AtDTDA: What Chicago Hears / "ewige Blumenkraft" - historical faction questions / Barth

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

                          Mr Haney:
                          any bios of that early Pynchon around?

That, my friends, has pretty much my point for the last week. 
There is no bio that I have been able to cook up concerning 
Pynchon & Company. There are many, many 'sports' stories 
in the New York Times, and little slivers of light that come in 
as regards day-to-day operations at Pynchco. Thomas 
Pynchon's novels are riddled with cross-references of his family 
at all their positions on the timeline of American history. I would 
suspect the Civil War history of the Pynchons would be rather 
dark, but I really won't know till I see the evidence. We desperately 
need a history of the Pynchon family line, the relation of law to 
their legacy and a focused view of Pynchon & Company. That 
might be the biggest single hole on the shelf of American History. 
There are a number of Histories of the family one can find up to 
about the time the Stupendica bi-located, but I haven't found 
anything later than that.

But yes, Mr. Haney:

                          BBH was involved on the side of the 
                          Confederacy (not that _that_ in                          
                          particular is what made them evil...
                          if indeed they are evil)

They are evil in very much the same way that Plutonium is evil---too much 
concentration of power is always trouble.

                           ...and maybe the mysterious reversal 
                          (Harriman/George M) was like a 
                          Renfrew-Werfner thing?
                          ie - how admirable was Pynchon?  
                          Maybe he faked his downfall, (like Ken 
                          Lay faked his death, maybe?) and 
                          re-surfaced in deep cover as Harriman?

Kinda like that, yeah. Though I'm finding so many cross references to other 
family members, like the Pynchon v. Stearns case---the 'Waste Doctrine', 
apparently central to Laws of property management in the U.S. of A. 

Vineland the good is full of family trees, plenty of them Traverses, 
and Wheelers and Pynchons, lots of stories to tell 'round the table. 

If only we had looked. . . .

But yes, looking at the history of this family, their Mindless Pleasures, their
rise, fall and near-erasure, relocates everything by the author and for me, 
at least, goes a long long way in explaining Pynchon's choices for inclusion in 
his massive historical fictions.