Pynchon and Catholicism

[Mark Kohut]

"There is no being an Ex-Catholic, just an upracticing one"---Charles
Simmons, *Powdered Eggs*,  a non-ex-Catholic.

Catholics do not have the Protestant self-justifications (re salvation) and
the Reformation's creation
of an individual relation to God.

Therefore Catholics lose EVERYTHING in their relations to their
metaphysical selves and the universe when they lose
Catholicism.

Some with great talent need to fill it all in again. With a new vision
(sometimes a mirror of the old vision) and with a relentless
style to try to match the incredible complexity of the world.

On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 6:25 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
wrote:

>
> Am 24.09.20 um 02:54 schrieb John Bailey:
>
> > I recently observed that several writers whose prose style I've been
> > admiring were raised Catholic. First it was Gerald Murnane, then
> > Rachel Cusk, and of course I recalled that Pynchon was raised (half)
> > Catholic himself. What these very different writers have in common, it
> > seems, is a love of baroque literacy, a willingness to tie their
> > sentences up in quite sadomasochistic knots, a hovering weirdness that
> > puts them at odds with much of the literary establishment, and a few
> > other things I can't quite nail.
>
> + World-opening Catholicism: Peter Handke receives the Nobel Prize in
> Literature
>
> Peter Handke belongs to the faction of 'ministrants' in German-language
> literature who were socialized Catholically in premodern village
> cultures after World War II ... +
>
> https://ixtheo.de/Record/1686672594
>
> "Vom Tod des Buddha, gab es da nicht jene Darstellungen, wo sämtliche
> Tiere des Erdkreises den Mahatma beweinen, Tränenflüsse vom Elefanten,
> Löwen, Tiger, Adler bis zu Maus, Regenwurm, vielleicht auch Mist-, Mai-
> und Junikäfer: wie aber war der Umgang all dieser Tiere mit dem
> Erleuchteten zu dessen Lebzeiten gewesen? Darstellungen: keine. Beweint,
> beheult, beachtet allein im Tode?"
>
> Peter Handke: Die Obstdiebin. Berlin 2017: Suhrkamp, p. 497.
>
> > Some quick searches and yep, other authors that spring to mind as
> > sharing these qualities turn out to have been raised Catholic: Cormac
> > McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, George Saunders. That's a
> > diverse list! But speaking as someone who was raised Catholic (though
> > long out of that club thanks) I find it relatively easy to predict if
> > a writer has the same background.
> > Obviously a lot has been written on the influence of Judaism on Jewish
> > writers, but I wonder if other strains of Christianity also have a
> > less obvious impact on the styles of writers raised therein.
> > --
> > Pynchon-L:https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > .
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>