Gnostic Myth-Making...? + notes from waste archives

[Joseph Tracy]

OK serious fuck up. I accidentally attributed an essay By Michael Jarvis UC Riverside to K Hume. Different take on a similar theme. 
On May 23, 2013, at 4:47 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> I remembered having posted one or 2 times on P's use of the Orpheus myth. So with an intro from L Underwing and Kathryn Hume i am reposting below a post /essay I wrote while reading IV.  I still tend to think that gnosticism in its traditional meaning is a stretch, but that P uses the realm of myth as one of the layers of his 3 tiered fictional/historic/mythic world. Some of it is play and some is serious and none is either dismissable or fully trustworthy.
> At the time of my writing about this I had not read Hume and am just starting the essay here quoted today during the patches of sodden downpour.
> 
> On May 22, 2013, at 11:51 PM, Lemuel Underwing wrote:
> 
>> So if Miss Hume is convincing in her argument that one of Pynchon's main stabilizing functions is his Myth-Making (and I think she is), and furthermore that it is a type of Gnostic Myth with a Twist,
> 
> This paper deals with mythological/religious imagery and syncretic soteriologies in Thomas Pynchon’s 2006 novel Against the Day, focusing in particular on the character of Cyprian Latewood, bisexual spy, Orpheus stand-in, and masochist par excellence. Cyprian’s path throughout the novel is specifically an Orphic descent/return myth, but it also deals with issues of mystical transcendence, metempsychosis, Dionysian ekstasis, and Buddhist nirvana. These are represented at the macro level in themes such as retreat from the world, neo-monasticism, anarchic activism, or hope for transcendent knowledge, and also within specific images and scenes, such as those involving flight, self-negation, disembodied voices, and the final voyage of the Chums of Chance, a Manichaean allegory of escape. Cyprian’s final home at a Bogomil-Orphic monastery near Thrace serves to tie together disparate religio-political strands within the novel, including a syncretic teleology (Gnostic/Buddhist/Manichaean) and countercultural activism. It is simultaneously a retreat from the world – a political move with relevance to the history of the Bogomils as both persecuted sect and social agitators – and also a move towards transcendence through gnostic ritual.
> 			Opening paragraph of one of Hume's essays
> 
>> From the waste archives
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l@[omitted]> 
> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7@[omitted]> 
> Subject: Coy 
> Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:06:26 -0400 
> 
> Coy Harlingen :Heroin addict, Sax player session man, undercover  
> agent for cops,/Vigilant/FBI ?, husband of Hope, father of Amethyst,  
> seeker of return home( Jason, 
> Orpheus
> , Euridice).
> 
> Coy:  The politics of heroin in Southeast Asia ( Harper &Row)
> by Alfred W McCoy - Mark Kohut wrote: Coy was on heroin; just a Mc  
> short of McCoy on heroin......... Coy- hard to get
> 
> Harlingen   -  Harlingen Texas ( named after Harlingen, Netherlands ,  
> Frisian version of same name as Harlinton, Middlex) far south near  
> brownsville 80% mexican was airforce base, almost died when base  
> closed -harley- lingo- ingen- gen  .  ARLINGTON CEMETERY :  named   
> after virginia town which was named after Harlington, Middlesex      
> Name etymology:  Place( open field)  of the army , Ton= town
> Harley' s (HD)  also have connections to war(Pancho Villa , WW1)and  
> heroin (Hells angels,Easy Rider)   Harlequin-romance stories
> 
> I think Coy Harlingen's story is a version of the 
> Orpheus and  Euridice story of Greek myth which may be a major mythic refrain of  
> the novel. It takes up a regular pattern and theme of Pynchon's  
> fiction in journeys to the underworld( Vheissu, Chumps of Chance  
> hollow earth/ sub sand machine witch, caves in Mexico/ in Colorado/  
> Switzerland, down urinal, caves in Peenemunde, subtext, underwater  
> bones, Dante', Lemuria etc....)
> One of the main forms this journey takes is an immersion into the  
> great game of  imperial espionage, undercover operations and  
> underground resistance.  Often those who travel this way experience a  
> crisis point when they find the game is simply a lucrative and greedy  
> cover and themselves implicated in serving people and actions which  
> are despicable.  What happens then varies , some seem unable to  
> emerge, some disappear in transcendence beyond the knowledge of self  
> or reader. Some, perhaps most, bounce like yo-yos.  Some journeys  
> turn back  toward something more humble that you might call home,  
> usually without so much sentiment, often flawed, but a  place with  
> love, family , friends, dogs, hope. Whether there is such a place is  
> not easily answered.
> 
> Whatever the origins, the character of Orpheus has generated myth,  
> legend and supposed history( as teacher and founder of mystery  
> religions).  He is always a musician and was the lyre player aboard  
> the Argo who played so beautifully that he broke the spell of the  
> sirens over Jason. In this chapter Jason is a pimp who is under the  
> spell of flash, cash,  and stash and is naive and unable to control  
> "his" women and admires the slick operation of the Golden Fang. Doc  
> goes from Jason to a bar where there is a torch singer who has him  
> pretty intrigued but he is even more drawn by the musical  
> reappearance of Coy Harlingen and is caught up again in the implied  
> story of a homecoming in the house of the Harlingens.
