the Serpent in the Garden of Eden
> was never symbolic, but a real being in a real history of intrusion 
> from somewhere else. Say from 'behind the sky'---
> --Say we were perfect. We were law-abiding and clean. Then one day 
> THEY arrived."
>
>
> Evil from behind the [screaming?] sky.....and then THEY arrived [to 
> invade our Garden of Eden]?? This is
> what it would be like without Original Sin??
> Or is it, the Grand Cohen being another satirized buffoon, yes? what 
> Original Sin is like?

I read it as the Grand Cohen introducing Lew to an alternative 
explanation of why things are the way they are--human-condition-wise. 
(an alternative to the usual Original-Sin explanation)

"An intrusion from somewhere else," to abolish our earlier condition of 
being "law abiding and clean."

"introducing time into a timeless world"

Instituting History.

One way of looking at it might be the substitution of the Symbolic Order 
for the Real.

But of course this is mere elaboration--what we're essentially seeing is 
the old Pyncher doing his paraoia schtick.

P
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