Farina & Hawthorne

[Andrew Dinn]

Paul DiFilippo writes:

> Also, as long as we're mentioning famous literary forebears of the
> Pynchon name, can I toss in HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES (surely
> this is not a new observation) with its down-at-the-heels
> Pynchons (or was that Pyncheons?)

Yeah, and there's that remarkably prescient line about the telegraph
(and the railways) linking up nations which Al Gore used in one of his
speeches (some crap about how the Internet would enfranchise all US
citizens in our new information age). You never know, maybe even
Rathenau read Hawthorne.

I'd see your Seven Gables and raise you a `Scarlet Letter' too.
Pierre-Yves Petillon has made much play of the notion of God's Garden
in the American Wilderness in both his paper reprinted in `New Essays
on The Crying of Lot 49' and the paper he read to the Warwick
conference and he cited `The Scarlet Letter' as another work dealing
with this issue. Both papers are well worth reading. Also, I was
intrigued for some time by similarities between `Vineland' and `The
Scarlet Letter', particularly that burning letter `A' seen in the
night sky (`A' screaming comes across the sky!), but also the
`dysfunctional' Prynne family who somehow manage to transcend their
supposedly preterite status and the fringe presence of the Indians
both as a threat and as a source of novel insights (e.g. the mention
of their knowledge of natural medecines) - Is it ok to commit genocide
in the name of being a Luddite?


Andrew Dinn
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O alter Duft aus Maerchenzeit / Berauschest wieder meine Sinne
Ein naerrisch Heer aus Schelmerein / Durchschwirrt die leichte Luft