> 
> The major story of Orpheus is his love story with Euridice .   
> Supposedly on the day of his wedding, Euridice is chased by Aristaeus  
> the son of Apollo into a nest of snakes and bitten.  Coy meets Hope  
> in a junkie bar ( nest of poison injectors)  on the Mexican border in  
> the loo where they shit out and puke up packets of heroin and are  
> soon injecting together ( a 2 fanged serpent). In the myth 
> Orpheus,  upon Euridice's loss, plays music so sad it moves the gods and they  
> advise him to go to the underworld to plead with Hades which he  
> successfully does.  In this story both Hope and Coy are sinking into  
> addiction and watching their child drink milk laced with heroin from  
> Hope's breasts when Coy OD's in mysterious circumstances and Hope  
> never sees the body and questions his death.  The song that moves the  
> reader's hearts and Doc's is the powerful evidence of a Love from  
> both Coy and Hope.  When we meet her she is healthy , recovered,  
> attractive (apart from her false teeth), and has ample money which  
> appeared when Coy "died" and/or disappeared into the underworld. Her  
> daughter is healthy, curious and lively. But what Hope really wants  
> is her husband and clearly not to resume the habit.
> 
> Coy's journey is revealed in pieces more slowly. First we find him in  
> the Club Asiatique where he gets paid, but doesn't know who he works  
> for.. He is straight now and living with the Boards and concerned  
> about Hope & Amethyst.  He tells the Doc GF is a boat with smuggled  
> goods and dangerous. We see him next at the Boards place where Doc  
> gives him a coded message amidst an  atmosphere of intense paranoia  
> that H& A are OK.  The Boards are so blinded by egotism they don't  
> even know their sax player is the reputedly dead Coy. Then he shows  
> at the Nixon rally and Penny says he is a cop snitch.  In Ch 10 he is  
> playing with the chanteuse and tells Doc he took the offer to work  
> undercover to get straight and serve his country . Now he has  
> realized that the people he is working for are not protecting people  
> but addicted to war and control/power/money. His addiction is dead  
> but he is still trapped in the underworld.  He misses his wife and  
> child, his only consolation is music.
> 
> Now Plato says 
> Orpheus
> is a weak willed coward who if he had any  
> manliness would have died . But Plato was a fascist prick and the  
> ultimate ideologist. Pynchon seems to have arranged things more along  
> the lines of where there's Life there's Hope or vice versa. Like  
> committing honorable seppukku is really not the way to save your  
> marriage ( or much else).
> 
> In the myth, Orpheusis allowed to lead Euridice out of hell if he  
> trusts Hades and Euridice enough to not turn around to check up  
> before escaping. He fails and sings sad music until killed by women.
> 
> As a parable of addiction this is pretty accurate; the recovered  
> person can lead the way but can't set the other free. That is a step  
> by step process they must take themselves.  As a parable of  
> unconsolable love as a source of the saddest and most beautiful music  
> it works well also. Somehow the saddest music purifies cleanses and  
> renews the will to love.
> 
> 
> Love guarantees neither success nor failure in the short term,  some  
> addicts recover , some don't,  families and marriages heal and they  
> fall apart, nations occasionally heal.  In  a version  of the myth,  
> 
> Orpheus refuses women after Euridice's death and consoles himself  
> with boys. This sounds to me a sad explanation for homoerotic love  
> and art. Even the greeks could not fully accept this aspect of human  
> diversity.
> 
> What is the way back from, or away from  war as a way of life? What  
> is the way back from or away from our many addiction's. Can anyone   
> or anything break the hold of ego and greed enough to heal this  
> paranoid country. Neither TV nor not TV, neither sex nor not sex,  
> neither information nor not information. Pynchon saturates us with  
> the detritus and the weighty issues of the early 70s until we are  
> reeling with it. Things haven't changed much. The gods of our age are  
> hard to move. Pynchon documents the course of empire and resistance  
> as it affects every type of individual, using satire, cultural  
> insanity, and moments of sheer horror to diffuse simplistic self  
> satisfaction and jolt the mind awake.
> 
> One of the great gifts of our times are the people who have ventured  
> into the dark places and come back to tell the truth, but the  
> greatest power of these visionaries is when they lead people out of  
> hell.  I think of people like Bayard Rustin, Pete Seeger, Aung San  
> Suu Kyi Dorothy Day, but  just as much, maybe even more on a personal  
> level, one thinks of  the friends and teachers and bakers and makers  
> and children who surprise us with courage grace and insight , empathy  
> and love, and information we can use.  I think one thing Pynchon is  
> trying to do is showing the struggle to escape the powers of hades as  
> it plays out in the confused, compromised realities of average  
> screwed up people. The lights may be rare but they  come through the  
> cracks in the world..
> 
>