Almanac Facts

[doktor at primenet.com]

I always thought the connection between Henry's "On This Day" and Pynchon
was the Almanac section of V., when, after listing a series of deaths and
disasters from all over the globe, Pynchon writes that oft-quoted line,
"...the world started to run more and more afoul of the inanimate."  As
Tony Tanner writes in his essay, 'Caries and Cabals,'

". . . Pynchon would scarcely have needed to write so intricate a novel if
his only intention was to show a graph of increasing destructiveness
manifest in recent history.  As he indicates, you can cull that from an
almanac.  What he shows--and here the juxtaposition of the historical and
the personal dimensions is vital--is a growing tendency, discernable on all
levels and in the most out-of-the-way pockets of modern history, for people
to regard or use other people as objects, and, perhaps even more
worryingly, for people to regard themselves as objects."

Most of Henry's almanac facts refer to deaths, winding-down,
destructiveness and the banality of pop culture's cult of celebrity.  I,
for one, don't mind having ol' Henry remind me that these themes from a
30-some year old novel are still very much with us.

--Jimmy