Gravity's Son/Mason and Son/Against the Son
Paul Mackin
mackin.paul at verizon.net
Mon Mar 5 09:14:38 CST 2012
On 3/4/2012 8:33 PM, Alex Colter wrote:
> M&D is chock-full of references to Christ, the Hebrew Testament,
> Biblical Allegory, and American Religious Experience.
>
> And Dixon is a Quaker, Mason a Deist, but really it serves neither of
> the characters to box them 'in' thus.
Also, I now remember the essay I was trying to think of. It was "It's OK
to be a Luddite," in which resurrection of the body for all (not just
for God as man) was discussed, to wit:
What had once been true working magic had, by the Age of Reason,
degenerated into mere machinery. Blake's dark Satanic mills represented
an old magic that, like Satan, had fallen from grace. As religion was
being more and more secularized into Deism and nonbelief, the abiding
human hunger for evidence of God and afterlife, for salvation -- BODILY
RESURRECTION, if possible -- remained. (emphasis supplied)
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html
>
> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 7:24 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com
> <mailto:recoignishon at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> "The Ascent to Christ is a struggle thro' one heresy after another,
> River-wise up-country into a proliferation of Sects and Sects
> branching from Sects, unto Deism, faithless, pretending to be holy,
> and beyondhttp://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html,--- ever away from the Sea, from the Harbor, from all
> that was serene and certain, into an Interior unmapp'd, a Realm of
> Doubt. The Nights. The Storms and Beasts. The Falls, the Rapids,...
> the America of the Soul.
> Doubt is of the essence of Christ. Of the twelve Apostles, most true
> to him was ever Thomas,--- indeed, in the/Acta Thom/ae// they are
> said to be Twins. The final pure Christ is pure uncertainty. He is
> become the central subjunctive fact of a Faith, that risks
> ev'ry-thing upon one bodily Resurrection.... Wouldn't something less
> doubtable have done? a prophetic dream, a communication with a dead
> person? Some few tatters of evidence to wrap our poor naked spirits
> against the coldness of a World where Mortality and its Agents may
> bully their way, wherever they wish to go...."
>
> -The Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke, /Undeliver'd Sermons
> /(M&D c53p511)
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 9:45 AM, Bled Welder <bledwelder at hotmail.com
> <mailto:bledwelder at hotmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Resurrection of the Body auto repair is brilliant enough!
>
> I'll check out the Marquez essay--
>
> > Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2012 10:35:59 -0500
>
> > From: mackin.paul at verizon.net <mailto:mackin.paul at verizon.net>
> > To: pynchon-l at waste.org <mailto:pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Subject: Re: Gravity's Son/Mason and Son/Against the Son
> >
> > On 3/4/2012 8:07 AM, Bled Welder wrote:
> > > Thanks yes, reverse mode, that sounds good and proper.
> Could I bother
> > > you for where I might look up this bit about resurrection
> and salvation?
> >
> >
> > Well, jocularly, there was the Resurrection of the Body auto
> repair shop
> > in Inherent Vice.
> >
> > But more importantly, my first thought would be to his review of
> > Garcia-Marquez's book the the NY Times, Death in a Time of
> Cholera.
> >
> > http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_cholera.html
> >
> > But it's in Mason & Dixon and other places as well.
> >
> > Also in one of his essays but I forget which one.
> >
> > P
> >
> > >
> > > Jeez, I was going to attempt to read something this morning
> and avoid
> > > being sucked in by those Morrison links...could not. Ah
> well, nothing
> > > wrong with a good dose of Jim-worship on a Sunday morn...he
> was a deity
> > > of his time.
> > >
> > > Would anybody agree with me that Roger Waters, one, /is/
> the mind of
> > > Pink Floyd, and also that Waters is the greatest mind in
> rock history
> > > (obvious to me), and also that Gilmore while maybe being a
> sort of
> > > virtuoso on the guitar, composes only a fraction of Floyd
> compared to
> > > Waters? Gilmorites cause me agnst on occasion. For a while
> two and three
> > > years ago Live at Pompeii became sort of a spiritual
> experience for me.
> > > Of course I was drinking very heavily back then--
> > >
> > >
> > > > Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2012 07:48:02 -0500
> > > > From: mackin.paul at verizon.net
> <mailto:mackin.paul at verizon.net>
> > > > To: pynchon-l at waste.org <mailto:pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > > > Subject: Re: Gravity's Son/Mason and Son/Against the Son
> > > >
> > > > On 3/4/2012 6:59 AM, Bled Welder wrote:
> > > > > Thinking about the greatness of Jim Morrison for a
> moment, I found
> > > > > myself thinking of Jesus.
> > > > >
> > > > > I've read 200 of AtD, 150 of GR, and 100 of MD
> recently. I don't recall
> > > > > any mention of religion, or Jesus, etc., items for
> discussion in that
> > > > > vein. Although maybe it might, wait, the uneducated
> half in MD, is it
> > > > > Mason or Dixon, the English chap, isn't he Christian?
> > > > >
> > > > > What's the role of Jesus/God etc. in Pynchon's work? No
> doubt something
> > > > > discussed a zillion times.
> > > > >
> > > > > What's the number of Christians and otherwise religious
> people in these
> > > > > sacred Pynchon vaults? Is this a fundamentally
> Christian list of people
> > > > > here?
> > > > >
> > > > > Does Pynchon have religion? I would very much like to
> know that if he
> > > > > is! Not like, math and physics type religion, but like
> > > > > Christianity/Kabbalah sortsa thing--
> > > >
> > > > He adapts Christian notions--in a kind of reverse
> mode--to explain the
> > > > condition of mankind (Us)
> > > >
> > > > Poor preterite souls.
> > > >
> > > > The passed over.
> > > >
> > > > Also, he uses "resurrection of the body" to suggest the
> possibility of
> > > > some kind of salvation.
> > > >
> > > > The few things I can think of off the top of my head.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > P
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> >
>
>
>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list