vv: is stencil to benny like stephen to bloom?

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

meine wenigkeit:

>                                         re: pynchon's anxiety of influence
>
>  in its internal construction the novel v resembles the novel ulysses through 
>  the male constellation (though in v this relation has, in contrary to
>  ulysses, 
>  no connotations of father- & sonship). like stephen, stencil is an educated 
>  person with ambitions. and bloom is, like benny, a profane man. in both
>  books 
>  the two men, though they meet, are most of the time seperated of each other.
>  in 
>  both books this male constellation works as a primary integrating structure.


   "both are drifting on the sea, helplessly at the mercy of modern life's 
    counter-streamings: - the average man staggering between shabby ambition    
    and gloomy frustration, the artist who is obsessed by the contradictions of 
    his own person and his special profession."
 
     (harry levin: james joyce [1960]; re-translation from the german edition,  
                                                                    p. 153) 

 kfl //:: ps: in bloomian terms (harold that is), one could call pynchon's way 
          of dealing with the anxiety of influence in this special case: 
          "kenosis" (see "the anxiety of influence" (1973], chapter 3).