AtDDtA1: Darby Suckling

[Dave Monroe]

>From an offlist correspondent, with permission ...
-----
Darby Suckling:On the first page of text, page three actually, of
Pynchon's Against the Day, we are introduced to a character named
Darby Suckling, a "Chum of Chance."  With time we have come to
understand Pynchon's use of indicative naming, and how the names (and
half-names) of his characters often allude to names and half-names of
people (real and fictional), and carry with them the freight of the
periods and conflicts they lived through.  It seems we ought to be
able to decrypt Darby Suckling with alacrity.  When we scout down the
names, we find some model pairs become known as "Darby and Joan"
couples, that is, happily-married usually elderly types.  Reasoning
backwards, I think, a "darb" (a younger "Darby"?) is "one that is
extremely attractive or desirable."  As a "suckling" is "a young
unweaned animal," so is Darby Suckling an attractively young and but
unweaned (and hence a little wild) animal.  That's at the literal
level.

On the level of allusions, his last name reminds us of Sir John
(1609-1642) Suckling, an English "Cavalier poet."  This is not the
first Cavalier poet Pynchon alludes to.  In his 1964 short story, "The
Secret Integration," he mentions "the old Lovelace estate," an
allusion to Richard (1618-1657) Lovelace, another Cavalier poet.
We've seen how Pynchon sometimes has given us an allusion at the
beginning of a work, and another related allusion at the end of the
work, as if to say, "Yes.  That's the one I mean."  In Against the Day
he seems to be picking up some threads begun in earlier works, again,
as if to point us to those as areas he wants us to attend, again.  For
example, he quotes Thelonious Sphere Monk in the Epigraph that
precedes everything, and this reminds us of McClintic Sphere's role in
V., how the fictional Sphere stands in for the historical T. Sphere
Monk, and reminds us of Monk's real life relationship with the
Baroness Nica de Koenigwarter, another historical person whose
allegiances were with the losing side in another, more recent, war.

The Cavalier poets were a group of English poets associated with
Charles I and his exiled son.  Most of their work was done
between.1637-1660, the period of the English Civil Wars. Their poetry
presented the life, the manners and morals of upper-class, pre
Commonwealth court, mixing their real sophistication with their
equally real naïveté, their elegance in adherence to established
poetic forms with their sometimes double entendre raciness.  Writing
on the courtly themes of the day (beauty, love, and loyalty), they
produced finely finished verses, expressed with wit and directness.
The poetry reveals their indebtedness to both Ben Jonson (they were
sometimes called "The Sons Of Ben"), and churchman John Donne (himself
not above elaborate double entendres).  The leading Cavalier poets
were Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, and Thomas
Carew.

As poets these writers exhibited metaphysical wit, an instinct for the
almost Poundian concrete particular, for ambiguity, paradox and
surprise, half-concealed by smooth classical diction and elegance.
These poets were quite well-schooled and were not taken lightly as the
heirs of Jonson and Donne.  The English Civil Wars, however, so upset
the social order that these aristocratic young men were to fall upon
hard times.  In the end they were on the wrong side as the Monarchy
fell to the power of the Commonwealth.  While Lovelace and Suckling
lost what wealth they had, fell ill, and didn't manage to live long
lives, Herrick and Carew prospered and lived to great age.

In Pynchon's terms, Lovelace and Suckling had been victimized and
disinherited in this archetypal situation known as "transfer of
power."  If you want to view Mason & Dixon as a work that leaned away
from this major theme and investigated the relationship of two men
thrown together by chance; you might view Against the Day as a work
that returns to the eternal striving for power, the cost to the
society that endures such upheavals, and the cost to the families (the
patrician Vibes and the working class Traverses) victimized by them.
We are reminded that things haven't changed all that much since
Pynchon wrote "The Secret Integration," now over forty years ago.  And
just because he wrote Mason & Dixon, he isn't finished writing about
power, its use and abuse.  Things change.  It seems he wants to have
his say about how things look to him now.   If ever Pynchon gave us
"instructions" about how he wants us to read one of his books, it
looks like he's giving us a "heads-up" to pay attention to transfer of
power, disinheritance, the fate of the previous dynasty, and how such
conflict can lead to multi-generational feuds that can be
dysfunctional to large segments of our nation, now numbering over 300
million.
-----
Okay, time for lunch, or dinner, or at least a snack, so ...