ATDTDA (2): J. (P)ierpont Morgan (33.27)

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

In his earliest short stories Pynchon creates an absence 
of overt political thought or commentary, all the while walking 
on the eggshells of politicized allusions—a trick he will use for 
the next thirty years.

In April 1929, Pynchon & Co. announced they would open a 
new Chicago office. By December 1929, after October 24, Black 
Thursday of the stock market crash, the firm had suffered 
noticeable reversals. The Times reported that Mrs. Harold 
Pynchon had to get an injunction to prevent Pynchon & Co. 
from selling her personal stock to pay the debt of her husband, 
a high–ranking executive in the firm. The senior Partner, 
George M. Pynchon, tried desperately to come up with some 
Technical breakthrough to stem the tide. In 1930, he backed 
experiments with a "diesel electric" boat and a "glider boat." 
Alas, neither paid off. By April 1931, the firm was suspended 
from the New York Stock Exchange and went into receivership. 
The Irving Trust Co. took Charge as receiver. According to the 
financial historian Ferdinand Lundberg, the Irving Trust Co. 
was a bank in the Morgan–DuPont sphere at the time.

Pynchon & Co. was one of the largest brokerages in the country, 
the largest ever to have been suspended from the NYSE 
( New York Times 25 Apr. 1931). The day after the NYSE 
announced the Suspension of Pynchon & Co., the Times 
noted a drop in the stock value of U.S. Steel and Johns 
Manville (26 Apr. 1931) — two firms closely associated 
with J. P. Morgan.

The Times’s financial writer analyzed Pynchon & Co.’s 
difficulties as due to its involvement, together with the Chase 
Securities Corporation, in Fox Film and General Theaters. The 
final blow came when the Fox stock feil under attack and its
 value was driven down by large scale selling—dumping. 
According to Upton Sinclair’s Upton Sinclair Presents William 
Fox (1933), the Chase Bank was instrumental in the fall of 
Fox Films, to that time "the largest industrial failure in the 
history of American affairs." Sinclair goes into excruciating 
detail, concluding that the deal which forced Pynchon & Co. 
into receivership was "a terrible trap." In America’s Sixty 
Families (1937), Lundberg describes the affair as "another of 
the many unsavory episodes in which the Chase Bank [later 
to become the Chase Manhattan] took the leading role." 
Sinclair also points out that "The only two bankers in New York 
who showed sympathy for our Fox [were] Edward Rothschild 
of the Chelsea Bank, and Bernard Marcus of the Bank of the 
United States." Note the Rockefeller bank on one side, the 
Rothschild banks on the other. An official spokesman for the 
Chase Bank told the Times the Chase "was merely in the 
Position of being one of the numerous creditors of the firm 
[Pynchon & Co.], but had no special interest in its affairs," 
expressing what sounds rather like the pro forma disinterest 
of a vengeful divorcée asked about an ex–spouse’s setbacks.

In March 1932, Pynchon & Co. had liabilities of $19.7 million 
and assets of but $12.8 million, the Times reported. These were not
inconsequential sums when a new Chevrolet cost about $600. 
Pynchon & Co. went under, and there was much subsequent 
scandal. One Mrs. Helen Delany Pynchon made news in 1931, 
saved from a jail term by the beneficence of her former employer, 
mining engineer Raymond Brooks, when she was convicted of 
robbing him of $45,000. Later the George M. Pynchon estate would 
be sold and — no end o ignominy — its furniture dispersed at public 
auction. From contemplating the world’s electric power needs to the 
equivalent of a garage sale. Still later, in 1939, a Spanish nobleman 
was awarded almost $90,000 in a suit for illegal stock–conversion 
against twenty–two former partners of Pynchon & Co. Perhaps it was 
in part as a consequence of such humiliation that George M. Pynchon, 
Jr., committed suicide in 1940 in the stables of his Long Island estate.

>From the stock market’s reaction to the failure of Pynchon & Co., and t
he use of the Irving Trust Co. as receiver, we can infer that the firm w
as a Morgan satrap. The Pynchons appear to have used to advantage 
all their family associations with the J. P. Morgan group, with whom 
they had shared common interests for three hundred years, since 
the founding of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Yet as the J. P. 
Morgan influence ebbed, the Morgan associates suffered as well. 
Once again the Pynchons had thrown their lot in with the loyalists and lost.

