Fwd: Escape from Freedom

[Mark Kohut]

I found an Avon paperback edition, 1965, published 3 months before *Like a
Rolling Stone* was recorded.  of* Escape from Freedom*, Erich Fromm,  the
other day. We know from one of the best books on Pynchon by real scholars,
that this book fed Pynchon‘s vision, especially in* Gravity‘s Rainbow *along
with Norm O  Brown’s *Life Against Death* one deep Freudian, one deep
Freudian who came out the other side.

Anyway, we also know that Weber‘s Protestant Ethic, and the Spirit of
Capitalism was influential to our young genius as early as V it seems.
Certainly also in the novel that has *everything* but *Against the Day,
Gravity's Rainbow.*

I found this in the foreword to Escape from Freedom, picking up on Weber
and our writer who focused on Christers, Cristofascists with those terms in
later novels, etc.

"I wish to thank the following publishers etc. for using excerpts from*
Institutes of the Christian religion* by John Calvin, Social Reform in the
Reformation by Jacob Schapiro.  Excerpts from* Bondage of the Will* by
Martin Luther and excerpts from Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by R H
Tawney. (as well as excerpts from *Mein Kamp*f and Jacob Burkhardt's
classic.

The social meanings of religion and capitalism were foundational to our
young writer. Why he is universal (for the West anyway)
Nothing new here but sorta documented now.

Sent from my iPhone