AtD 247 Spoiler (?)

[Dave Monroe]

"... the claim to what, by now, generations of
Sfinciuni, in a curious inertia of resentment, had
come to regard as theirs by right." (AtD, Pt. II, p.
247)


His constant theme, disinheritance." (Lot 49, Ch. 6,
p. 160)

>From Pierre-Yves Petillon, "A Re-Cognition of Her
Errand into the Wilderness," New Essays on The Crying
of Lot 49, Ed. Patrick O'Donnell (New York: Cambridge,
1991), pp. 127-70 ...

"... the whole concept of the Tristero seems to derive
linguistically from a reference in Eliot's The Waste
Land to 'le Prince d'Aquitaine a tour nobile' (line
430).  This line itself bears a cryptic reference to
Gerard de Nerval's poem 'El Deschidado,' in which most
of the major themes of the Tristero are sounded (the
exile into a shadowy, marginal world; the former
prince whose 'tower' has been 'abolished'; the 'black
sun of melancholia').  Nerval's poem, in turn, takes
its title from the motto on the shield of the
mysterious Disinherited Knight who turns up at the
beginning of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, and who will
eventually represent both the Saxons and the Jews
evicted from their estates by Norman chivalry.... 
Gravity's Rainbow will reveal how deeply interested in
such 'esoterica' Pynchon is: there the 'tour abolie'
of Nerval's poem--itself drawing on esoteric
lore--will be seen not only as a symbol of
disinheritnace, but also as the tower in the Tarot
pack, blown down by the Holy Ghost so that voices can
be heard--surely, in retrospect, a theme relevant to
The Crying of Lot 49...." (pp. 144-5)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=59035

Cf. Charles Hollander, "Pynchon's Inferno," Cornell
Alumni News (Nov. 1978): 24-30 ...

 The Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. with whom we are
concerned wasn’t born until the sordid and humiliating
drama of the Pynchon clan had been played out, 1937.
His father, Thomas Sr., is the grandnephew of the
president of Trinity College, for whom he was named.
Apparently Pynchon Sr. was never in the high-finance
circle of the Pynchon family. Rather, Pynchon Sr. was
an industrial surveyor by training, and worked for
engineering firms most of his adult life, or held
state engineering posts. For example, he was, for a
time, commissioner of roads for the town of Oyster
Bay, Long Island.

Although Thomas Jr. enjoyed the felicities of a middle
class upbringing, in his art Pynchon's sympathies are
repeatedly with the losers, the victims, the
disinherited, and this preoccupation began with his
earliest writings...

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

However, note as well Charles Hollander, "Pynchon's
Politics: The Presence of an Absence," Pynchon Notes
26-27 (Spring-Fall 1990): 5-59 ...

Pynchon's writing evokes the dispossessed heirs of the
old American dynasty based on steel, coal, and
railroads. He writes much as Faulkner wrote for the
dispossessed heirs of the agrarian South. But, as
Faulkner attributed evil to the carpetbagging agents
of the industrial North (J. P. Morgan as villain),
Pynchon attributes evil to the agents of the new
multinational, petrochemical dynasty (J. P. Morgan as
victim)....

http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm#chap_2

http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm

You gotta be inherited first to be disinherited ...

Meanwhile ...

Sfinciuni (also spelled Sfincioni) is the Sicilian
member of the Italian flatbread family.... The name of
this dish, sfinciuni, probably comes, as many Sicilian
terms do, from the Arab. The original Arab isfang,
meaning fried sweet, became the Sicilian sfingia which
took up the meaning of something soft and spongy.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sfinciuno_Itinerary

Sfinciuni means "old woman's face" in Sicilian,
probably because the finished bread looks wrinkled....

http://www.nola.com/food/t-p/recipes.ssf?anchovy_bread.html


 
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