banker stereotype

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

From: "Monte Davis" <monte.davis@[omitted]> 
Subject: RE: Leon Thomas /interface / Benton article on anarchism in P-Notes 
To: <pynchon-l@[omitted]> 

>> How can a bunch of boring old golfers in suits so totally dominate 
>> truly clever and worthwhile people...

>If you really believe that caricature, I think your question contains its
>answer.

one doesn't believe caricatures, does one?
I was still riffing on the "I hate banks" theme.

Nonetheless, if you allow me credit (not, in the process, becoming
a boring old golfer, of course) for two senses behind my expostulations,  it's also in one sense a shorthand for that underestimation
of the forces of reaction - both their capabilities and their nastiness,
as revealed in the business history of Gustavus Myers, showing the
adroit cruelty with which these men made their money (and competed just
as viciously with each other, playing with railroads* as if they were
toys of a spoiled child; or more pertinently in the case of IG Farben,
how Prescott Bush and the Brown Brothers themselves were caught short
by the Depression and bailed out at the cost of permanent indebtedness
to the real eminence grise, Harriman, so that even if they did have
some qualms about building Hitler's war machine, they couldn't act on them
without personal sacrifice, or with any hope that somebody else wouldn't hop
 on to replace them and do the same) - that casual ease with which early
anarchists believed the order of things could be overthrown, was one of
the things that led them astray. 

The other sense, then, would be the idea of personal mentorship and the
craving for it shown in AtD (Kit at Yale seeing how older men would
seek out certain boys on the playing fields and bond with them, and
inwardly lamenting that he would never be so chosen -- though in fact
he HAD been chosen is what kills me) and in Pirate's attitude in GR (he wants Their rough love) - the sort of preterition that one in fact chooses
through thinking one has no choice; underestimating the capabilities
for help that bankers, and others possessed of unfair advantages,
can offer if one isn't busy being oppressed by them. That in fact,
the reliability of banks, combined with the personal attention of
a banker (acting on one's behalf instead of toward one's ruin)
is an attractive thing indeed.

But still, seeing the situation as if for the 1st time, from afar,
through a glass darkly, it's like, you've got all these capable people
and these boring old banker guys set them killing each other off,
to make their bank accounts bigger.  Boring goal. Vicious goal.
Then they sail around on their boring yachts, go to their boring
segregated country clubs, count their boring money.  Bleaugh.

*railroads, mines, governments, utilities all reduced to ink on paper
that somebody could "own" and abuse with impunity.  Enforced by
bought courts and bought shootists.  Radix malorum est cupiditas.

Nevertheless, seek and ye shall find.  Hate, revenge, violence, they
are not in my program (ill-defined though it be, I take pains to
leave them out of it) and poor old JP Morgan with his rosaceae
playing patience (boring?) has my sympathy.  Young John Rockefeller,
spied by his secretary in his first flush of wealth, dancing in
his office and singing "I'm going to be rich" - well, I can't 
claim to love him, but maybe I can believe God does.