Wicks the Elder & His Story

[public domain]

The first example ("as Planets do the Sun…" page 95)
is from "Unpublished Sermons." It doesn't provide much
support for the characterizing young Wicks as pompous
or petulant or polemical, but it is a bit muddled. I
can't quite make out the transition from our feeling
God's love and "gravity" to the last line where he
says, "Surely if a Planet be a living Creature…"
However, the idea that Planets are living creatures is
a common enough one in Pynchon's novels and is a major
motif in this one too. I assume that Wicks connects
the dots or the planets and stars and maybe even the
entire universe in the sermon, but having only this
fragment I can't be sure of that. 


The second example ("In their Decadency these
Virginians…." page 275) provides good evidence of
Wicks' pompousness and petulancy.  However, his
description of the Virginians  practicing some form of
Courtly Love in Decadency and being sucked into some
fantasy world pretending to an aristocracy it has only
heard rumors of must give us pause. There is surely
quite a bit of truth in what he says. We are reminded
that in Pynchon's novels (specifically V. and GR,
Decadence and Courtly Love carry as much weight as
Entropy and Gravity). Moreover, the story itself, if
not the storyteller, can't quite distinguish Folly
from the substantial world or even from the book or
books inside and outside of it from history. To
example number 3. 


"Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,-Tops and
Hoops, forever a-spin.... Alas, the Historian may
indulge no such idle Rotating.
History is not Chronology, for that is left to
lawyers,-nor is Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs
to the People. History can as little
pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power
of the other,-her Practitioners, to survive, must soon
learn the arts of the quidnunc,
spy and Taproom Wit,-that there may ever continue more
than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day,
losing our forbears in
forever,- not a Chain of single Links, for one broken
Link could lose us All,-rather, a great disorderly
Tangle of Lines, long and short,
weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep,
with only their Destination in common." (p.349)

If you are still reading this….want to hear but
another comment on this passage do ya? ah, why not?  
Well, so much has been already said, but most of it
says something about the argument that fills the
chapter, an argument about history and fiction and so
on. Actually, it not clear to me that this piece
functions as a traditional motto or epigraph, it seems
to part of the conversation here in chapter 35, but
there is no direct reference to it by any involved. In
fact, while the piece is called Christ and History, it
is probably another unpublished or undelivered sermon
and we don't have any evidence that anyone has heard
or read any of these. That being said, they are as
much a part of the novel's conversation as any thing
else and the ideas and themes are discussed throughout
the novel. So much that is discussed is only probable,
possible, would have been, if they had this talk,
subjunctive, likely to have been said, or a
conversation between Benny and one of those guys SHOCK
or SHROUD. Nothing very pompous about this piece.
Critics love it and many have tried to string together
a Pynchon theory of history from it. The conversation
that follows does more to characterize old Wicks than
young Wicks. We could say the old man is a bit
petulant, a bit polemical, although I admire his
obstinacy here, how is one to deal with Uncle Ives on
these matters. Also, this piece is not muddled, at
least I don't find it muddled. 

PD & B 


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