The Crying of Lot 49. Group Read 2024

[David Morris]

Damn! I’ve only just now tried reading this email, and it has definitely
sparked my attention. I’m going to dive in to the points that I think are
interesting from your synopsis in a bit. I’ll get back to you soon.

On Tue, Jul 9, 2024 at 2:31 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> More relevance to some themes, I hope.
>
> I spoke of reading a book that I thought had perspective,
> very relevant stuff to show insight into Pynchon's novella...
> to bring a certain slant of light onto P's genius. Which perspective
> he had in 1965!   Since these books mentioned are all much later, yet
> the prompting phrase and much intellectual ruminating goes way back
> to discussions of modernity: "Round about 1910, human nature changed"---V.
> Woolf
>
> The book I was referring to was *The Ethics of Authenticity *by Charles
> Taylor, google him, I'm gonna read more of him. The book is from 1991.
>
> Here is his thrust (and I hope I do not kill his meaning with a
> reductionist oversimplification.)
>
> This: the modern world has lost its enchantment. (This, in a famous quote
> from Weber, a Pynchon fave, we know).
> That enchantment held all of us in a spiritual/religious chain of being, so
> to speak. [See The Great Chain of Being book or concept]
> Wherein we were all connected beyond our {puny) selves. That great chain
> bound us in communities of all kinds. Basic earthbound
> communities as well as others. In which we defined ourselves. ( PS, this
> organic community concept is what I would argue is Morris's
> fingering of Pynchon's Garden of Eden nostalgia, but in history not myth. P
> shows and says so in *Against the Day, imo. *And it is in another P fave,
> Henry Adams*)*
>
> Losing that connection in modernity, we are thrown back on our
> individualism. THAT is the problem Taylor tackles.
> Such individualism, he sez is psychologically grounded in nothing beyond
> itself, (as the word kinda implies. I have ordered his* Sources of the
> Self)*)
> Such individualism is self-grounded, kind of like Morris's loop analogously
> and therefore is wholesale pervasive narcissism. --(He uses others here; he
> says this is seen everywhere by some, such as Lasch in his book The Culture
> of Narcissism. Which I read but while not fully "woke", so am looking at
> again) The whole rootless culture echoes it--allusion to Echo Court
> intended. This reflection tower is everywhere, is also a mirror.   Seeing
> the men wanting Oedipa can be seeing full-blown narcissism in all of them.
> (Oedipa not feeling any sexual relevance in her situation may be a way of
> saying she ISN'T narcissistic anymore.)
>
> All of the religious-like signs Oedipa sees that are signs that do not lead
> to religion as known are like the disenchantment of the--her--world. (This,
> from Weber, seems very likely to me as part of Pynchon's intent.)
>
> Taylor works hard in the rest of his book to show how individualism can
> overcome itself, he thinks.....(an authentic connection to the polity of
> one's
> country is one way---Taylor is Canadian and near the end he contrasts his
> Canadian readers with "the country just south of us" )
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>