All Intensive Purposes

Expat asks, what is Pynchon talking about when he refers to the "preterite?" Let me take a hasty stab at an answer.

As I recall, the Calvinists thought that there were three kinds of people: the elect, the preterite, and the damned. The elect are going to heaven. The damned very clearly are not. The preterite can't be sure, so they do their very best to act like elect, since if they act like the damned they won't be happy in the end.

Having said that, I see a couple of sources on the web suggesting that there are only two sorts of people, the elect and the preterite. Presumably then the preterite act like elect in the hopes that they actually are elect. (But . . . .)

Here's one view -- (one's willingness to get through the following probably parallels one's appreciation for Pynchon):

Perhaps one of the most thoroughly developed themes, and certainly one that Pynchon has explored before, is that of the struggle between the "preterite" and the "elect," or the traditional dichotomy between the "common" classes and the "anointed" classes. (The former terms hail from his family's Puritan background.) As Pynchon himself puts it, the preterite, while "in theory capable of idiocy, are much more apt to display competence, courage, humanity, wisdom, and other virtues associated, by the educated classes, with themselves." This class distinction acts as a tangible dehumanizing force, permitting us to see each other as objects to be hated, feared, scorned, demonized, exploited, or manipulated. And it's not just his characters who embody these roles -- the whole novel seems to be impregnated with a sinister force, a Presence that hovers between the two classes like a malignant angel (or a malevolent version of Maxwell's Demon?) carefully at work maintaining the illusionary divisions between one human and another. This sense of sentient division is not just reserved for the traditional targets (organized religion, the military, corporate entities, intelligence and security agencies, various racist groups, u.s.w.) but, through the hypnotic power of Pynchon's prose, is extended to include speculations that our whole material world is somehow involved in the conspiracy. Falling rockets, the growth patterns of cities, and even the forces that govern the laws of molecular bonding are all subjected to the manipulations of this force. Linked with the actions and inactions of the characters -- each with their own personal agendas, delusions of control, and hidden networks -- this pervasive sense of paranoia gives rise very quickly to a clear distinction between Us and Them. "Us," or "We," are the preterite, the common, the vulgar: possessed with a certain Foolishness, for sure, but also endowed with the ability -- if We want to -- to see through Their systems of death and decay, Their artificial distinctions and forces of normalization, vectors that force Us into the compromise of a thousand little deaths. . . . When organized (and that itself is always risky, ephemeral) We can form a potent Counterforce. But that takes a very intricate knowledge of control, of hope, of love, and of laughter -- the ability to cry out Joyce's most emphatic yes! to counterbalance the Burroughsian schlupp! of vampiric absorption. "They" are the classic Masters, hung up on control systems, worshipers of the Northern Death Cults -- from SS officers to mad Pavlovians, believers in the Granfalloon, inhabitants of corporations and governments, rendered faceless by the sheer multiplicity and interchangeability of Their bland servants. . . . They are, as Burroughs might have it, running the Mayan scheme, the classic Mind Control Game. And the most frightening thing of all is not that They can control Us; but that it's so very easy for Us to simply -- and slowly, one decision at a time -- become Them. In Something Wicked this Way Comes, Ray Bradbury asks of evil: "What will they look like? How will we know them?" Looking nervously at each other, his characters suddenly apprehend the answer: "Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here."

Corrections and amplifications gladly noted.

So here's my question for Expat@Large: What's the low-down on the The Bottoms Up Club?