Pynchon & Religion

[Mark Kohut]

Pynchon explores Mark's gospel and closeness as another subplot and theme in a few places in AtD,
we remember....p.250...and a couple other places I've already forgotten....
 

________________________________
 From: Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2012 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: Pynchon & Religion
  

I am going to assume that this began upon her reading that I was interested in Frank Kermode's Genesis of Secrecy, which examines CoL49 alongside the Book of Mark. It is important to stress the startling differences between Mark's Gospel and Matthew's. In Mark the Apostles are hopelessly inept, they are the Birds that devour the seed in Christ's Parable of the Sower, and none of them know Christ's true Identity as the Son of God. It is believed that the later Synoptic Gospels sought to amend these flaws, and endowed the Apostles with a bit more understanding, but I am ever in sympathy with Mark's Gospel (the earliest to be written) and do not believe, as many Christians nowadays do, that we have a special vantage point with which to see Mark's Christ, as if peering over the heads of his apostles...


On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:

ahem, forgive me 'Madeleine'
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>On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:
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>Continued from Madeline's post in the Pynchon Lit. thread, cause I figure it would be more appropriate to start a different one...
>>We can't escape it so let us try to keep the discussion focused on the works of Pynchon and what they indicate, while keeping our own beliefs along the margins.
>>
>>We know Pynchon was raised Catholic, and, inasmuch as anything Jules says can be trusted, continued to go to Confession while at Cornell.
>>There we begin to loose him, biographically speaking, and must resort to his Novels. 
>>I am inclined to agree with Madeline that the greatest writers among us have rarely been 'Christian' 'Jewish' or 'Muslim' in anything but upbringing, such Institutions seem to be downright hostile towards anything called imaginative thought.
>>I am inclined to draw the closest portrait of Pynchon's Religious Views (a phrase that makes me bored just typing it) in Cherrycoke's wonderful narration. One thing is obvious, that Cherrycoke, despite his own attempts to make himself appear so, is anything but orthodox, and often waxes into Gnostic Thought, which was experiencing a revival amidst the so-called Era of Enlightenment. 
>>I would include among the institutions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the institution of Deism, now known by its proper name Atheism, as being downright hostile towards anything called imaginative thought. 
>>I am inclined to believe Pynchon is something of an imaginative Skeptic in his literature, and is careful to censor himself whenever he approaches a sort of 'Gnosis' therein.
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