Century's child raised Motherless

[Thing]

Herbert's relationship to V., his dilemma, his situation,
"the situation", is constructed, influenced directly by his
views of his father's view of V & Company and by his
motherlessness. 

"There is more behind and inside V. than any of us had
suspected. No who, but what: what is she." HP.V.49 


And it is the "the Situation" which appears to be
structuring events, the events of the novel even. This is of
course Pynchon's first "THEM" or "THEY." And the power, the
inexplicable nature of Them or  "the  Situation", whoever,
whatever "They" are, has got Stencil and maybe a few other
characters, maybe even this paranoid reader, maybe even
YOU,  thinking that They are calling the tune. Sidney is
like a child, the century's child. That clock is
Shoenmaker's office has quite tale to tell, a century. 

In the Chicago chapter of The Education, Adams discusses
Silver and Gold, morality, the tower of babel,  and the
Banking system: 

"Blindly some very powerful energy was at work, doing
something that nobody wanted done. Evidently the force was
one; its operation was mechanical; its effect must be
proportional to its power; but no one knew what it meant,
and most people dismissed it as an emotion-a panic-that
meant nothing." 

Henry, referring to himself in the third person, also takes
note of brother Brook's view of History, a law of history
that involves paradox, well actually the big paradox is
every day existence, the day's facts that overrun, outpace
and erase even the collected thoughts of history,
accelerating and breaking the boundaries of history and
another paradox  within this paradox that, " in the social
disequilibrium  between capital and labor, the logical
outcome was not collectivism, but anarchism." 

I would type up a few paragraphs from that fine essay by
Graham Benton in that Oklahoma City University Law Review,
"Thomas Pynchon and the Political Philosophy of Anarchism",
but I've got but one working hand here and I'm getting out
today, well only a short yo-yo to the Radiological Imaging
Center for tests, more tests, and tests, and forms and forms
and, but there is this beautiful vampire and her pricking
the bruised crotches of my atrophied arms always yields some
scarlet indulgences.  

In the dynamo I go, as natural as the sun, the nuclear
medicine, the scan of bone, profusion of lungs, radionuclide
cystogram, for reflux, scan these poems on the board, the
machine as natural as the sun and we expect to understand
one as little as the other. What a child! What babbling
futility, what ignorance, yes, sit down on the ivy league
steps and benches and turn and brood Fergus, what nonsense
we have allowed ourselves to teach our children, but we can
take some solace, some comfort, some passion to trudge as
towards a lover, to learn to place the heels just so,  if we
allow a metaphysical, a theological, a political history, a
sequence, some unity of natural force, but this history,
children of the 20th century,  belongs to the mechanical
force, oh century's child, "the whole consolidation of
mechanical force, which ruthlessly stamped out the life of
the class into which Adams was born, created monopolies
capable of controlling the new energies that America
adored." 

Blood, "sons and friends of the originals", bloody
situation, bloody Chiclitz, "they had been opponent once"
now doesn't that sound familiar, Enzian? 



           Motherless children have a hard time when mother
is dead, lord.
           Motherless children have a hard time when mother
is dead, lord.
           They don't have anywhere to go;
           Wandering around from door to door.
           Nobody treats you like a mother will when your
mother is dead, lord.