Railroads & steel and harsh technologies and nonfictional ideas (legal ramblings, really)
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Sun Nov 11 08:00:41 CST 2007
Against the Day is the height of the Pynchon era.
They were America's Ancien Régime, Railroads and Power & Light
during the Peak of Art Nouveau, They were 'Them' and now they're nothing.
The Pynchons belong in the history books like the -------- are in
history books, but it's real hard to find any. . . . Interesting, eh?
If you look up Pynchon in some of these search engines,
sometimes 'Pynchon vs. Stearns'---the 'Waste' law---is
what comes up most often.
That points to real estate. Something the Pynchons had a great
interest in. In truth, particularly considering the time zone of the
book---1893-192?--- AtD must be of great importance to the Pynchon
Dynasty. Revisionist history is required simply in order to have
available a history of the Pynchon Clan, just for correspondences
to genealogy. But in a way, it feels like the Pynchon story was erased.
Against the Day starts in the Chicago exposition of 1893, and ends in the early
Twenties. Gravity's Rainbow's narrative line seems to contained to 1945, but the
back story keeps popping up, so the characters in Gravity's Rainbow remember
that past. With Gravity's Rainbow, we start in a train and end in a movie
theater.. Pynchon & company started in and around the the early 1890's and went
down with General Theater and the fall of Fox films in 1931. Railroads and land
aquisition/leasing were at the heart of the Pynchon empire. Pynchco also had
investments in power companies. Pynchon & Co. invested in Thomas A. Edison, for
what it's worth. My work on finding out what sort of properties,
businesses and public displays of wealth concerning Pynchon & co.. will take
quite a bit of time. . . .
. . . .real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in
his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled
enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead
eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as
drunk as possible. . . .
. . . ., as Oedipa Maas can tell you, that's a lot of stuff to inventory. Like
where are all the missing property deeds from Pynchco, did BBH soak up the
assets and burn all the papers? Who is BBH? BBH is Brown Brothers
Harriman. You can look it up, I won't bore you with details now. Just try and
understand that BBH went up as Pynchco went down. There is a major slice
of American history right there that you won't find even in Zinn's "A People's
History of the United States."
Against the Day is the rise of the Pynchon empire. The CoC heads off to
Chicago, where Raymond Pynchon & Co. will start up in 1895. There is a George M.
Pynchon and George M. Pynchon Jr., the sort that finds yachting to their liking,
living in high style (possibly up in Scarsdale, but definately in a neighborhood
of similar per-capita income level. The Pynchons of Old New York were a family
right out of
'The Great Gatsby'. Doubtless there's a non-fictional Gatsby, whose tale would
un-skein the whole tapestry. Maybe that elusive admixture of the Corporate and
the Criminal would one day rise to the top? Who knows? So much of the evidence
appears to be missing. . . .
The Operation moved to New York, It got bigger.. Pynchon and Company was in
competition with the Brown Brothers and the Harriman co. And again I'll note
that the consolidation of the two aforementioned enterprises into what is now
BBH, the world's largest investment banker, occured in 1931 just as Fox Films,
Fox Film and General Theatres Equipment, Inc. and Pynchon and Company went
under.
The Pynchons made heaps of money off the railroad. You can imagine the way that
struck young Tom. Always in Pynchon we find more of looking at two sides for
these topics because Tom is on both sides of these situations. Brought up
on enough money to make it to Cornell, but nothing like George
M., who was raking it in. Knows he comes from one of the great American
families, whose history comes up missing in Libraries and Schools. But there's
just enough online to see a pattern, something about Traversing the Web that
would. . . .
I'll attach a series of links at the bottom, you can look it up.
from Mark Kohut:
David,
Well, as one who has stated often the 'anti-railway'
observation, I want to defend it while also agreeing
with your larger very smart near-essay below.
I think that all of the anti-railroad remarks in AtD show
that TRP does feel---as an abstraction, as a larger theme---
the way the wilderness is bridled, carved up and enslaved.
But I would argue he sees almost nothing good in railroads
in AtD and makes thta clear as anembodiment of lots of
larger themes/abstractions.....
1) owned by the powerful
2) Used largely for commercial/military reasons
3) Iron and steel---the 'revolution' [industrial revolution] he
dislikes massively
4) yes, despoiling, carving up our 'free ranges"
Yes, power relationships are a deeper "abstract" theme in his works,
but I might argue that, as AtD is about historical forces, the
railroad---less intensely than the Rocket but echoingly---embodies
much that TRP feels went wrong, is wrong,with the "modern world".
P.S. No, I don't think he likes cars---remember Rachel's "love for a
thing--her MG in V.?; admittedly not on cars per se--- as we know
he doesn't like photography----and embodies his deep abstract i
deas about, in his fiction.
Among other things, his fiction is those incredible embodied
metaphors within to-the-limit over the top scenes that
all mean more than most parsing of them, no?
Michael Bailey:
If (which I'm not totally sure in the kishkas, but there is textual
evidence) if Pynchon is anti-railway, it's certainly not without
justification: noisy, polluting, laying steel tracks across ley
lines, scaring wildlife...
David Morris:
Saying that Pynchon is "anti-railway" makes me cringe a little.
This is way too simplistic an equation. Pynchon's novels examine
power relationships, and these relationships are constantly shifting.
