Moving on to the Christian references I find most moving in Pynchon

[Michael Bailey]

That's a lot of good references there, Joseph. Thanks for those!

I think Christianity is like the Tardis: You think you can summarize it briefly, and maybe you can with some of the important parts like forgiveness & the Golden Rule, but it's bigger inside.
________________________________
From: Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com>
Sent: Monday, June 8, 2026 3:39 PM
To: Michael Bailey <mi256118 at ucf.edu>; Pynchon List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: Re: Moving on to the Christian references I find most moving in Pynchon

RL "So, Friend Tom isn't OBA."

JT I initiated the question, but in the 'maybe, but who knows' mode. Did someone come up with actual evidence against it?

As to Christian references I think I could go on a pretty long journey in that direction. From the beginning, with his reference in V to the 3 layered world of Dante which begat or at least modeled his own 3 layered world, on to books where  yea shall yet more worlds be projected; I would suggest he knows the mythic territories of the Old and New Testament as well as that of the Tarot deck, Kabballah, Rocketry, CIA, labor history etc. Perhaps every writer worth his or her salt wants to make a world as big as the Bible and perhaps as influential. It's a universal reference point in the ongoing Abrahamic wars. The imagery enters the subconscious, the conscience, history itself.
   If a few Pynchons have been heretics, one has to ask whether Jesus himself was the original heretic... You have heard it said by them of old, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you love you enemies,...
   COL49- Kinnaret, one of many bodies of water involving death, baptism= death to old life,  Lago de Pieta(Pieta- image of Mary with crucified body of Jesus), bones of vets bought by Pierce Inverarity lead Oedipa via Paranoids to Couriers Tragedy- Perhaps fallen angel(incest, torture, regicide, consecration of Cardinal's blood to Satanic chalice,...)  Duke Angelo enlists tristero in murder of rightful heir Niccolo. Plays about killing the rightful king have Christian overtones in the post classical world.

The mystery of tristero leads her to an alternative postal system, to reformation era religious wars, to strange postal stamps, to mexican revolutionaries, mobsters,  Maxwell's Demon, the mysterious drowning of the director of the Courier's tragedy,an ex Nazi psychiatrist gone mad, the rise of anti-left fascism, the end of her marriage. There is  Dylan line: "I been to the bottom of a world full of lies, I ain't lookin for nothin in anyone's eyes "  Whether her rejection of the propaganda of her culture opens the door to rebirth is hard to say but while she seems to have given up on having a meaningful role in the disposition of Pierce Inverarity's estate she is still watching who will bid on certain stamps there in an auction in the 49th state. Still holding on to some hunger for truth.

Back with more christian references if anyone else continues this thread.


