AtDtDA(28): Bevis, the Story of a Boy

[Dave Monroe]

On 4/4/08, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I suggest, in contrast to that wiki sacrificer who actually read Bevis,
> while I was too lazy too,  that Bevis' connection to Nature is a key
> connection to themes of AtD..........

Given what one can find WITHOUT having read the book ...

> Vol. I, Ch. 2 The Launch
>
> Whiz! Away it went, bend first, and rose against the wind till the
> impetus ceased, when it hung a moment on the air, and slid to the
> right, falling near the summer-house. Next time it turned to the left,
> and fell in the hedge; another time it hit the hay-rick: nothing could
> make it go straight....
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=35uAmC3TSN8C

... well, my interest in that one I hope is obvious.  However ...

> The names were duly registered ; Pompey's lieutenants as Val Crassus
> and Phil Varro, and Caesar's as Mark Antony and Scipio Cecil....
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=mukBAAAAQAAJ

Cf. ...

   The name of the "beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo" (CL 20-21)
points to that of the Roman satirists Marcus Terentius Varro (c.
115-27 BCE), who codified what has come to be known as Menippean
(sometimes Varronian) satire —Pynchon's favorite form. Menippus of
Gadara, a Greek philosopher-slave, developed the prose form in the
first half of the third century BCE. Menippean satire is characterized
stylistically by its union of humor and philosophy, a looseness of
structure, a tolerance of digressions, and opportunities of incidental
versification (which becomes song in Pynchon's hands). Two and a half
centuries after Menippus, Varro wrote about one hundred and fifty
satirical essay-like that were so popular they inspired subsequent
writers to carry on the Menippean tradition, most notably in the
Satyricon of Petronius and The Golden Ass of Apuleius. In
sixteenth-century France, Le Satyre Menippee (1594) married
Petronius's satiric style to state affairs and sired a new genre, the
political satire. By mentioning Varo, Pynchon evokes Varro and signals
that Lot 49 is to be read as a political satire. The Varo paintings
also introduce the tapestry motif. Thus the name Varo does double
duty. Pynchon's maaswerk holds up state affairs to ridicule —something
to do with Morgan-Rockefeller competition, with Nazis and Jews, with
sacred and profane revelations, drug-induced and otherwise.

http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm#chap_1
http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm

Where have you gone, Charles Hollander?  Oh, wait a minute ...

http://www.graat.fr/5%20Hollander.pdf
http://www.graat.fr/readingpynchon.htm
http://www.graat.fr/programpynchon.htm