How seriously can we take what Pynchon is writing outside of his novels?

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

My favorite example is the following paragraph from the Stone Junction 
intro:

"/Stone Junction's/ allegiance, however, is to the other kind of magic, 
the real stuff---long practiced, all-out, contrary-to-fact, capital M 
Magic, not as adventitious spectacle, but as a pursued enterprise, in 
this very world we're stuck with, continuing to give readings---analog 
indications---of being abroad and at work, somewhere out in it." (p. XIII)

Apart from the fact that Stone Junction is a shitty novel, this sounds a 
little too enthusiastic to me. Was Tom high when he wrote it? The words 
"all-out, contrary-to-fact, capital M Magic" stuck to my mind the very 
first I read them, though. And some of the more positive characters in 
Pynchon's work - think of Geli, or of Sortilège - seem to be pictured as 
if they actually have magical respectively psychic powers. Maybe Pynchon 
really believes in "capital M Magic." So I'm not sure about this, 
neither about the particular passage nor about the problem in general.

How seriously can we take what Pynchon is writing outside of his novels? 
Discuss!


"Magic is a means of re-opening metaphysical possibilities, 
re-enchanting the world, that counters the loss of possibilities 
lamented by Cherrycoke and documented throughout /Mason & Dixon/. Magic 
is thus a form of what Pynchon in /Gravity's Rainbow/ calls 
"counterforce," something that opposes the dominant cultural forces of 
decadence and entropy. It functions both as a metaliterary trope for the 
fictional processes that lead to recovered metaphysical potential and as 
a metaphor for the attempts of characters within the narrative to 
re-enchant their worlds. This re-enchantment is, however, partial and 
fragmentary in that it results in ambiguous pockets or islands of 
possibility within a larger context of politico-economic domination and 
manipulation. Magic in /Mason & Dixon/ takes the form primarily of feng 
shui, kabbalism, and magical signs or sacred glyphs. It can be both(,) 
black magic, investing history with a sense of malevolent but 
otherworldly conspiracy, and white magic, granting aspects of 
America('s) tentative hope and lyric beauty." (Jeffrey Howard: The 
Anarchist Miracle and Magic in /Mason & Dixon/. Pynchon Notes 52/53, 
2003, pp. 166-184, here 176.)


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