On 6/8/26 6:49 AM, Michael Bailey via Pynchon-l wrote:
> Robin Landseadel wrote:
> So, Friend Tom isn't OBA. My dreams are shattered. Guess I'll hang my tears out to dry:
>
>
>    *
> That hasn't been conclusively proven...dream on if you want...
>    *
> Thanks for the CoL49 data, and in general the illuminating info on Pynchon's family background & the movies. There really are a tremendous many movie references in ST!
>
> ________________________________
> From: Pynchon-l <pynchon-l-bounces at waste.org> on behalf of Robin Landseadel via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sunday, June 7, 2026 10:07 AM
> To: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>; pynchon-l at waste.org <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Subject: RE: Moving on to the Christian references I find most moving in Pynchon
>
> So, Friend Tom isn't OBA. My dreams are shattered. Guess I'll hang my tears out to dry:
>
> https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F22xGxIiFsz8%3Fsi%3Drae0pXFSXW4FgY7v&data=05%7C02%7Cmi256118%40ucf.edu%7C177ee49561a94d16ada408dec59a6944%7Cbb932f15ef3842ba91fcf3c59d5dd1f1%7C0%7C0%7C639165464172381873%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=smKc22KIqjTkhAG%2Fe%2BftDCDYzZkRgFC5goWYLhAShyc%3D&reserved=0<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F22xGxIiFsz8%3Fsi%3Drae0pXFSXW4FgY7v&data=05%7C02%7Cmi256118%40ucf.edu%7C177ee49561a94d16ada408dec59a6944%7Cbb932f15ef3842ba91fcf3c59d5dd1f1%7C0%7C0%7C639165464172415191%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=kKrlhj5If4iPf8qfuos7sMRan%2FtmqlF%2FYNufZaiMASM%3D&reserved=0><https://youtu.be/22xGxIiFsz8?si=rae0pXFSXW4FgY7v>
>
> MB: "Maybe Christianity is the secret sauce in the Pynchon oeuvre -
> one of those very intellectual developments around an enlivening
> faith which reach out to the world instead of curling up around a
> finite, limiting credo."
>
> I was looking at the initial P-List group reading of Against the Day and find your post
> from late 2006 relevant to recent discussions here:
>
> Michael Bailey: Moving on to the Christian references I
> find most moving in Pynchon's work: . . .
>
> . . . e) I haven't read The Crying of Lot 49 in so long that I can't
> recall Christian references in it. But Pynchon seems to
> spend a lot of thought on the "preterite-elect" theme here
> and in Gravity's Rainbow. . .
>
> Tactful thoughts about Christian ideas in Pynchon https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwaste.org%2Fpipermail%2Fpynchon-l%2F2006-December%2F093189.html&data=05%7C02%7Cmi256118%40ucf.edu%7C177ee49561a94d16ada408dec59a6944%7Cbb932f15ef3842ba91fcf3c59d5dd1f1%7C0%7C0%7C639165464172441100%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=k1cDIdNWkK7Abw1uizjrQD7Jck7BUCOmITxiXdnSlG4%3D&reserved=0<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwaste.org%2Fpipermail%2Fpynchon-l%2F2006-December%2F093189.html&data=05%7C02%7Cmi256118%40ucf.edu%7C177ee49561a94d16ada408dec59a6944%7Cbb932f15ef3842ba91fcf3c59d5dd1f1%7C0%7C0%7C639165464172461085%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=xnlUA8YTftGzIETbX0RnnyuBOcTGqQeUHSffFxNbzUg%3D&reserved=0><https://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/2006-December/093189.html>
>
> (raises hand at the back of the class, waving wildly)
>
> (Ahem) The Calvinist doctrine of the preterite and the elect points back to William
> Pynchon, founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, a fur-trader and later a Judge:
>
> . . . He disagreed with the church leaders of the day on a
> crucial pillar of Puritan belief. Pynchon argued Jesus did
> not suffer the torments of Hell to absolve mankind of its
> past sins. Rather, he won a state of grace through his
> obedience to God.
>
> This interpretation left open the idea that the way one
> behaved on earth could dictate whether one would go to
> heaven rather than a selected few reaching heaven by
> virtue of predestination.
> In 1650, William Pynchon Tweaks the Puritans - New England Historical Society https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewenglandhistoricalsociety.com%2Fin-1650-william-pynchon-tweaks-the-puritans%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cmi256118%40ucf.edu%7C177ee49561a94d16ada408dec59a6944%7Cbb932f15ef3842ba91fcf3c59d5dd1f1%7C0%7C0%7C639165464172479244%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=JlDnBEERajp%2F%2F3ifwRQruUunOTq3%2BEWU%2Fh7XsiVug24%3D&reserved=0<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewenglandhistoricalsociety.com%2Fin-1650-william-pynchon-tweaks-the-puritans%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cmi256118%40ucf.edu%7C177ee49561a94d16ada408dec59a6944%7Cbb932f15ef3842ba91fcf3c59d5dd1f1%7C0%7C0%7C639165464172497199%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=X3am8OxuwqxDOxgalBkQC0jJRFKG%2BHFiG3BtzIJImug%3D&reserved=0><https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/in-1650-william-pynchon-tweaks-the-puritans/>
