Little AtD wisdom, lest we get too secular

[Mark Kohut]

?

I read this as one of the clearest visions of the secular we get in
Pynchon, in ATD.

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 2:29 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> The figurehead debate, at first no deeper than varying decorative tastes
> might account for, had grown bitter and complex, swiftly reaching an
> intensity that astonished them all. Old injuries 'kicked up,' pretexts were
> found to exchange shoves and, not infrequently, blows.
>
> [...]
>
> After a while the boys would come to think of the episode as others might
> remember a time of illness, or youthful folly. As Lindsay Noseworth was
> there to remind them all, such difficulties always arose for good
> reason--namely, to provide cautionary lessons.
>
> 'Like what,' sneered Darby, '"be nice"?'
>
> 'We were always supposed--by whom it is less clear--to be above such
> behavior,' asserted the 'X.O.' somberly. 'Literally above. That sort of
> bickering may be for ground people, but it is not for us.'
>
> 'Oh, I don't know, I kind of enjoyed it,' said Darby.
>
> 'Despite which, we must ever strive to minimize contamination by the
> secular,' declared Lindsay.
>
> Each of the boys in his way agreed. 'We have had a narrow escape,
> fellows,' said Randolph St. Cosmo.
>
> 'Let us develop protocols,' added Chick Counterfly, 'to avoid its
> happening again.'
>
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