Grace?

[ish mailian]

Speaking of hard boiled grace, in the best chapter, the very last
chapter of a a book essential to my reading of grace in Pynchon,
Leslie Fielder defines grace as "dumb luck."

Some here are familiar with Leslie Fielder's seminal work on the
American Novel, _Love and Death in the American Novel_, and some here
have marked-up copies of the final chapter-- "The Power of Blackness:
Faustian Man and the Cult of Violence."

Though the book is first published in 1960, revised in 1966, it is by
far the best commentary on Pynchon detective work to date.

On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 11:14 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> I don’t think grace must be theological for an individual, but the theological roots of its use cannot either be completely disentangled from how Pynchon uses it in ATD. Every cultural use of a word seems to add new dimensions to the word. A hymn like amazing grace transcends theology and speaks to inner liberation, mercy, and a happier future in such a way that it speaks  as powerfully to the unbeliever and those of non western faith as it does to the believer, so that we see it taken up and embraced beyond it’s Christian origins.
>   Language seems at its best when it bridges gaps rather than creating new ones, the effect being to make an idea translatable and understandable to the intended audience, which can be as large as everyone. Pynchon is trying to translate that moment when an old paradigm and its baggage falls away and the soul/mind/human/spirit begins to see in a different way. We have a vast body of eloquent testimony that these moments are, just as experienced by Lew B, both wonderfully redemptive, light filled and also unnerving, somewhat shattering and difficult.
>   That a word like grace is chosen at this moment  seems to me neither an affiramation nor a denial of the historic use of the word, but a means of transcendent communication which is enhanced by both its theology and the more severe zen like definition which P feels it necessary to include.
>   Part of the power in the text of ATD is that it appears in both the hardboiled  observation-based detective and the mythical chums. The connection is up to the reader.
>
>
>> On Aug 11, 2017, at 1:34 PM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Must grace be theological? Maybe it's more a frame of reference. There are moments we all have where we see things freshly. Lying on the grass, when the trees rustle, just as a cloud partially obscures the sun. Focussing on the dust motes illuminated by a ray of light in a musty room. Pausing, almost without realizing it, over the odd curvature of the pepper one's about to slice into. Responding to the moments, the thing-ness, unmediated by any thoughts or knowledge of theology or philosophy or any lore at all. To commune with the trees or the dust motes or the pepper on that elemental level is to (momentarily) become a child of nature. No knowledge, no morality, no mediating thoughts at all. As soon as you name it, it's gone.
>>
>> To view the world from that frame of reference for an extended period might put one at peace. But it would be terrifyingly lonely. More than Lew can bear. For Gottfried, that point at the top of the parabola -- where the knife cutting the apple is just a knife cutting an apple, where there's a complete absence of knowledge or morality -- is a comfort. For the Chums, it's a safe haven from the impending horrors. Don't we all attempt to retreat to that frame of reference - the cold, amoral universe, where things just are what they are - when confronted with the insanities of the day? I know I do.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 7:54 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thomas,
>>
>> Theological concepts indeed. As far as I can tell, the key figure here
>> is Descartes, who studied with Jesuits, thus  Aristotle/Thomas and
>> then applied his Subjective *I*  to Thomas's defense of God's
>> existence, not to deny it, but, as his Meditations  argue, to shift
>> the proof of existence from God's Nature/Action to Man's thinking.
>>
>> As far as I can tell, P does not use Grace or any other concept  to
>> make of Man a thinker who in the act of thought has an equivalency of
>> knowledge of the essences, that is to say, humans are not, even with
>> the shift to Descartes, privy to the knowledge of Thomas's God.
>>
>> As far as what we or the Chums fly toward? Well, Grace, of course.
>> Something we move toward by God and God alone, something we may want
>> to know by can not. And since we can not know it, how can we know we
>> want it? Because it is God's will. or will be when He elects us. Of
>> course, this is why Pynchon finds the Preterit so compelling.
>>
>> >
>> > In theological/philosophical terms, seeing things as they are means
>> > understanding things in their quiddity or "whatness", perceiving their
>> > essence and not their outward appearance. We know, from his essay on Sloth,
>> > that Pynchon is familiar with Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica (and Aquinas
>> > turns up in his writings as early as "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna").
>> >
>> > Cf.:
>> >
>> > "But the angelic and the Divine intellect, like all incorruptible things,
>> > have their perfection at once from the beginning. Hence the angelic and the
>> > Divine intellect have the entire knowledge of a thing at once and perfectly;
>> > and hence also in knowing the quiddity of a thing they know at once whatever
>> > we can know by composition, division, and reasoning. Therefore the human
>> > intellect knows by composition, division and reasoning. But the Divine
>> > intellect and the angelic intellect know, indeed, composition, division, and
>> > reasoning, not by the process itself, but by understanding the simple
>> > essence."
>> >
>> > Summa Theologica, I, Question 85, Article 5
>> >
>> > Against this background, seeing things in their quiddity would mean to see
>> > things like God or angels do, having "the entire knowledge of a thing at
>> > once and perfectly". Is this not the state of mind (or grace) that befalls
>> > Lew and that Gottfried aspires to?
>> >
>> > We don't know what "flying toward grace" means for the Chums, but we know
>> > that they have to shield their eyes against the revelation (against the
>> > day/light?) that is to come:
>> >
>> > "They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part the
>> > sky. They fly toward grace." (1085)
>> >
>> > As usual, exactly what kind of revelation is to be expected remains unsaid
>> > -- the blinding Glory of God, Rilke's terrifying angels, "the light beyond
>> > metaphor" (Derek Walcott)...
>> >
>> > I also hear echoes of Fausto Majistral's confessions, in particular "life's
>> > single lesson:  that there is more accident to it than a man
>> > can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane" and the task of the poet to
>> > invent "pious metaphor" to cloak the isolated and accidental nature of
>> > things.
>> >
>> > I suspect that Aquinas may also be helpful in understanding the "unsought
>> > good" becoming "more accessible" to us at the end of AtD. There seem to be
>> > some important theological concepts at play here.
>> >
>> > -
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