Misc. on AtD, Pynchon's oeuvre, etc.

[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> ever since the Chums had fled the pack of wild dogs in D. C....--early in
> AtD....(paraphrase)

eckshually...didn't they rescue Pugnax, caught
in the canine equivalent of crossfire, rather than themselves flee
the dogs (the Chums armoury would've obviated
that concern)?

Which leads me to place, in a sort of heraldic
way, not some horrible literary "symbolic" way (-;
Pugnax as a figuration of righteous pugnacity
(like the sponge couchant in the Spongiatosta arms
representing, um, whatever it represents - Sponge Bob, maybe?)

which could feed into a royalist-Pynchon heresy -
the feuding dogs representing the rabble, or canaille,
of a democracy (form of government scorned by
Plato and other classical thinkers, who saw a flaw
in the idea that all would try to vote themselves rich
at the expense of others - which of course our practice
in this country has contradicted)

but, I'm not holding out too much hope for a royalist
interpretation of AtD - though his early icon Eliot adhered
to that political tradition...

But the Chums adopting Pugnax, as later they adopted
Chick Counterfly and perhaps Prance...
perhaps does have some significance (he said boldly)