>
> I’m going to offer up the suggestion that Thomas Pynchon, fully conscious of his ancestor’s
> profound act of civil disobedience, is following in his footsteps, claiming that God is not
> wrathful but loving―Christ didn’t die for our sins but died in perfect obedience to his
> Father. This concept undermines the social hierarchy of the Calvinists, making William
> Pynchon a heretic in their eyes. But William Pynchon saw the Life of Jesus as a moral
> roadmap, where the lowly are judged by God on the basis of their good work in this
> world instead of damned and not worth saving thanks to predestination. And Pynchon
> sees a lot of what is unjust in the world depends on maintaining the Elect/Preterite
> social order, in rendering the lives of brown-skinned people, by way of example, spiritually
> beside the point, helping Calvinists to justify slavery and exploitation of “the other”.
>
> There's a funny allusion to William Pynchon in Shadow Ticket:
>
> . . . Vito does a lot of his own felting, dealing direct with Indians who
> are apt to show up here at all hours with a rumble seat full of beaver
> hides, come in, drink some home brew, clown around, Vito buys in
> volume, gets a discount, all is copasetic. . .
> ST pg. 99
>
> CoL49 has Christian, and especially Catholic, references peppered throughout.
> A reference one is likely to pass over on account of it initially seeming to be a
> non-sequitur: Jesus Arrabal points to the Mexican playwright Fernando Arrabal Terán,
> who published some of his works simply as Arrabal. It also points to the CIA at the
> same time in a way that seems like some kind of a joke, but we can save that detail
> for later.
>
> One of Arrabal’s best known works is “The Automobile Graveyard” which presents the
> Passion of Jesus Christ as performed in an automobile wrecking yard by those who now
> live in the otherwise abandoned cars. There is a later reference to this Mise-en scène
> towards the very end of the book, where the author speaks of those living on societies’
> fringes:
>
> If only she'd looked. She remembered now old Pullman cars,
> left where the moneyed run out or the customers vanished,
> amid green farm flatnesses where clothes hung, smoke
> lazed out of jointed pipes. Were the squatters there in touch
> with others, through Tristero; were they helping carry forward
> that 300 years of the house's disinheritance? Surely they'd
> forgotten by now what it was the Tristero were to have
> inherited; as perhaps Oedipa one day might have. What was
> left to inherit? That America coded in Inverarity’s testament,
> whose was that? She thought of other, immobilized freight
> cars, where the kids sat on the floor planking and sang back,
> happy as fat, whatever came over the mother's pocket radio;
> of other squatters who stretched canvas for lean-tos behind
> smiling billboards along all the highways, or slept in junkyards
> in the stripped shells of wrecked Plymouths, or even, daring,
> spent the night up some pole in a lineman's tent like caterpillars,
> swung among a web of telephone wires, living in the very copper
> rigging and secular miracle of communication, untroubled by the
> dumb voltages flickering their miles, the night long, in the
> thousands of unheard messages. . .
> CoL49 pgs. 159/160
>
> It also points back to Mucho Maas’ nightmare at the used car lot.
>
> Arrabal means the suburbs in Spanish, with a further definition noting that Arrabal
> can also mean zones beyond the fringes, towards wilder country.
>
> Jesus Arrabal, ardent leftist, has some interesting things to say about miracles:
>
> “You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said.
> But another world’s intrusion into this one. Most of
> the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch
> there’s cataclysm. Like the church we hate, anarchists
> also believe in another world. Where revolutions break
> out spontaneous and leaderless, and the soul's talent
> for consensus allows the masses to work together
> without effort, automatic as the body itself. And yet,
> sena, if any of it should ever really happen that perfectly,
> I would also have to cry miracle. An anarchist miracle.
> Like your friend. He is too exactly and without flaw the
> thing we fight. In Mexico the privilegiado is always, to
> a finite percentage, redeemed one of the people.
> Unmiraculous. But your friend, unless he's joking,
> is as terrifying to me as a Virgin appearing to an Indian."”
> CoL49 pg. 105
>
> Later, Oedipa encounters a wrecked sailor, living on the fringes and near death,
