dates [was Re: mdmd(4) - Commentary]

[Vaska]

I meant to comment on this earlier, but all sorts of other things came up to
distract me.  _V_ came out in 1963: Pynchon was all of 26 at the time.  It
was _L49_ that appeared in 1966.    

Richard Farina died in a motorcycle crash in Carmel on April 30, 1966, just
days after _Been Down_ was published.  And only days before Pynchon's 29th
birthday.

Vaska

>Brian D. McCary comments on Maskelyne's soliloquy upon turning 29:
>
>>An interesting
>>sentiment penned by an Author recently turned sixty.  Pynchon would
>>have turned 29 in 1966, after V. was published and he was already being
>>heralded.  Seems like Richard Farina might have died about that time,
>>perhaps around that age, but I don't have the dates or details on me.
>
>I'm not sure how much autobiographical speculation helps here. Perhaps
>someone knows statistics concerning average life-expectancy in the 1700's,
>but I speculate that the proverbial three-score-and-ten was pushing the
>upper limits. So the looming threshold of 30 would induce angst in many --
>the eighteenth-century version of the mid-life crisis -- and Maskelyne is
>already rather predisposed towards musing on mortality.
>
>Not that things have changed entirely -- I've known many acquaintances who
>fretted turning 30 as much as Mask., but they were a bit less florid about
>it ... BTW, contemporary literature has a fine example of the portrait of
>the single man edging towards 30 and going crazy in James Kelman's _A
>Disaffection_.
>
>Cheers,
>Paul
>(who turns 29 in Nov.)
>
>
>