Pirate - T.Bloat - TS: Anglo-Atlantic-Dissolution

[Andrew Dinn]

Joel Dinerstein writes:

> Like a bunch of folks out there, I've been thinking about why the novel
> starts with Pirate and not TS...  so how about this?

> It occurs to me that Pynchon is building *up* -- or *across* -- to TS:
> from Pirate to Teddy Bloat to Slothrop:  he's bringing the reader up to
> contextual speed (so to speak) from British *and* American directions, from
> both the disintegrating British Empire of Brigadier Pudding's adenoidal
> paranoia *and* the Great Depression's great death-knell of the
> Puritan-cum-Protestant-ethic, the conflagration of the Puritan home and
> mindset.  (Pynchon ends his history lesson at 1931, in the depths of the
> Depression that clearly formed the teen-aged Tyrone.)

It was Oswald Blathero's adenoid, I believe. Part of Slothrop's
initial charm is that f the Yank in London. I guess that implies that
to some degree you have to see London in all its Englishness first
before you can play him off against it. But I recall that `Atlantics
aplenty' comment early on. Perhaps it is necessary to set up this
dichotomy so as to highlight the reversal imlicit in the traversals of
Willima Slothrop to and fro and Tyrone Slothrop fro and . . . well he
never makes it back to the US, now, does he? At least when he finds
his harp it is made fairly clear that America, that old vamp, does not
expect him back, poor plucked bird that he is.

> So Pynchon erects a new genealogy, a new progression -- or a new
> declension, as Jeff Meikle sez --  from the responsible, autonomous British
> Empire-company man (and colonial administrator)
> "Pirate" Prentice
>
> .... to the average-Joe  cannon- and factory-fodder of Teddy Bloat
> .....to the principled/ confused/ decent-but-passive Tantivy Mucker-Maffick
> and then ...
>        .... across the ocean (and cubicle) to where these same English went
> to become "new"....
> ......to Tyrone Slothrop, who is now at the bottom of "his blood's
> avalanche," who is now the beginning
>         of the endpoint of Pynchon's V (& quest).

Not sure that this is just a V quest. If one return trip is a V then
the other must be an A, nix? I suspect William's journey was an
attempt at ascent which failed (that Puritan spirit must be on the
side of the Archangel, trying to build a heaven on earth in the New
World). Whereas, Slothrop's journey must be a descent and eventual
return from Hell, although we never hear that he makes the trip
back. Where else can Orpheus go with his harp? What else can the
descent into the toilet be but a deliberate journey into chaos and
disorder.

One grouch though. Teddy Bloat is also an Oxford man,one of Tantivy's
chums from Jesus. So, he's neither average bloke nor factory fodder
(although he might indeed be cannon fodder, excpet wasn't that
Tantivy's lot?).

  ...

> One last thought:  certainly such an appetite for sex and women is not
> exactly an old Puritan pastime.  Perhaps Pynchon was trying to locate the
> moment when Puritan ethics died as a force in American society for the
> average Tyrone.  Perhaps in 1944, perhaps in 1931:  either way, somewhere
> between the 1920s Puritan-bashing of writers H.L. Mencken and William
> Carlos Williams, and 1966, when Philip Rieff reluctantly noted in his 1966
> classic *Triumph of the Therapeutic*  that if there's one thing we know is
> dead in American society, it's the Puritan father.

I think it must go a lot further back than that. How about somewhere
between Constant and Variable Slothrop? Remember teh Slothrop family
has been in decline for a long time.  If the initial impulse to enter
the new World was driven by an upward sriving then Brennschluss must
have happened way back in the past, say maybe when William turned back
on his tracks. So the apogee, the point at which ascent turned into
free-fall would only have been a few generations later. Of course,
that's not to say that by Slothrop's time the Puritan streak would
necessarily have disappeared `without a trace'.


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.