Pynchon and Catholicism

[Mark Kohut]

She never was unCatholic.

On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 10:32 AM David Elliott <ellidavd at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  Flannery O'Connor? I'd like to hear/read thoughts on her in this context.
>
> On Thursday, September 24, 2020, 06:34:11 AM EDT, Mark Kohut <
> mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> "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
> >
> --
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>