Very misc. on Slothrop ( as thematic notion)

[Mark Kohut]

I recently unearthed a short book I read back in the day called SELF-DEFEATED MAN ( Moral y nueva cultura, 1971) by a Catalan philosopher, XAVIER RUBERT DE VENTOS. This book spoke to me. I think I learned some ways with reasons to act in my life and did, ( at times). 

His leading idea was to attack our Western idea of a moral self--one self-concerned with authenticity, sincerity, integrity ( of self), etc. Subtly, without using Eastern thinkers, he made the case for less ego,---for "a Non-Fichtean ego" -- for a selflessness opposed to Western mainstream thinkers---and industrialized, institutionalized society. He found too much self in leading countercultural thinkers and figures as well. 

Looking at it again, I see a chapter title that NOW connects in me with Slothrop. " Morality as Dispersion" .. "In opposition to the morality which takes coherence, conviction and consistency as its standards of valuation, I place the morality of heteronomy, inconsistency and prodigality---of using, squandering and wasting ourselves. According to these criteria, the good action is not one that leads to my fulfillment but the one that brings about my dissolution." ...

 He riffs on the moral good of " losing oneself in one's passions" ...( not 'finding oneself') 

a later ( untranslated ) work is called GOD AND OTHER INCONVENIENCES, which gives us another Pynchon echo ( esp within Against the Day p'haps) 

On this book's cover Richard Sennet sez: " Rupert is an anarchist, but a highly sophisticated one." 

This thinker even became a political force ( of some dimension) in Spain but he has disappeared ---like Slothrop---in English translation. Even Wikipedia has only a sparse Spanish language entry, mostly of his publications. 

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l