ATDTDA (7): 197-198 decoding

Lawrence Bryan lebryan at speakeasy.org
Thu Apr 26 12:33:26 CDT 2007


A few years ago I was teaching in the national university of the UAE.  
One of the male students brought up the fact that he could have three  
wives while I could only have one. I asked him if all the men there  
could have three wives. He said yes. Then I asked him,  "Where do all  
the extra women came from?"

"Huh?"

"Since there are about as many girls as boy born, where do all the  
extra girls come from?"

He looked at me, frowned, and for the first time in his young life  
realized the math didn't quite add up. He actually seemed quite  
shaken by this revelation as he slowly walked away.

Lawrence

On Apr 26, 2007, at 6:21 AM, bekah wrote:

In 1890, likely for political reasons,  the Mormons approved a   
Manifesto which ended polygamy as official doctrine  but polygamy  
continued to be practiced.   While most Mormons accepted monogamy,   
many didn't or it took a lot of time, and some of the highest placed  
Apostles left the church but others stayed on with secret families.

So Utah got to become a State in 1896.   In 1898 they elected H.R.  
Roberts to the US House but he had to leave office in 1900 due to his  
polygamy.  Reed Smoot, a monogamist,  was elected to the Senate in  
1903 and after the Smoot Hearings,  was allowed to stay (many years).

The Mormon apostles mentioned on page 198 are probably just  
polygamous Mormons with multiple wives who were living in the  
"Jeshimon" area of Utah and Deuce is telling Webb how good he can  
have it there even after death.

Bekah



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20070426/9f632e8d/attachment.html>


More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list