> with a muted posthorn tattooed the back of his left hand:
>
>   . . . Exhausted, hardly knowing what she was doing, she
> came the last three steps and sat, took the man in her
> arms, actually held him, gazing out of her smudged eyes
> down the stairs, back into the morning. She felt wetness
> against her breast and saw that he was crying again. He
> hardly breathed but tears came as if being pumped. "I
> can't help," she whispered, rocking him, "I can't help." It
> was already too many miles to Fresno. . .
> CoL49 pg. 110
>
> I’ve always visualized this scene as Oedipa becoming Mary to the old man’s crucified
> Jesus in the manner of Michelangelo’s Pietà, just before passing his letter on to Fresno
> via the trashcan under the freeway near the Transbay Terminal.
>
> Very soon after first reading (and re-reading) CoL49 I got a temp position at the Union 76
> building, short walking distance from the Transbay Terminal, where the bus I took from
> Berkeley arrived. I know that stretch of San Francisco well.
>
> The Crying of Lot 49 has many pointers to Christian/Catholic doctrines, saints, place names,
> heretically inverted Christian/Catholic references in “The Courier’s Tragedy” and so on.
> There are lots of these sorts of references slipped in throughout the book, like references
> to Saint Narcissus and the myth of Narcissus. San Narcisco = St. Narcissus. Also, multiple
> references to Pentecost, particularly the very last words in the book:
>
> . . . Passerine spread his arms in a gesture that seemed
> to belong to the priesthood of some remote culture;
> perhaps to a descending angel. The auctioneer cleared
> his throat. Oedipa settled back, to await the crying of lot 49.
> CoL49 pg. 163
>
> And there are all those times Oedipa attempts to find out about the Tristero, but she
> encounters “ritual reluctance”, with everybody dummy-ing up, or the fates themselves
> intervening to prevent her from getting to “the truth”, for us be presented some noir-mystery
> styled denouement that we’re anticipating but never arrives.
>
> When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in
> one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound
> like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where
> they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to
> them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled
> with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as
> the Spirit gave them utterance.
>
> Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from
> every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude
> came together, and they were bewildered, because each one
> was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were
> amazed and astonished, saying, "Are not all these who are
> speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in
> his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites
> and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
> Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts
> of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both
> Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians--we hear them
> telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." And all
>   were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What
> does this mean?" But others mocking said, "They are filled
> with new wine." (Acts 2:1-13)
>
> Pentecost
>
> . . . Old English Pentecosten "Christian festival on seventh Sunday
> after Easter," from Late Latin pentecoste, from Greek pentekostē
> (hēmera) "fiftieth (day)," fem. of pentekostos, from pentekonta
> "fifty," from pente "five" (from PIE root penkwe-"five"). The Hellenic
> name for the Old Testament Feast of Weeks, a Jewish harvest
> festival observed on 50th day of the Omer (see Leviticus xxiii.16).
>
> Pentecost - Etymology, Origin & Meaning of the Name https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.etymonline.com%2Fword%2FPentecost&data=05%7C02%7Cmi256118%40ucf.edu%7C177ee49561a94d16ada408dec59a6944%7Cbb932f15ef3842ba91fcf3c59d5dd1f1%7C0%7C0%7C639165464172514972%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=RrkXk2JhHx5N6%2FZc%2FJ5X6Y2G%2Fw6rXwVAnwkK8QpU5Ag%3D&reserved=0<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.etymonline.com%2Fword%2FPentecost&data=05%7C02%7Cmi256118%40ucf.edu%7C177ee49561a94d16ada408dec59a6944%7Cbb932f15ef3842ba91fcf3c59d5dd1f1%7C0%7C0%7C639165464172532959%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Mbe5AP2p8fDuKzbSfvtQ7cM%2BMmJcGVXDbKFzgZdOfU4%3D&reserved=0><https://www.etymonline.com/word/Pentecost>
>
>
> 50 is the Number for Pentecost so 49 would be just before the unveiling.
>
> --
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> --
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