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., was not born until the sordid humiliation 
of Pynchon & Co. had been nearly played out: 1937. His father, Thomas 
Sr., is the grandnephew of the President of Trinity College (for whom he 
was named), the one who wrote Hawthorne. Apparently Pynchon Sr. 
was never in the high–finance circle of the family. An industrial surveyor, 
he worked for engineering firms or held local government engineering 
posts most of his working life. For several years he was Superintendent 
of Highways for the Town of Oyster Bay, Long Island, until he was 
appointed Supervisor by the Town Board in 1962. Oyster Bay was where 
his son, our author, attended high school.

To know Pynchon is to know his family’s history, his passion for history 
and historical method, and to see how political consciousness of a historical 
kind becomes central to Pynchon’s aesthetic, becomes one of Pynchon’s 
penchants. 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.ottosell.de/pynchon/ppolitics.htm

The Morgan Curtails Access to a Trove Of Pynchon Letters
By MEL GUSSOW
Trove of Thomas Pynchon letters--most highly prized item in 
Carter Burden collection of American literature given last month to 
Pierpont Morgan Library by Burden family--will not be open to 
scholars during Pynchon's lifetime; Susan Burden, Carter Burden's 
widow, says change in bequest is a response to Pynchon's 
objections about having his private correspondence available to public
March 21, 1998

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/morgan_library/index.html?query=PYNCHON,%20THOMAS&field=per&match=exact

Under the black humor, under the parody of manners, Pynchon 
is evoking a genuine dread that there have been times in history, 
and the present seems to be one, when cadres of coordinated 
assassins act in the everyday scheme of things.

In his apparent schema, paranoia should be preceded by 
feelings of disinheritance. Actually Pynchon does feel somewhat 
disinherited. Pynchon’s family is a clan of bluebloods who were 
misguided enough to align themselves with the wrong side during 
not one, but two American Revolutions, one in the eighteenth 
century and one in the twentieth century, and who have suffered 
social and economic reversals as a consequence.

In a commentary in Water’s Genealogical Gleanings (London, 1901), 
it is noted that from William Pynchon’s son John “are descended all 
who bear that name in America.” John Pynchon became, along with 
the Morgans, one of the richest men in New England. One of his 
descendants, Joseph Pynchon, was groomed to become governor 
of Connecticut and would have been had he not been loyal to the 
Crown. The first Thomas Ruggles Pynchon was a physician during 
the Revolutionary period. His nineteenth century descendent, the 
Rev. Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, was a chemist and an educator, 
eventually becoming president of Trinity College of Hartford.

In more recent times there was a rather prominent stock brokerage 
called Pynchon & Co. This house was frequently mentioned by the 
New York Times during the ‘20s and ‘30s. The Times frequently 
published abstracts of prestigious Pynchon & Co. publications 
just as they publish abstracts of the studies of Merrill Lynch today. 
The titles ranged through such topics as might be of interest to 
investors: The Aviation Industry (1928, 1929), Survey of Public 
Utilities (1928), The Gas Industry (1928), and the ambitious 
Electric Light and Power: A Survey of World Development (1930). 
The firm was obviously well connected and enjoyed great favor. 
They had offices in New York (3), Chicago (2), Milwaukee, Battle 
Creek, London (2), Liverpool, and Paris. They were one of the 
largest brokerages in the country, if not the world. When Pynchon 
& Co. talked, people listened; they were, in a word, influential.

In April 1929, Pynchon & Co. announced they would be opening a 
new Chicago office. By December 1929, after October 24 or the 
Black Thursday of the stock market crash, the firm had had 
noticeable reversals. The Times reported that Mrs. Harold Pynchon 
had to get an injunction to prevent Pynchon & Co. from selling her 
personal stock to pay the debt of her husband, a high ranking executive 
in the firm. The senior partner, George M. Pynchon, tried desperately 
to come up with some technological breakthrough to stem the tide. In 1
930 he backed experiments with a “Diesel electric” boat, and a “glider 
boat.” Neither paid off. By April 1931 the firm was suspended from the 
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and went into receivership. The 
Irving Trust Co. took charge as receiver. According to the respected 
financial historian, Ferdinand Lundberg, the Irving Trust Co. was a 
bank in the Morgan-DuPont sphere at the time.

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