mddm: story-telling-uncle

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

+ perhaps the following parallel exists just in my paranoid mind, but when i - a 
bottle of cherrycoke before me on the table - started to read henry adams' 
"mont-saint-michel and chartres" i was struck by the "preface" which is dated on 
december 1904. see for yourself:

"some old elizabethan play or poem contains the lines:---

        ... who reads me, when i am ashes,
        is my son is wishes .........

 the relationship, between reader and writer, of son and father, may have 
existed in queen elizabeth's time, but is much too close to be true for ours. 
the utmost that any writer could hope of his reader now is that they should 
consent to regard themselves as nephews, and even then he would expect only a 
more or less civil refusal from most of them. indeed, if he had reached a 
certain age, he would have observed that nephews, as a social class, no longer 
read at all, and that there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew 
reading his uncle. the exception tends rather to support the rule, since it 
needed a macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it. finally, the metre 
does not permit it. one may not say: 'who reads me, when i am ahes, is my nephew 
in wishes.'

 the same objections do not apply to the word 'niece'. the change restores the 
verse, and, to a very great degree, the fact. nieces have been known to read in 
early youth, and in some cases may have read their uncles. the relationship, 
too, is convenient and easy, capable of being anything or nothing, at the will 
of either party, like a mohammedan or polynesian or american marriage. no valid 
objection can be offered to this choice in the verse. niece let it be! 

 the following lines, then, are written for nieces, or for those who are 
willing, for those, to be nieces in wish. for convenience of travel in france, 
where hotels, in out-of-the-way places, are sometimes wanting in space as well 
as luxury, the nieces shall count as one only. as many more may come as like, 
but one niece is enough for the uncle to talk to, and one niece is much more 
likely than two to listen. one niece is also more likely to carry a kodak and 
take interest in it, since she has nothing else, except her uncle, to interest 
her, and instances occur when she takes interest neither in the uncle nor in the 
journey. one cannot assume, even in a niece, too emotional a nature, but one may 
assume a kodak.

 the party then, with such variations of detail as may suit its tastes, has 
sailed from new york, let us say, early in june for an entire summer in france. 
one pleasant june morning it has landed at cherbourg or havre and takes the 
train across normandy to pontorson, where, with the evening light, the tourists 
drive along the chaussee, over the sands or through the tide, till they stop at 
madame poulard's famous hotel within the gate of the mount.

 the uncle talks:---"


                                    now, pynchon certainly knows this passage, 
                                    but is it really of relevance to m&d's 
                                    narrative structure? 


 kfl *