TCoL49 - relevance - from lithub.com

[Monte Davis]

I was paraphrasing and hyper-simplifying. I'd looked for an Eddins passage
to quote, but he doesn't extract well -- partly at the sentence/paragraph
level because of his style, but also because he passes old and
(comparatively) familiar concepts of gnostic & Orphic through a fascinating
but VERY idiosyncratic modern reading before applying them to Pynchon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Voegelin

But you certainly got the drift: that like Rilke, P works very hard to
embody both the seductive appeal *and* the terror of every candidate
Answer. Slothrop can't end up either crushed like Orwell's Winston Smith OR
triumphant, as redeeming hero leading a Counterforce. Instead, he dissolves
back into the world.

Campbell: "My friend [Indologist - art historian] Heinrich Zimmer used to
say, 'The best things can't be told,' because they transcend thought; 'The
second best are misunderstood,' because those are the thoughts that are
supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about, and one gets stuck
in the thoughts; 'The third best are what we talk about.' ”

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 12:24 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>
> > On Jul 8, 2016, at 9:51 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> quoting Dwight Eddin’s or commenting on his ideas?
> >
> > GR is one long metaxic ping-pong between those poles, a 760-page system
> of words proving (like Rilke proves)  that no system of words will deliver
> the Word we think we want.
>
> Or perhaps GR is asking  whether these are not irreconcilably disconnected
> poles, renuciation vs embrace, but simply polarities of the same global
> energy flow, both doors to each other and the whole. The ping pong game
> becomes a necessary discipline to avoid getting  stuck with a falses sense
> of self , a false sense of the meaning and comprehensibility of the game.
>
>  My own feeling is that part of the genius of Pynchon is to leave the
> reader to sort it out, but only after several rounds of serious internal
> ping pong. Also he shows how very elegant and poetic ideas can illuminate
> madness and cruelty. Which implies that just having a beautiful, powerful
> scientific or poetic vision is not enough to liberate one from theft,
> abuse, hatred and murder.
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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