CoL49 (5)

[Monte Davis]

Laura sez:

>  I don't really get the feeling that Pierce has guided Oedipa 
> towards Tristero and W.A.S.T.E.  She seems to have found them 
> by the act of questioning Pierce's investments, the source of 
> his wealth, starting with the bones-into-charcoal dealings.

Much of M&D, of course,  is a "questioning of the source of" the US'
collective wealth. As are AtD's cross-cuts from miners to Vibes, Vibes to
inventors, etc. One could go on.

When my sons were in 3rd/5th grade -- holiday-pageant days at their schools
-- I was musing one Thanksgiving about the primacy of the Pilgrim-Plymouth
Rock narrative. Because of New England's early and lasting concentration of
scholarly divines, colleges, publishers, etc., it was able to stamp its own
story -- usually purged of Roger Williams, Ann Hutchinson, Daniel Shays, and
the like -- on the nation.

For most of the Anglos' first two centuries here, though, Virginia and its
region were in fact more populous and richer (and the Caribbean sugar
islands richer still, for the plantation set). I'm pretty sure that Average
UK Emigrant pictured a quick score from tobacco or cane, setting his
children up as leisured squires, rather than digging boulders out of a
thin-soiled Massachusetts pasture so his chidren could be self-respecting
Congregationalist abolitionists.

Which is why at a school event that fall, I suggested to a teacher that the
REAL Thanksgiving pageant, eschewing the Puritans and friendly Squanto,
would show a Tidewater or Jamaica paterfamilias praying: "Dear easygoing
Anglican Lord, we thank you for an addictive crop and slaves to tend it."

Like many other pedagogical reforms I've championed, it didn't catch on.
Beats me why.

-Monte