Sandoz

[Steve Maas]

Currently reading _Old Jules_ (no, not _that_ Jules!), written in 1935 by 
Mari Sandoz about her father, an early homesteader in Nebraska's panhandle.  
It's an interesting book, an episodic biography but written in a literary 
style.  (The book does a good job of deflating any romantic notions about 
god-fearing, pious, saintly pioneers--you had to be tough as nails and 
willing to do whatever was necessary, to survive that life.)  Anyhow, all of 
this is to point to a proto-pynchonesque passage (I don't know whether to 
attribute the sentiment to Jules or Mari).  Following the 1890 Wounded Knee 
Massacre is the following observation: "There was something loose in the 
world that hated joy and happiness as it hated brightness and color, 
reducing everything to drab agony and gray."

     Steve Maas

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