BEg2 chapter 10 a reconvergence of what the day scattered

[Mark Kohut]

Thomas! and anyone---

When Acquinas (because he is a philosopher/theologian) speaks of
"quidditas" , quiddity, does it also mean---and when Lew speaks
of things being exactly what they were--that things simply "are' and that
is part of the meaning of grace? .....What argument did Catholic Acquinas
offer for the existence of
God---one of the ontological arguments I would guess. ...Does that mystery
that anything exists part of this in Lew, too? (We know Joyce had rejected
his Catholicism so
this cannot be alluded to in Joyce, be part of his use of Acquinas except
apart from God....

Exciting, Thomas, thanks....

On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 4:24 PM Thomas Eckhardt via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> Am 22.12.2021 um 08:18 schrieb Michael Bailey:
>
> “What might only be a simple point on the workday cycle, a reconvergence
> of what the day scattered as Sappho said someplace back in some college
> course, Maxine forgets,
>
> “becomes
>
> “a million pedestrian dramas, each one charged with mystery, more
> intense than high-barometer daylight can ever allow. Everything changes.”
>
> Something about lower barometric pressure changing everyone’s mood and
> appearance?
>
>
> The important change is in the quality of light, I believe. What is
> suggested here is a mild collective epiphany. Compare:
>
> "One mild and ordinary work-morning in Chicago, Lew happened to find
> himself on a public conveyance, head and eyes inclined nowhere in
> particular, when he entered, all too briefly, a condition he had no
> memory of having sought, which he later came to think of as grace.
>
> (…)
>
> Lew found himself surrounded by a luminosity new to him, not even
> observed in dreams, nor easily attributable to the smoke-inflected sun
> beginning to light Chicago.
>
> He understood that things were exactly what they were. It seemed more
> than he could bear." (AtD, 42)
>
> I have argued before that understanding that things are exactly what
> they are (Aquinas' and Joyce's "quidditas" or quiddity) means that one
> is having an epiphany. In the case of characters like Lew Basnight or
> Pirate Prentice this state of mind is linked to a supernatural gift
> which can be instrumentalized by the powers that be -  as is certainly
> the case with Lew's affinity to the invisible which gets him a job at a
> detective agency that does "Pinkerton work".
>
> In BE, the change in everything affects everyone, not only Maxine, and
> it is really only the shadow of a true epiphany. Still, the imagery
> connects the two scenes.
>
> I note as well that Maxine has received an important message from a
> perhaps "otherworldly messenger". There are definitely intimations of
> the invisible here.
>
>
> As for the political/parapolitical background, I note that John Perkins'
> "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" provides the background to some of
> Windust's activities as a "neoliberal terrorist", that Windust's
> expertise in "interrogation enhancement" and "noncompliant
> subject-relocation" foreshadows "enhanced interrogation" and
> "extraordinary rendition", the euphemisms that would soon be used by the
> Bush administration, and that all this emphasises what I believe to be a
> central and ever more chillingly present idea in BE: The continuation of
> the Cold War under different circumstances.
>
> For torture in Latin and South America, besides the School of the
> Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
> Cooperation), see also Dan Mitrione and Michael Townley. On the latter,
> read Roberto Bolanos (with a tilde) "By Night in Chile". For background
> to Bolanos novel, this seems to be solid:
>
> https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24494053.html
>
> (Interestingly, but definitely NP, Dan Mitrione was a friend of Jim Jones.)
>
> I also liked: "How right-wing, Maxine wonders, does a person have to be
> to think of the 'New York Times' as a left-wing newspaper?"
>
> This critique of the "Newspaper of Record" will come up again
> immediately after the attacks of September 11.
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>