Back to the Future

[Paul Mackin]

On Nov 25, 2007 5:43 PM,  <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>           Paul Mackin:
>           Let me ask this question.
>
>           Other than name identification what
>           persuasive reason would author
>           Pynchon have for being so obsessed
>           by  the downfall of a Wall Street
>           brokerage firm  (who for all we know
>           might have been a bunch of cheating
>           scoundrels) that he would let it direct
>           his writing? It's not as if P's own family
>           fortunes had been compromised in
>           any way.  George M. Pynchon (head
>           of P and company) wasn't  a close
>           relative.  Does anyone know what kind
>           of cousin he actually was. Third,
>           Fourth, Fifth?
>             At a certain point we're all related.
>
>           Of course, nothing is inconceivable.
>           Joyce wasn't that closely related
>           to Odysseus and Penelope either.
>
> I suppose what I'm pointing to when I mention 'Pynchon & Company' has
> two rather distinct meanings. One is the Wall Street firm that developed
> out of Raymond, Pynchon & Company. The other is the larger East-Coast
> 'blue-blood' clan and their associates. I don't really know why
> the author chooses the larger story of his family as the 'spine' of work.
> And I don't really need to. All I really need to do is show just how many
> of these things we've been reading all these years reflect back on the
> author's genealogy. Because William and John and Edwin and George M.
> and another Thomas Ruggles, and another William and another John and
> a Susan---what they were doing way back lands in the author's books.
> Why? That's speculation. But it happened, those fingerprints are all over
> the novels.

Showing in any kind of all-encompassing way just how the history of
the extended Pynchon family--ten generations of 'em--is "all over" the
 novels will be an ambitious undertaking. Good luck. I predict it will
take you a thousand pages.

I would still like to know (if anyone has a handle on this) just how
closely  related the Long Island Pynchons, of which author Thomas is a
member, are to the ("blue blooded") Pynchons of Wall Street and
Newport RI? How many generation do you have to go back in order to
find a common ancestor for our Tom and George M.?