The 'Waste' Law | Pynchon's genealogical influences

[Bryan Snyder]

it's funny, I posted that because for about two days or more I've been finding myself going... "is this really all some psycho-genealogical therapy session?!?" and more and more informative posts and ... 

so, yeah, I agree with that.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of kelber at mindspring.com
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 8:03 PM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: RE: The 'Waste' Law | Pynchon's genealogical influences

I think it's a given here that neither Robin nor Brian nor any of the TRP-obsessed would ever think that his works can be reduced to being about one main theme.  Kudos to Robin for providing all of this food for thought, and to Bryan for adding some context.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Bryan Snyder <wilsonistrey at gmail.com>

>
>Very interesting stuff that's been shared for sure.  I'm loving it.  Please
>do not read the below text as if I'm trying to take away from the great
>information being shared here.  Let me state that as a Pynchon fanatic, I
>love it... I print it... I read it twice... I waste tons of trees (gone to
>the blade for these posts!!) on this stuff and I think it justifiable cause
>it all deals with my favorite author and all that good, fuzzy stuff.
>
>Please... I don't want to seem like I don't appreciate the delving of
>material here!!
>
>so with that rambling of mine out of the way...
>
>I would say that while TRP does place in his fiction a lot of his family's
>history and his family's ties with thematic "winners and losers of the Great
>Depression" (a lot like how GR deals with the winners and losers of the
>carving up of Germany and the businesses that fragmented from that action) I
>don't think that his own ancestry is central to the fiction.
>
>I'm sure he enjoys the study of his own past ancestors and sees that his
>family was very much at the center of that pre-Great Depression American
>collective monetary war and these references I think are more a
>manifestation in his literature of the fate that befalls all authors: the
>insertion of themselves in their art.  
>
>But when his letters do get released, I think we'll see a different force
>that drove him to his works.
>
>In one letter that was written about(in the NY Times I think... the article
>dealing with the letters TRP's old publicist sold...) back before those
>letters were promised to be kept from the public until his death, TRP says
>himself (before GR, and in one of these letters) that's he's working on
>three books and if they are anything like he envisions they will be the
>"literary event of the millennium" and I just think that if he thought this
>(and time will tell) then it must because of the snippets of ideas that we
>all discuss that he can view as a larger and far more interacting-whole
>(science, technology, philosophy, behaviorism, politics, economics,
>engineering etc.) ideas that are far more important in an
>onto-epistemological sense and FOR all of mankind than this
>self-genealogical-study FOR his own personal demon-dealing.  
>
>A-and (sorry, had to) if this meta-idea of his is to have any sort of
>ability to tug at our heartstrings, then I think the use of his family's
>history allows it to tug at HIS heartstrings which I would think would
>provide him with a method for making us all feel the way he does.
>
>Not to say at all that his family and its incredible history are not part of
>his millennial-event causing ideas, but I just don't think he's as obsessed
>with it as we are (and I am too... I almost bought a hanger made by Pynchon
>& Co.  lol)
>
>I'm down to read this stuff so please keep it coming!!
>
>B