An economist I respect

[alice wellintown]

Economist, Statistician, Priest, Scientist, Linguist, Mathematician,
the list is long....because Pynchon is writing from a satirical
stance, but it is when the theory, the drive for the ultimate theory,
the Nobel Prize or whatever...Pointsman....blinds the character to the
human fragility, to the Natural scatterbrained beauty in the universe,
prevents one from hearing the Orphic Song, when one becomes a
Gnostic-Fascist (Voegelin), driven to find the center, the all, the
key to it all reduced to an equation....this is when suffering is
greatest---this is the Mushroom CLoud, the Transfiguation of Nature,
August 6th.

But, to slam all economists or all businessmen, or all
wall-streeters....this is stupid. And s a form of the extreme, no
beter than the Vibes and Bad Shit of corrupted power gnostics,
Extremes, and especially violent extremes, are pushed into the lowest
DIS of the Inferno. Anarchy, a good staart,  hates violence in
Pynchon's novels because it forms a perfect S&M with violent Power of
the State.

Pointsman would cut Slothrop's skull open to prove his theory.

Slothrop, however, is a Pig and no Angel. The Angels (Rilke) are
terrible and awsome, and remain, forever a mystery. Difficult to
embrace, but impossible to wrestle to facts and figures.