A Narciso query

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Steely's mention of CL49, and his characteristic demand of--keep it 
historical/political you metaphysical numbskulls!--coincidentally follows my 
coming across this morning an ad for a book titled: NARCISO LOPEZ AND THE 
FIRST US INVASION OF CUBA.  I was boggled by the name, and the latino 
connection (thinking of Jesus Arrabal on the beach with his anti-Christ Pierce) and 
now Steely's reference to Trist's Cuban connection--well,it's a little boggling (but I 
am easy to boogle).  I haven't checked the COMPANION to CL49, so maybe this 
Narciso Lopez is well-known to others.  Any enlightenment, homme de fer (the 
way I once heard Superman referred to in an episode set in the French Canadian 
wilderness)?

john m



>
>Lately I've taken to re-reading the Crying of Lot 49.
>
>For those more interested in the political/historical meaning of this
>little chap book-rather than endless recursions and  explications of its
>phenomenological underpinnings, its full-blown flowering of the latest in
>pomo-pop trivia, or the certain ineluctable cachet it has an an Ur-fractal
>masterpiece-the biography of one Nicholas Trist--child of the Other Century
>(born in 1800), student and grandson-in-law of Jefferson, clerk to Indian
>killer Andy Jackson, American consul to Cuba, negotiator of the Treaty of
>Guadalupe Hidalgo, deemed a traitor by that bane of Henry Clay, James "Dark
>Horse" Polk, whose great promise to the nation was to finalize the
>acquisition of California, which he accomplished through the Mexican
>War--might be instructive to one degree or another.
>
>Steely
>
>PS I was just lurking when that mighty orca Jules jetted across the
>zone, lurking in utter amazement at the sheer spectacle of it all.
>
>
>