BEER Group Read. spring and a burning bush

[Fiona Shnapple]

It's not easy to say much without digging deeper into the book,
but...a book about death  is also a book about survival and life and
remembrance.

1. these trees are common in NYC and on the UWS.
2.  they are known for their great strength, their resiliency, the
ability to survive pollution and salting and sloshing of waste waters,
in fact, they are said to thrive under these conditions
4. in a uws meeting people talk about them, planting them, saving
them, not planting so many on the same street..etc.
5. the debates can get testy but are nothing when compared with the
debate, a furious debate about the wtc, its museum and memorials,etc.,
this continues, though the worst seems to have ended, their is general
agreement that the pear tree, the  survivor tree, is an appropriate
symbol, or...not symbol but, well, for many it is more than a symbol,
so and here we can dig into Eliade and Widengrean, and believe me,
people did, and do.
6. Maxine, taking time for her children, to care for the children of
her neighbors, to live deliberately, takes communion with the visible
form of Nature.

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/Bryant/thanatopsis.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Survivor_Tree_at_the_National_September_11_Memorial.jpg

On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 12:24 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone here have a strong knowledge of the significance of the burning
> bush in strands of Jewish mysticism? I only know it through a
> half-remembered Catholic childhood, in which the bush was basically an
> avatar of God, or maybe just a speakerphone.
>
> The otherworldly light recurs in the novel and Maxine's response to it
> changes. What's the 'God' here? I reckon there'll be a few theses
> written on it.
>
> Also on certain acts of refusal or turning away. No posting spoilers,
> to be polite.
>
> On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> First day of spring. Equinox. A pagan celebration co-opted by The Church. Someone, Laura, wanted
>> an example of simple fine writing: how about here, first page, about the Callery Pears on the Upper West Side
>> and "sunlight finding its way past rooflines and water tanks to the end of the block and into one particular tree,
>> which all at once is filled with light." Such an image, why?
>>
>> I suggest we get the author's almost-religious love of nature and light, the pantheistic or panentheistic vision, as we wrote
>> about it in that Book of Light, Against the Day embodied in that illuminated Callery Pear tree that catches
>> secular Maxine like that Biblical bush caught Moses.
>> "As a powerful religious symbol, the burning bush represents many things to Jews and Christians such as God's miraculous energy, sacred light, illumination, and the burning heart of purity, love and clarity."--wikipedia
>>
>> If Oedipa wanted, tried, to hear the Word, but couldn;t Maxine sees god in a Callery Pear tree fifty years later.
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l