Takeshi Re: ATD--How Does it Fit

[pynchonoid]

Somebody argued fiercely against the notion that
Takeshi in GR is the same as Takeshi in Vineland, if I
recall correctly, but seems safe to say that's
extreme.

Wonder when TRP first saw Godzilla?



--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> On 17/09/2006, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:
> 
> > 'The Japanese Insurance Adjustor'
> 
> Yes, the "Japanese Insurance Adjustor" is Takeshi in
> Vineland I think.
> 
> Isn't it also possible that what P. mentioned in
> passing as his 
> intentions in a letter over 40 ago years evolved
> somewhat in the 
> meantime. 

Would be surprised if they hadn't.


>I mean, he can't have envisioned Vineland
> back when the 
> letter was written because neither of the primary
> historical contexts 
> had yet occurred.
> 
> But Takeshi (Vineland's Takeshi) seems like he was
> part of a plan. (And 
> Takeshi is indeed a recurring character. Timewarped
> in with his magic 
> card on Kahuna Airlines from the Komikal Kamikazes
> show on the Tube in 
> GR).

Japan seems to have been on TRP's map for a long time.
I haven't gone back through V. to look - anybody
recall anything Japanese in there?


> 
> I agree that it's interesting to think of the
> writing process P. 
> undertakes. V. has always struck me as a series of
> short stories strung 
> into one another (very deftly and artfully), and
> perhaps the subsequent 
> works do the same sort of thing except with an
> extended scope and more 
> assured historical grounding.


This is the sort of thing where studying earlier
versions of a novel's manuscripts can help.  The
upcoming article on the material excised from an early

V. version should be enlightening.

I think Pynchon has a more elaborate big-picture
design than jbor suggests here, made obvious in the
planning, writing, and publishing, over several
decades, of several substantial and tightly
interconnected novels.  He's got character arcs that
span several novels already.  Clearly, he breaks his
novels into smaller elements (chapters, etc.) but this
"series of short stories" seems weak to me.

> 
> I'd be pretty sure one of Bodine's ancestors will
> have a naval role 
> somewhere in AtD. New recurrences: maybe one of
> Tchitcherine's or 
> Djabazev's (sp.) parents?
> 
> best
> 
> 

Takeshi's Father is probably one of the 
Western-educated Japanese at the turn of the 19th-20th
centuries, his son's tour as a kamikaze in WWII part
of his family's embrace of anti-Western Japanese
Imperialism....Takeshi's later reincarnation as a kind
of "New Age" figure in Vineland the continuing
Japanese cultural influence on the US. 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com