COL49 - Chap 1: Who is Pierce Inverarity?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Good finds, Robin -- both the family history connection (given Pierce's robber-baron infatuation, this seems like a direct hit) and the postage stamp connection.

LK

-----Original Message-----
>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>Sent: May 3, 2009 1:32 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: COL49 - Chap 1:  Who is Pierce Inverarity?
>
>On May 3, 2009, at 8:29 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>
>> Does everyone have their copies of The Crying of Lot 49 handy?
>
>Yessir!
>
>http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/thomaspynchon-thecryingoflot49.htm
>
>> 1.  There may be more editions of this than the other books, due to  
>> its use in college lit survey courses (just guessing. Can anyone  
>> confirm or deny this?).
>
>Got my first copy of CoL49 out of the trash, a stripped copy of the  
>Bantam edition featuring Oed dancing to the Paranoids in paisley  
>patterns. 1979, Berkeley, plenty of used copies on the shelves of  
>Textbook stores around the campus.
>
>> 3.  What do we learn about Pierce Inverarity?  Pierce the  
>> untruthfulness?  Get right to the point?  Inverarity's a Scottish  
>> name, like Carnegie.  Pierce is something of a wannabe Robber Baron;  
>> Jay Gould's bust hovers over him, threatening (or maybe it's only  
>> Oedipa who's threatened by the robber baron image).
>
>I detect plenty of Pynchon family history in all of TRP's books. The  
>company that picked up Pynchon & Co. as it fell apart in the early  
>thirties was E.A. Pierce.
>
>http://tinyurl.com/cv7qpz
>
>Those stamps could well be the tax stamps of brokerage houses.
>
>"Inverarity" also points to "inverse rarity"
>
>http://www.math.ucsd.edu/%7Ebenchow/Inverted_Jenny.jpg
>