Is it OK to be anachronistic?

[Jeremy Osner]

Michael Baum wrote:

> Well, yes, and no. It seems to me that it depends on how you parse Mr.
> Pynchon's original sentence. Specifically, the referent of "this". I
> originally read it to mean that the willful destruction of stocking
> frames had been going on since 1710, not the popular references to Ned
> Lud. The most immediate antecedent to the "this had been going on"
> phrase is the "whenever a stocking-frame was sabotaged" phrase, which
> lends support to that reading.

This reading seems most natural to me as well.

Jeremy