A little on the Stearns's a LOT on Pynchons

[Michael Bailey]

> and I have a waning vivaciousness about, the Stearns stuff, making this an
> inconclusive breadcrumb trail.

interesting, though.   Appreciate the work you've done...
the bio-background seems like a fertile field to be improving -
it stretches back & back, too...

this page http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_biography.html
mentions that there was a Pinco back in 1066 who was
part of the William the Conqueror political machine,

Got to sometime find out what a
"Per bend argent and sable
Three roundels with a border engrailed
All counter changed--
The crest, a tiger's head erased argent" looks like.

I found a book called "Matthews American Armoury and Blue Book"
printed in 1907 which has the Pynchon coat of arms in it ---
(no Baileys, not a one (-;) --- but not on a viewable snippet.

I like the image of the Pynchon clan throwing snowballs
and the desk with many drawers...where'd you learn about the
glass pitcher hand-blown, though?  or is that also in M&D and I missed it?

As you pointed out in one of the posts, "the reason other people
had so little land was that [people like Pynchons & Stearns] had so
much..."  - that social hierarchy, which many a Pynchon fan
is prone to question & find serious flaws with...

Contrarianly, it might be fun to try to trace
a crypto-Burkean-conservatism in the oeuvre.
I think such a theme could be written, but handily refuted.

...likewise it'd be more likely to find a rapprochement than
a continuation of enmity in the work of latter day Stearns (Eliot)
and TRP...or would it?  Maybe the obvious disagreement of
Lardass Levine with Eliot's position on rain signifies a continuation
of the dispute over water resources?!


Mike Bailey
"they seek him here, they seek him there,
his clothes are loud, but never square" - Kinks, Dedicated Follower of Fashion