As a part of his examinations of power structures he idealizes the
untamed/unregulated "wilderness," and sees how it is bridled, carved
up, and enslaved. Railways are only a component of this dynamic. Not
inherently "bad" (Really, do you think he likes cars better? Maybe
horses?), but a potential force used to control and take possession
of what was formerly free. See this quote from GR (courtesy of
Quail's "Modern Word") to see what he's really getting at. Remember,
Pynchon loves abstractions, and taking anything literally is usually a
disservice to the intended depths of consideration:
"In the days of the gauchos, my country was a blank piece of paper.
The pampas stretched as far as men could imagine, inexhaustible,
fenceless. Wherever the gaucho could ride, that place belonged to him.
But Buenos Aires sought hegemony over the provinces. All those
neuroses about property gathered strength, and began to infect the
countryside. Fences went up, and the gaucho became less free. It is
our national tragedy. We are obsessed by labyrinths, where before
there was the open plain and sky. To draw ever more complex patterns
on the blank sheet. We cannot abide the openness: it is terror to us.
Look at Borges. Look at the suburbs of Buenos Aires. The tyrant Rosas
has been dead a century, but his cult flourishes. Beneath the city
streets, the warrens of rooms and corridors, the fences and the
networks of steel track, the Argentine heart, in its perversity and
guilt, longs for a return to that first unscribbled serenity . . .
that anarchic oneness of pampas and sky. . . . "
--Gravity's Rainbow V264/B307
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122441&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122413&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122426&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122443&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122446&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122526&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122527&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122567&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122474&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122468&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122467&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122464&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122449&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122562&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122571&sort=date
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0711&msg=122304&sort=date
Got to go back to Foley Walker and learn
about Harriman & Co on that thread.
Vague in my head.
Now first off, a foley artist literally follows in the footsteps of. . . .
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH) is the oldest and largest partnership bank
in the United States. The firm has 40 partners and employs over 3,500 people in
eight domestic and seven overseas locations. The firm currently oversees $44
billion in client assets, including over $16 billion for families and
individuals.
In addition to a full range of commercial banking facilities, the firm is among
the leading providers of global custody, foreign exchange, private equity,
merger and acquisition services, investment management for individuals and
institutions, personal trust & estate administration and securities brokerage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Brothers_Harriman_&_Co.
Brown Bros. & Co. was founded in 1818 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a
merchant bank and trading company by George and John Brown, sons of
former Ulster linen trader Alexander Brown (1764—1834). In
1825, third son James Brown (1791—1877) opened an office in New York City and
another in Boston, Massachusetts in 1845. James Brown's son, John Crosby Brown
(1838—1909) would be a driving force for growth, making Wall Street in New York
the center for operations and seeing the bank become major lenders to the
textile, commodities, and transportation industries.
In 1931, the firm merged with Harriman Brothers and Company, another Wall Street
firm owned by W. Averell Harriman and E. Roland Harriman to form Brown Brothers
Harriman & Co..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Bros._%26_Co.
http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/EntityDisplay.php?Entity=WAHarrimanCo
http://tinyurl.com/ytnm86
The Missouri financier
It was 1903, and George Herbert Walker was well on his way toward building a
fortune and an extended family that would spawn a senator, two governors, and
two presidents. A tough bear of a man, a Missouri heavyweight boxing champion
who frequently fought and sometimes pummeled his own sons, who liked his Scotch
and his racehorses, Walker lived a gilded life in the grandest style.
As the genius behind the successful investment firm he founded and ran mostly by
himself - G.H. Walker and Co. of St. Louis - Walker not only maintained the
''Walker's Point'' estate in Kennebunkport, but also a New York mansion on Long
Island, a stunning residence at One Sutton Place in Manhattan, and a 10,000-acre
hunting preserve called Duncannon in South Carolina. There were servants,
perhaps 15 of them, a yacht, and, when needed, a private train. He
believed in these things : golf, hunting, drinking, horses, gambling, a
boat named Tomboy, and, eventually, a son-in-law named Prescott Bush.
George Herbert Walker was supposed to have led a much different life: His
Scottish Catholic family had planned for him to be a priest. But when his
parents sent him to England to prepare for the priesthood, Walker rebelled.
''As a result of that stern schooling, he grew to hate Catholicism and married a
Protestant,'' Dorothy Walker, his daughter and the president's grandmother, said
in a 1980 family history. Walker's family ''was so upset he married a
non-Catholic that they did not attend their wedding,'' she said.
The clash with Catholicism would play a role in the presidential campaigns of
former President Bush, an Episcopalian, and President Bush, a Methodist, both of
whom struggled to get the Catholic vote.
By all accounts, George Herbert Walker inspired awe and fear even among those
closest to him, including his wife. ''He was a tough father, a tough old
bastard,''
said one of his grandchildren, Elsie Walker. ''There really
wasn't a lot of love on the part of the boys for their father.''
A private man who disliked being photographed, Walker nonetheless maintained a
high profile. When a friend named Dwight Davis established the Davis Cup for
tennis, Walker decided to do the same for golf. The Walker Cup competition
between amateur US and British teams is still known as one of the preeminent
golfing tournaments.
http://www.angelfire.com/hi3/pearly/htmls2/bush-dynasty.html
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