M&D p. 152: "the Night of the 'Black Hole,' some Zero-Point of history"

[Smoke Teff]

Have written about this extensively elsewhere, so withholding most of
what I’ve already said about it.



This event itself is put forward and suggested to have a special
spatio-temporal/historical gravity. Will be interesting to track to
what extent that is true—or if other candidates are put forth for this
special historical gravity—over the course of the novel.



Seems also to track with P’s general interest in original sin—the
original sin of (modern) history?



Norman Brown, in Life Against Death, suggests that man is defined by
his history-making abilities/tendencies. This ability to make history
is, for Brown, both the cause/dawn of man, and also the cause of man’s
suffering (i.e. original sin). So what does that mean for the
zero-point of history?



Insofar as P is always probing for original sin, this reflects
interestingly on GR’s Beyond The Zero stuff, in ways I’m not currently
equipped to fully grapple with. Thoughts?



The ZERO is associated, in P’s oeuvre-wide vision (as I understand it
from this vantage point) with original sin (or maybe, less biblically,
with the inherent vice of all man-made systems, all man’s endeavors,
etc), with the dawn of man, with the beginning of history/modernity,
and with (the innocence of?) the period before (Slothrop’s)
conditioning…
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l