On "Mindless Pleasures",

[Mark Kohut]

This is an interestingly thoughtful response, I say recursively...I see and agree, perhaps, with part of the thrust.
"mindless pleasures" meaning no-thought, positively, in some Eastern sense??  If I get it.
 
But I think the etymological support for the argument doesn't hold up. Mindfulness goes back, even in 
the Buddhist sense, to 1800s....wikipedia on later history is interesting....and mindless goes back to the
12th Century, .....even in 1972, I think those who heard the phrase Mindless Pleasures thought of mindless
as thoughtless in a pejorative sense first, although, again, Pynchon's ambiguity enriched the meaning
upon mindful reflection.

 
 

From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> 
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 4:50 PM
Subject: Re: On "Mindless Pleasures",



Slothrup becomes the Buddha before disappearing. 

"Mindless" may be taken to mean something other than a contrast to "mindfulness."  I don't know if that term was even used back then.  "Be here now" was common, but "mindfulness?"

Buddhist meditation involves stilling the frantic mind (sometimes called the Monkey Mind) by focusing on what might be called mindless: eg.  the sensation of breathing to the exclusion of all narration.  The goal being to find a place within, still & quiet, from which to let chaos of "thinking" become external, something to observe w/o letting it control one's central being.  "Just Being" as opposed to Thinking.

"Mindless" back then might actually mean what is now called (ubiquitously) "Mindfulness."

David Morris

On Friday, May 10, 2013, Mark Kohut wrote:

the working title of GR, as we know. Is there anything known,
>or have we bloviated yet on that possible title, used all the way
>through submitted manuscript copies to paperback houses
>to read and bid for paperback rights?
>
>What would be the mindless pleasures in GR? All of them? 
>Everything in it? 
>
>And, this occurred to me last evening, prompting this post: maybe
>this title was a working contrast to the concept of Mindfulness in
>Buddhist thought? 
>
>Anyone, anyone, Bueller? Bueller?
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