Fw: American History tidbits [From Henry Adams and the Making of America]

[Mark Kohut]

I am reading this book because I know little about Henry Adams but I do know
he influenced Mr. TRPynchon, Jr. a lot......
___________________________________________


Henry Adams collated his grandmother Louisa's writings.
 
She was Mrs. John Quincy Adams. Henry liked her not him.
 
He "had no inner life"---[and we know how important the "inner life" is in Pynchon's oeuvre
J. Q. was raised to abjure laughter..."not dignified"...
(Louisa could not help laughing at stupid clothes, stupid social rituals).
 
He was Pure Upper Class Puritan. Told Louisa, when she was his fiancee
that "he was training himself to avoid strong attachments". (Just what
a smart beautiful woman wants to hear.)
 
Wills writes of their "cosmetics war".......she was naturally pale and
he would not allow her to wear any rouge......
 
Twice she "resisted", once by teasing him in semi-darkness as she
prepared for the ball (naturally she was a great dancer) hoping when he saw her it would be too late to forbid her.  -- 
He left her standing as he rode off in their coach.
 
This kind of "gravity"---seriousness by the power elite---is part of the meaning
of the gravity (gone wrong) in Gravity's Rainbow, I say. 

Mark Kohut (& Associates)
63 Western Ave.
Jersey City, NJ 07307
646-519-1956
201-795-9388


      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing.  Make Yahoo your home page. 
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20080102/e90d6d72/attachment.html>