CoL49 (6) Winthrop Tremaine

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Slothrop is probably derived from Winthrop.  Slothful Winthrop -- a negation of that old Puritan work ethic that Winthrop Tremaine so keenly demonstrates

LK

-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jul 5, 2009 4:04 PM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: CoL49 (6) Winthrop Tremaine
>
>"'I could've sold him two hundred of the swastika armbands too, only I
>was short, dammit.'
>   "'Government surplus swastikas?' Oedipa said. 'Hell no.'  He gave
>her an insider's wink. 'Got this little factory down outside of San
>Diego,' he told her, 'got a dozen of your niggers, say, they can sure
>turn them old armbands out. You'd be amazed how that little number's
>selling. I took some space in a couple of the girlie magazines, and I
>had to hire two extra niggers last week just to take care of the
>mail.'
>   "What's your name?' Oedipa said.
>   'Winthrop Tremaine,' replied the spirited entrepreneur, 'Winner,
>for short....'" (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 149)
>
>
>From J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to The Crying of Lot 49 (Athens: U of
>Georgia P, 1994) ...
>
>It is, of course, no accident that Winthrop Tremaine, the Swastika
>salesman, should have as his first name the last name of one of the
>oldest New England Mayflower families, the Winthrops.  Pynchon seems
>to want to create a link between Nazism and the
>fanatic early American Puritan persecution of Quakers, witches,
>Indians, and other "heretics" and consequently the very foundation of
>America, which seems and important element in the novel's "tapestry"'
>(Colville 27).  Perhaps, too, Pynchon brings in the TV
>show 'Johnny Tremaine' as a way of providing a further diminution of
>the American past." (p. 122)
>
>Citing ...
>
>Colville, Georgiana M.  Beyond and Beneath the Mantle:
>   On Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49."
>   Ansterdam: Rodopi, 1983.
>
>[...]
>
>http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=58984