Bleeding etch and the shlong of shlongs which is Solo man's. LOVE and fascism

[Joseph Tracy]

The list has several times from different perspectives and with fierce intensity  approached the topic of a re-appearing trope/pattern/archetype. That pattern is the sexy, free, intelligent, feisty woman who is torn between  a man who is authoritarian, fascistic, sexually potent, police/military/ spy, agent of great powers in a great game on one hand; and on the other hand she is drawn to the lost puppy, happy go lucky or happy go luckless, just wants someone to love caring father type who seems to actually have found some of the liberty that everyone is fighting for.. It is in some sense the weak force magnetism ( and realness) of the regular dude versus the strong force magnetism of the power dude.   

The question of why Pynchon insists on working and re-working this pattern  despite the obvious way that it invites very reasonable feminist distaste and seems a bit worn has yielded some interesting conversations. I have argued it as a metaphor for who will win the heart of  'America' whoever or whatever the fuck that is. And thus the question of who or what is Pynchon's America?  : Is it  a)vineland the fair damsel awaiting true love's kiss, b)lake stream and prairie the abused, sometimes utterly polluted,  and abandoned daughter of dreams best hidden, c)free and easy, guns and uniforms make me hot, pierce my v and save me from boredom,  d)  a nation of TV zombies addicted to fast flesh and vicarious  numbness e) money and guns gone crazy  f) just give me some truth, something real, something that might last g) I'm a lost cause  but my babies, my babies, save my children h) all the above, plus rock and roll, and so much more. Anyway.   America is the babe and she just can't make up her mind who she is or who she loves.

I have another theory of the origins of and reasons for this literary pattern, and probably more lined up in the recesses of my mind, but this one is big enough to paint half the sky.  It is contained within a larger theory which covers the rest of the sky and most of time. The larger theory is this. Pynchon is playing God and his collected works are his Bible. He wants to rewrite the old old story and include some of the parts previously left out by the high priests of God porn. He is setting his version in the Eden, the Babylon and  shining new world Jerusalem of America. But he is not above the inclusion of talking snakes, sex and detective work,  bionic Eves,  a hollow earth, more sex and detective work, competing aliens, apocalyptic rockets,,  psychedelic toiletry to refresh the Bowels of any apostle, crucifixions in the Utah desert  and time machines to give us a little glimpse of the futures which are being traded these days along with paranoia and other problems that accompany the whole Calvinist Predestination riff. If those don't seem like biblical themes,  well, it's a weirder book than many know.

                                                   THE 2 HUSBAND LOVERS AND THE 2 WOMEN IN THE SONG OF SONGS
 So I think  there are many Bible stories and themes that are thinly and thickly veiled in Pynchon's work along with post-biblical religious themes. This is one. One of the more mysterious works in scripture is the Song of Songs.  It is a weird and beautiful and revolting love poem. 'One More Cup of Coffee,' or 'Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts' could easily have been inspired by this poem. The Bible writers were, let us say, conflicted about the proper role of the whole love-interest angle of literature. They knew the book and the religion would never sell without sex and that means opening Pandora's dangerous little box. I mean, you are telling this ripping good yarn about the creation of the stars and naming of the animals, and magic trees in the Garden of Eden and some little Girl raises her voice and asks, loud enough for everyone to hear, Mommy, what did Mrs. God do?  Which is why Eve appears right quick in the story, consorting with snakes  wrecking paradise and relegated to the shut-up-and-listen  part of the synagogue. There she hears about the importance of being pretty, making boy babies, standing by your man, and serving the chosen people. 

So one  place this conflicted attitude to love and sex shows up is in the Song of Songs. One interpretation of this poem is as a kind of national love song with 2 characters,  the male character is Israel as God represented by King Solomon and the female is Israel as the beautiful bride, the land, the people.  In the course of the poem the bride starts as a wild deer, lilies and clusters of grapes, tender and sweet  and she slowly becomes a palace and an armed tower.  The king was once a dark skinned shepherd boy and is now the mighty Solomon with multiple wives, palaces and gold. If Solomon represents peace, as his name implies, it is the peace that comes from being center of economic and military power. The future of Israel is the unassailable union of God and all who have come to union with the God of Israel, the Lord of Hosts.
 But there is another interpretation of the poem where the shepherd is really just a poor handsome young man of the earth. And Solomon knows and marvels that a young woman he desires for his harem would prefer such a lad to him and that she seeks to escape with this wild Roebuck from the interest of Solomon the Great. Solomon sees a future for her as a part of the palace of his magnificence and potency, but part of him loves her for her true passion. The poem in this case is unresolved as to what happens, all hinging on the heart of the babe.
   In the course of the poem there is a kind of conflicting eros, one is the eros of orchards and wilderness, flowers and wheat. And one is the eros of power, architecture, weapons, security, walled gardens, gold, and milk baths.
  The genius of this ancient poem is the invocation of the universal in the particular. The conflict is both an inner and an outer one that easily resonates in our own time and setting.  America and the public and private inner lives much of the world continues to veer from the securities of fascism and it's architecture of the machinery for control, extraction seduction and growth which inevitably becomes cancer and desolation,  and to then swing toward more idealistic visions of a healed planet with wild places, harmony with nature and neighbors , and the romance of adventure, creativity. Both extremes may be flawed and unrealistic but one of them is far more dangerous than the other and neither Pynchon nor the rest of us knows how the young lovers can win this one.  
  
But if his larger project is to say that we are that authors of any Bible we might embrace, and that every spiritual text must include the whole raunchy  and delightfully crazy truth of things, and inasmuch as tragedy mingles here with heroism and slapstick, the point is that we are, in our whole mundane lives, also the shapers of a larger destiny and that somewhere buried under all the files and the secret corridors and stolen loot is the age old question, "Who do you Love?"


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