re Heffalump, pigs, Pynchon

[pynchonoid]

[...] What was a Heffalump like?

        Was it Fierce?

        Did it come when you whistled? And how did it
come?

        Was it Fond of Pigs at all?

        If it was Fond of Pigs, did it make any
difference what sort of Pig?

        Supposing  it  was  Fierce with Pigs, would it
make any difference if the Pig  had  a  grandfather 
called  TRESPASSERS WILLIAM?[...]

<http://winnie-the-pooh.ru/stories/english/heffalump/>

William Pynchon is Thomas' colonial descendant, born
in Springfield, Essex, England on 11 October 1590.
[...]
<http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/ety.html#william>

"[William Slothrop] and his son John got a pig
operation going--used to drive hogs right back down
the great escarpment, back over the long pike to
Boston, drive them just like sheep or cows. By the
time they got to market those hogs were so skinny it
was hardly worth it, but William wasn't really in it
so much for the money as just for the trip itself. He
enjoyed the road [...] --and most of all just being
with those pigs. They were good company. Despite the
folklore and the injunctions in his own Bible, William
came to love their nobility and personal freedom,
their gift for finding comfort in the mud on a hot
day--pigs out on the road, in company together, were
everything Boston wasn't, and you can imagine what the
end of the journey, the weighing, slaughter and dreary
pigless return back up into the hills must've been
like for William." 555

"William must've been waiting for the one pig that
wouldn't die, that would validate all the ones who'd
had to, all his Gadarene swine who'd rushed into
extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but
by trust for men, which the men kept
betraying...possessed by innocence they couldn't
lose...by faith in William as another variety of pig,
at home with the Earth, sharing the same gift of
life...." 555

<http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/pigs.html>

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