Pynchon and Catholicism

[matthew cissell]

Howdy all,

First, I hope you are well. I have been feeling a bit despondent (can't
imagine why) but this thread has moved in an interesting direction to which
I would like to add.

So by route of Pynchon and Catholicism we arrive to Kerouac. We know how
TP feels about On THe Road, but when he wrote that he couldn't have read
Barry Miles 1998 bio of Kerouac - not flattering to the King of the Beats.
THis is why we are urged not to meet our idols. If you don't know, Jack had
become a real son of a bitch in his later serious alcoholic life. For
example? Well, not helping his daughter Jan was bad enough, but it's his
anti-semitism and bigotry that stand out most. (He burned a cross in a
black family's yard when living in Florida. Nice.) Jack's mother was
anti-semitic but then again back then many people still harbored the hatred
that post-wwII had not yet affected. Let's look at Catholics and
anti-semitism.

You ever hear of Father Coughlin? Go check it out. Big radio broadcast
audience back in the day (during the '30´s about 30million listeners, bear
in mind that the number of catholics in the US in 1910 was 15million) so if
you were in a practicing catholic family somebody probably listened to
Father Coughlin. You may choose to call these listeners passively
anti-semitic but still they didn't want jews in their neighborhood or
elsewhere.

So back to TP. How much anti-semiticism was he exposed to growing up out in
East Norwich? That part of Long Island didn't get a  synagogue until well
after Pynchon lived there. In fact you can bet that the demographic of TP's
school system was WASPish with a strong Catholic presence.

And now we might shift to the present. THe scions of Scalia are being put
on the court, serious Catholics who speak of their Textualist approach to
the text of the US Constitution. (Let's leave aside the fact that they know
a great deal about law but little about textual interpretation.) Now, we
know that Scalia and RGB were friends, at least she said so. But the new
nominee is just 48 and part of a sect within the Roman Catholic Church
(since when did Catholics start speaking in tongues?). Mind you that is not
an attack on her faith, let us all be free to practice what we want. But
would the GOP want a muslim who believed in Sharia law on the SCOTUS? When
your faith makes you bend the social contract to favor your beliefs you
approach an unraveling of the separation of Church and State that is
essential to the US.

Finally, the Holy Roman Catholic Church has given rise to some of its
greatest critics (think Voltaire or Joyce) but it has also given us its
share of less holy or admirable individuals. Being Catholic doesn't make
one anti-semitic, but it doesn't neccessarily keep one from becoming so.
Carl Schmitt and Heidegger were both serious catholics. But then again so
was JFK. So, it is not faith alone that guides us but its currents are
strong and pull this way and that. Remember that Nietzsche only said that
God was dead, the religion marches on.

Peace.

mc otis


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On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 11:53 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree so absolutely that we have mind-merged.
>
> Mary Trump's book is maybe the best on Trump
> because it sees the whole sick man and in his family relationship.....and
> her psychological training
> keeps her keenly sure-footed with every psychological word.....She clearly
> judges him per the major
> Psycological Qualites/ Sicknesses book---we all know it, right?---but
> carefully says she cannot go as far as
> calling him sociopathic......
>
> On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 5:34 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Projection has so clearly become seen as Trump's main reflex.  It doesn't
> > seem controversial now.
> >
> > On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 4:16 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hey, I'm no trained psychoanalytic reader of history. Projection, is
> that
> >> what trained depth psychologists in the Freudian tradition do? I dunno,
> >> mate.
> >>
> >> I think Eric says Catholic 'hate' is not pan, was mixed with some
> >> self-love---love is strange---and therefore had more grace in the
> everyday.
> >>
> >> I can't see Trumpism quite anywhere here but elaborate? I did see Trump
> >> in Eric's words when he wrote of how when we lost our communal sense of
> >> identity, and grew up feeling alienated, weak and helpless like Mickey,
> >> we could not stand that psychic pain so we filled ourselves with endless
> >> scorn for
> >> weak others--projection fer sure-- and endless greed. Our things and
> >> money  were our psychic good drives by analogy.
> >>
> >> One can see how, if TRP was influenced by this work, it led to
> >> discovering Norman O Brown's work. (This book is 1941!)
> >>
> >> On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 5:01 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> So, to condense, Eric argues that Catholic pan-hate resulted in less
> >>> self-hate?  Isn't that what is called "projection" these days?
> >>>
> >>> Doesn't that define Trumpism?
> >>>
> >>> David Morris
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 3:36 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Eric Fromm in *Escape From Freedom* says that the feeling of
> >>>> 'predestination" ala Luther and Calvin although present in
> >>>> Acquinas' Catholicism because of the understanding of God's
> omniscience is
> >>>> very different, producing avery different
> >>>> character structure overall.
> >>>>
> >>>> He quotes Acquinas cutely: Aquinas saying doing extra good things
> >>>> sort speeds up predestination of oneself. (my paraphrase).
> >>>>
> >>>> Anyway, unlike the self-hating Protestants---they had to in order to
> >>>> hate so many others so totally, Eric says--Catholics hated themselves
> less
> >>>> (in general).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>