M & D Duck Read: still thinking on Mason.

[Mark Kohut]

Praxis Conference @PraxisHouston
A Catholic, a Pentecostal, and an Anglican walk into a bar....

It has occurred to me that Pynchon does not end the joke in M & D because
it hasn't ended yet....

On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> I say one major level that Pynchon lays down is that Mason IS
> a Puritan, a Protestant caught in Protestant Religion deeply...he
> is so Puritanical he is half in love with Death, all in love with
> a 2-year dead woman; Why is this emphasized so much by Pynchon?
> Because Protestantism in the Spirit of Capitalism is a death wish.
>
>   Puritans don't fuck---except for baby-making;
> Puritans are Fundamentalists, THAT deep tradition; America's
> Puritanism descends from them.....
>
> And THAT is one major thematic meaning of Mason & Dixon, I say...
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 6:34 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Not Puritan but typical of his sect at the time, Academic and
>> Pragmatic. Though Mason exhibits what was considered a dangerous
>> enthusiasm, he tempers it, though it haunts him, causing him, at times
>> to Quake. So our boys are entwined, both Pragmatic Mystics, one by
>> choice, that is Dixon, the other by haunt and wind and history.
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 6:21 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Is "Puritanism" the word you want?
>>>
>>> On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 6:16 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Overdetermined, that Freudian concept. Why does Pynchon stress Mason's
>>>> grief so hard? Why is his Puritanism as defining repeated? Does over
>>>> determinism apply?,
>>>> I think it might....so, taking my cue from TRP on tendril, I
>>>> looked it up to see if I understood it and learned this,
>>>> over determinedly as well, along with Freud's notion.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The New Critic I. A. Richards used the idea of overdetermination in
>>>> order to explain the importance of ambiguity in rhetoric, the
>>>> philosophy of language, and literary criticism.
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l