AD

[Dustin Iler]

Sidney Stencil on the period in which AD is said to be set . . .


" 'Which way does it go? As a youth I believed in social progress because I 
saw chances for personal progress of my own. Today, at age sixty, having 
gone as far as I'm about to, I see nothing but a dead end for myself, and if 
you're right, for my society as well. But then: suppose Sidney Stencil has 
remained constant after all--suppose instead sometime between 1859 and 1919, 
the world contracted a disease which no one ever took the trouble to 
diagnose because the symptoms were too subtle-- blending in with the events 
of history, no different one by one but altogether--fatal. This is how the 
public, you know, see the late war. As a new and rare disease which has now 
been curred (sic) and conquered for ever.' "

V. (Perrenial Classics) pg. 498


Against the Day, being set in this period and leading up to that cataclysmic 
event, promises to be the diagnosis.

I can't help but imagine Pycnhon rereading this passage and seeing himself 
as Sidney Stencil.

Any thoughts?

(And apologies if this has already been brought up)
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