MDDM Washington, Gershom, Great Dismal Swamp

[jbor]

on 7/7/02 9:34 AM, Simon Bryquer at sbryquer at worldnet.att.net wrote:

> Personally I believe he named him after Gershom Scholem, the
> scholar/teacher/writer and world's foremost authority of Jewish mysticism
> who devoted his life to the academic study of the Kabbalah. His work  on the
> Sabbatai Svi especially and the Sabbatian heresy might shed some interesting
> light on this issue. Anyway as I said I think that was the first creative
> spark for  a name.  He started with Scholem and then worked backwards into
> American history records of the time to find a Gershom and your reference
> fits in here.


Yes, that has been one suggestion I believe. I'm not sure what it is that
Pynchon's text is purportedly saying about Gershom Scholem and his works,
however, but I'm not discounting that it is saying something about these.

http://www.digiserve.com/mystic/Jewish/Scholem_1/

But it seems more likely to me that Pynchon found the name of Gershom Nimmo
in the historical record, and then developed the fictional characterisation
of GW's manservant from there. Note that Colonel Byrd's Journal is
specifically referred to in Pynchon's text (by young Thomas Jefferson at
395-6), and the connections - Gershom Nimmo was the surveyor chosen by
Washington to chart the Great Dismal Swamp - are pretty solid. I think that
the name "Gershom" is less uncommon (in colonial America particularly) than
has been supposed (just like the Hungarian name "Zsuzsa"). I guess all I'm
suggesting is that in naming this character Pynchon might have started from
the historical Gershom Nimmo.

http://www.norfolkhistorical.org/highlights/14.html

http://www.webroots.org/library/usahist/dotds000.html

The salient fact which I take from the historical record here is that GW
employed a Jewish, or Jewish-descendant, surveyor. Again, it is George's
(religious/ethnic) tolerance and liberalism which is foregrounded in this
historical detail, and which Pynchon's text might be alluding to in building
up the characterisation.

There's also an earlier Levi ben Gershom and a Rabbenu Gershom as well:

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/mason-dixon/extra/gershom.html

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/RabbenuGershom.html

best