Book of Revelations

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

              Robin :
              My understanding is that Thomas Pynchon's 
              family tree is full of heretics. My reading of the 
              author's writings indicates that Mr. Pynchon's
              literary output is profoundly heretical, and 
              requires understanding of some rather occult 
              goings on. Some of the pages of GR are either 
              quotes from or magical actions derived from 
              A.E. Waite's book of black magic. My advice is 
              that you should proceed with extreme caution.

              Friend Tom:
              I mentioned that I know a lot because I've been 
              studying this Pynchon Phenomenon for many 
              days now, even a week or longer if the truth be told. 

On the tree of life, Temperance [called Art in the Thoth Tarot Deck]
is the card closest to the center of the tree. One might call it an angel's
p.o.v. Click on the various trees of life to expand the view.

http://tinyurl.com/2b6xyh

              When you have a connection with the Soul’s Voice 
              it is possible to participate in creation with a greater 
              feeling of peace and humble confidence than you 
              would if you simply relied on the physical mind 
              and the emotions. 

http://apocalypsenever.wordpress.com/2007/02/
http://www.aiwaz.net/a11

Reading Against the Day for the first time, I rapidly tagged pages 
with a color code that encompassed various themes in Pynchon's 
writing. Green for Anarchism, Purple for the spiritual [those meet 
in the realm of the heretical, like 'Pan's Labyrinth']. Yellow for jokes,
Orange for Music & Song. Red for blood or literary brilliance and 
Pink for anything that reminded me of The Crying of Lot 49, the one 
book of all books I've read the most times.I sensed that Oedipa's 
investigation into the estate of Pierce Inverarity was overgrown
with coded messages. That code appears again, right at the very 
start of the Chums adventures, when Miles trips over the picnic 
basket. That 'Organization' alluded to is a parody version of the 
elephant in the room, Thomas' Pynchon's 80000 lb. gorilla, 
King Kong himself, Pynchon & Company.

If you allow me to back up the view a bit, we can observe at a number of very 
pertinent themes found in all of Pynchon's books. We find Calvinists, Heretics, 
Real Estate Moguls, Inventors, Surveyors, Scientists and more.

Allusions that are confusing, puns like "For DeMille, young fur-henchmen 
can't be rowing," seems like total [albiet hilarious] nonsense. Until we learn 
that Springfield founder William Pynchon ran the mills and was a renown 
fur-trader, among other seriously interesting things.

The elephant in the room is the Pynchon Family itself, we could have tripped 
over it if only we looked, and years ago too. The beginning of the twenties, 
when the Chums sign the agreement with 'the Girls' is where free access to 
the New York Times archive ends with a December 29th notice on 
upcoming Debutante's ball: http://tinyurl.com/23wbrq

Someone told me that a lot of the answers I was looking for are in 'Upton 
Sinclair Presents William Fox'. My copy arrived. I have yet to read the book, 
as it only arrived yesterday, but I did pick up 'The Talkies: American 
Cinema's Transition To Sound 1926-1931' by Donald Crafton, a book first 
published by Charles Scribner's Sons, later re-printed by the University of 
California Press. I've said elsewhere that High-Fidelity as we now know it 
was created in Nazi Germany, but the first important developments came 
out of developing 'Talkies'. Those developments include finding ways of 
getting sync between image and sound and the first condenser microphones.
To get there, the disc had to be abandoned for the optical track, a development 
of Fox Films. General Theaters Equipment was setting up theaters for talkies
using the Fox system. Upton Sinclair continues:

. . . .the deal for the Marketing of 433,000 shares of General Theaters 
Equipment stock at $48.50 a share: the Chase Bank "held the bag" for this 
also, and two great firms were wrecked by it . One was West & Co. of 
Philadelphia, one of the oldest banking-houses in the country, having 
been organized one year after the signing of the Declaration of 
Independence. The other was Pynchon & Co. of New York. This firm had 
twenty-eight partners, all of them men of wealth and most of them men 
of family. The firm had $20,000,000 capital, and at the opening of 1930 
found itself with $20,000,000 of surplus which was divided among the 
partners. But then came this deal in General Theaters Equipment 
stock, and it was a terrible trap.
Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox, pgs. 311/312

When the dust settled, Pynchon & Company was $40,000,000 in the hole. 
E.A. Pierce was left to basically action off the estate.  E.A. Pierce joined 
Merril Lynch, during the early 40's and then was Merrill, Lynch, Fenner, 
Pierce and Smith. Some of you may be old enough to remember recall 
Television ads for this very large investment house.

So the history of Pierce picking up the Pynchon Co. for a song is
encoded in what sound like Tax Stamps, which would be found 
on deeds of property. But why call the estate of the Pynchons, 
a small holding within the the E. A. Pierce empire 'W.A..S.T.E.'?
Because of the Waste Doctrine, Pynchon v. Stearns, mass 1846.
If you go to page 95 of this book: http://tinyurl.com/2gb8aa
you will find out why it was called 'the crying of Lot 49'.

http://tinyurl.com/2gb8aa